Here's your Daily Poem from the Poetry Chaikhana --
 | Not dawdling By James Broughton
Not dawdling
 / Photo by Nina Matthews Photography / |
| ============ Thought for the Day: May our eyes see, though our hearts break. ============ | Here's your Daily Music selection --  Scott Huckabay Secret Portal |
Hi Omss -
James Broughton was a poet and experimental filmmaker associated with the San Francisco Renaissance.
He was born in Modesto, California into a wealthy family.
In his autobiography, James Broughton describes a visionary encounter while he was still a toddler:
I remember waking in the dark and hearing my parents arguing in the next room. But a more persistent sound, a kind of whirring whistle, spun a light across the ceiling. I stood up in my crib and looked into the backyard. Over a neighbor's palm tree a pulsing headlamp came whistling directly toward me. When it had whirled right up to my window, out of its radiance stepped a naked boy. He was at least three years older than I but he looked all ages at once. He had no wings, but I knew he was angel-sent: his laughing beauty illuminated the night and his melodious voice enraptured my ears . He insisted I would always be a poet even if I tried not to be .Despite what I might hear to the contrary the world was not a miserable prison, it was a playground for a nonstop tournament between stupidity and imagination. If I followed the game sharply enough, I could be a useful spokesman for Big Joy.
The family soon moved to San Francisco. When he was five, his father died. James was sent to military school at the age of nine. He later attended Stanford University.
He is perhaps best known for his avant garde films, exploring themes of sex, death, and meaning, earning him a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute. His poetry often mixes the Beat Zen sensibilities with a playful, pranksterish quality, summed up by his phrase, "Follow your own weird." (In modern usage, the word "weird" means "strange or odd," but originally the word meant "fate or destiny." I suspect he is teasing us by merging all these meanings.)
James Broughton died in 1999. His gravestone reads "Adventure -- not predicament."
==
What to say that's not already said?
At every crossroad
be prepared to bump into wonder
Ivan
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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.
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