memoir – Page 2 – Beguine Again

Mar282018 by Jamie DedesNo Comments

Brown Eyes …. Poems in Memory of My Father

Hello, Nazim ... Hello! After Nazim Hikmet What happiness that today I can be “open and confident” Though normally I would hide in the safety of feigned ignorance, feign joy, pretend that I can see my clear sky in spite of his clouds Respectfully, I provide the detail requested ... The year is 2016 The month, January This the first Wednesday The hour is 6 a.m. now that i am getting to know you, now that i am chest-high in your poesy it’s your time that interests me ..........1902 ~ You were birthday twins, Nazim You and my mysterious father, born the same year, into the same culture, spent your youth in that turmoil If I study you, Nazim, will I find him, my diffident father, in the dissident roots of your Turkish sensibility ~ they said he left

Brooklyn, In Memory Most Green

history, justice, memoir

The courageous immigrants of the elder generations cast the shards of their hopes and dreams across the landscape of this continent as prophecy. They worked hard and long for their visions. These people included my Lebanese maternal grandparents with their first-born children. They arrived in New York in 1897 on a boat from Syria. They petitioned for citizenship in 1925. Included also was my Turkish father who arrived here alone in 1919. He was just seventeen, eager to make good and to earn dowries for his four older sisters. The distaff side eventually settled in Brooklyn. That's where they were when I was born and that's where I was raised. These were people who came to America in “the days of sail,” as the great New York writer, Irish-American Pete Hamill, would say. Today's

Oh my! 1967 – the first poem of mine ever to be published; Yikes! 17 years old

Grace, heart, Joy

I was definitely the product you'd expect from the odd and awkward situation in which I grew up and surely I showed little talent, no free thinking and no genius or particular promise. The poem is not good - some youth write profoundly beautiful and wise poetry and young people today are far more savvy than I ever was - but it does illustrate that after fifty years or so writing will improve. We writers often have our doubts, but we are an unrelenting bunch. We write, write, write. We enrich, reform and reframe as if every word of ours will spark more Light in the collective unconscious, which I rather think they do. Make of Me a Tree I am young, Lord, but my heart is true, Make of me a tree Make me strong and supple That when tempests blow, I shall stand unyielding. Let