marjorie-palimpsests

Sunday, April 6, 2025

1923 and THE THEME THAT DEVASTATES

Perhaps one has to have the "soul of a poet" to understand this theme. But it is certainly a theme that has inspired within me poetry. A visit to any cemetery can make one wonder about all the lives of those buried there; all the layered stories that were lived and then "washed away."

At every grave, for every headstone... there is a name that lived 1000 stories: 1000 adventures filled with happiness and sadness. And with the passing of time, as memories fade and the stories stop being told, nothing remains.

I adored the series 1923. I will not review the epic ride within the episodes, but I will say that the ending is devastating. It left me filled with grief... for characters that were not even real. Heartbreak comes in many forms. The feeling of despair because of this form of despondency is a heartsickness that is a nasty beast.

LIMERENCE

Why am I feeling all this great emotion?

Perhaps I am thinking of poor Mary,

Moving away after so long living

In a quietly familiar and convenient place.

Mary, audibly rocking and rocking in the

Same chair above me as she aged into invisibility…

And soon I too will leave this same place.

For how long did I live with illusions,

Locking away all transitory possibilities

And realities and choosing instead to

Dwell inside mercurial fantasies and

Interior delusions and then grounding a still life?

Now the fading obstacles hardly matter.

The grey heavy details carved and set in stones

Have been kicked away by newer shades

Of sharp pastels that do not even belong

To me in my particular smallness.

Fog is moving in from the Hudson River,

Passing over yesterday and all the

Layered stories and everything

That came… before.

BECOMING UNTIL

BECOMING UNTIL is Marjorie J. Levine’s latest collection of poetry and is a bookend to her critically acclaimed debut poetry book, ROAD TRIPS. The bends in the road as life advances become mercurial passages and the moment comes when a life lived as one young with limitless possibilities becomes, just like that, an existence that settles into an almost tapered old age with many decades that recede into a personal past. In this collection of poems, the author creates a vision of her autumn years as defined by a time when she has been left behind but is slowly evolving and becoming until the time she joins again all the many in her journey who have fallen away. The anthology is structured into three distinct sections: HAIKUS, STREET POEMS, and MAGICAL THINKING, and culminates with her concluding piece, THE BEND IN THE HIGHWAY.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

THE CHANGED VIEW

In 2014, the view at 2 plac Grzybowski, at the corner of Prozna Street in Warsaw Poland, was heartbreaking. The very very old buildings had windows and walls covered in photos of those who lived there and who were sent to concentration camps.

I returned recently to see those buildings with those stunning and sad portraits were no longer there... and as is often the case, they were replaced with buildings of a more modern architecture.

Old photos certainly do light a particular present and preserve a personal history.