Red Dragonfly Press, 2008
http://www.reddragonflypress.org/"Throughout Metamorphoses of the
Sleeping Beast, Dale Jacobson speaks
for the unspoken, the victimized,
the disillusioned, and does so eloquently,
forcefully, in a voice filled with beauty
and moral indignation."
--Robert Hedin
Exile in My HomelandAuthorhouse 2005
Exile In My Home Land, though an
autonomous poem, develops from two
previous long poems, Factories and Cities
and A Walk by the River, bringing
together their manifestly separate themes,
history and politics on one hand,
and metaphysical questions of loss
and mortality on the other.
Ranging through my personal experience, the poem confronts
the destructive as well as constructive forces operating beyond
our individual control that nonetheless define our lives.
Working from my childhood as a reference, the poem wants to
make sense of these various powers, often ruthless and absolute,
which present themselves as either human constructions such as
war, or the inexorable forces of nature.
In writing about nature or mortality, poets tend to exclude history
and politics as if they are irrelevant. This poem sweeps beyond
those conventional esthetic limitations, drawing connections
between all these themes of nature, history, politics and mortality,
using the backdrop of the author's personal experience.
This poem explores these enormous powers, and our perception
of them, as we struggle to determine our place in the universe.
A Walk By The River : A Long Poem
Original wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec
Red Dragonfly Press 2004http://www.reddragonflypress.org/music/493
"The river goes on flowing
indecently oblivious, opening
deep doors of its own darkness.
"There the shadows of sons
flow into the shadows of fathers
which flow into the shadows
of their fathers--a long regression
of sons, songs, daughters,
mothers and fathers in the murky
night of water toward the deep
undersea currents..."
Factories and Cities
1st Books Library 2003
"While the mighty engines turn,
which flow into the shadows
of their fathers--a long regression
of sons, songs, daughters,
mothers and fathers in the murky
night of water toward the deep
undersea currents..."
Factories and Cities
1st Books Library 2003
"While the mighty engines turn,
and the dynamos purr
like demons feeding the gargoyle lamps of the labyrinthine
streets, our cars take us neither closer to nor farther from
home, beneath the high stone buildings with shadows cool
as slate--
and ourselves
streets, our cars take us neither closer to nor farther from
home, beneath the high stone buildings with shadows cool
as slate--
and ourselves
near always to the past like distance
to the stars"
