Born: Nov 8,1934. Bklyn, NY.
Currently: working jazz pianist/singer, yoga teacher,
poet.
Residence: Sweden
Early life: singer, harpist, budding poet.
Hofstra University graduate.
50’s Lead role in cult musical “The Nervous Set”.
Appeared in Cassavetes “Shadows”, lead in B
film “Jukebox Racket”, wrote score to “1,000 Shapes of Female”.
60’s,70’s, 80’s Lived in Paris, Greece, Lebanon, England (TV,
radio and lecturing)
80’s to now, Sweden.
Have published 17 books of poetry, still writing, teaching
yoga & performing.
Working Through
Thought-Come-To-Life
After all the time of
alterations,
Reconstruction, wooing,
Swapping, substitution, plain
redoing,
One begins to see a rhythm in
and out the line;
A something not to cry about,
groan or complain,
For it, benign, makes for the
‘real’ of art;
Rhyme, meter in the walls, the
very cell
Fulfilling which one cannot
help but feel well.
Perhaps a look into
thoroughness of the poetic bent
Put under microscope of
strength,
Reveals endless levels, endless
youth;
Embryonic possibilities which
only come to birth
When worthy poet cozies up to
word and breadth.
After all the time of playing
blacksmith
To the craft of
scribbling,
Not just dabbling -
Finally, yes finally, a text
without pretext
Or mixture comes to earth.
One’s said the thing one had
to say
The best, if not the only way
One could - that day.
Self-Interest
Oh, so big, so mono-formed.
So easily mis- un-, de-formed
And yet infused with nothing
but
A you that’s
there and cared for
More than anyone within your
sphere.
Showing forms that seem
concerned
And even empathetic
With a pride and unearned
Self-conviction that conceals
a mind cosmetic -
Hard to rid one’s selfish self
of,
So well hid, this dearth of
love.
Fueled and filled by all the
vices,
My advice is:
Nothing,
I might have it too.
I Write To...
I’m quoting myself- a brash and vain thing.
A Facebook answer dug from ashes of awakening.
In answer to some honeyed comment, I replied,
“ I write to share, write to be read…
I write in form
From some mysterious and magic norm
Sent by conundrum’s force and source;”
I’ve frilled my answer,
Filled my answer
All because I am a poet
In my heart,
Not smart - besotted and bewitched
By thought through language.
Not thought-through, but thought, through word.
How I anguish over each and every turd.
Anyway to sum it up,
I send you friends, a cup of wine
Which lots think fine, and
Which I see a hint of the divine in.
Yours devotedly, Arlene
