Poetry and Reflections: To the World from a Distant Son

By Dr. Aomar Benslimane

Contemplations, often dark that spring up along walks of shattered memories conjured by the rythms of New York and the world conversation in the shadows of globalization as it unfolded in the last few years paying tribute to those that shaped it.

The book moves seamlessly across cultural and historical bounadaries evoquing the New York City cultural settings, the Algerian Amazigh identity, the global climate change conversation and finally the latest world events viewed thrugh the author

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477208885

Dr. Aomar Benslimane

An aspiring American poet residing in New York/New Jersey area since 1992 coming from an engineering background. Originally Algerian berber. This is first poetry collection, A surprising often choking series of homages, elegies, rants, and autobiographical poems as a new register of language in which time and mortality echo and reverberate in often dark notes but ending on hopeful love notes to describe a state of an unquiet mind and restless soul in light of personal conditions that affected him and still endure and a constant struggle to extract joy and hope out of suffering

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© 2012 by Dr. Aomar Benslimane. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/14/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-0887-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-0888-5 (e)

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Contents

Introduction

Apology/Elegy to a distant world (September 2010)

The Verb by Jean Amrouche, Translated to French by Fatiha Lasri (June 2006) (Tifin). Rabat (April 8 1978)

The Cloud

Berber Conversation(March 20, 2010)

The white Paper. Lounis Ait Menguelet. (2010)

Sad Moments

(May 2010)

Dark Thoughts—Sunday (May 16, 2010)

Breaking Down

COP 15Copenhagen, Denmark (16 December 2009)

Ireland, London, Paris, G8: What is Next? What now?

Kneel and stay down (July 20th)

AB Thought of the day (August 14 2011)

November Celebration(11/2/2011)

The Dismantled House and the Sense of Survival(November 2011).

Weeping/Grieving for Marie (November 27 2011).

I Say let Love Shine. Tuesday. (December 20 2011).

Ferdowsi—Shahnameh

Sa’adi

Eugene O’Neill—Long Day’s Journey into Night from the True Compass of the late Senator Edward Kennedy

This is poetry as white phosphorus, written with merciless love and depthless anger

Griffin Poetry Prize citation

It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.

CD Wright:

One with Others: a little book of her days.

Poetry demands that the reader give over his imagination to that of another, which is why we’re most deeply moved by the poets we most trust.

Chase Twichel

—Horses where the answers should have been.

I write poems to find out why I write them.

Stephen Dobyn

—winter’s Journey.

Good poetry enlists the participation of the reader in the construction of meaning; it’s not meant to be passively consumed.

Ben Lerner

—Mean Free Path

It is primarily a reliance on the process of writing poetry as a refi ner’s fire, which burns away the dross of self, and leaves the pure gold.

Richard Jones;

The Correct spelling and Exact Meaning.

For a poet, whether boom times or bust times, it’s all the same if you’re sitting down at the page. In times of worry, there’s more of a need to listen."

Ed Skog Mister Skylight

I believe that poetry is a way into the world. In the writing of the poem I come to discover what I value and love, what there is to make my life worthy of. It’s a humbling and surprising process.

Joseph Stroud.

Off This World New and Selected Poems 1966-2006

"Poetry is the original fun. Poetry is living prose just as gardening is living architecture."

MS Merwin.

—The Shadow of Sirius.

Our writing comes out of the totality of what we are. Writing is the only interaction I have with the universe.

Ruth Stone.

What Love comes to

To a reader: Do not trust the poem—

The daughter of absence

It is neither intuition nor is it

Thought

But rather, the sense of the abyss…"

I am not mine" Mahmoud Darwish:

The Expropriated Poet (State of Siege)

Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in their best order.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And history makes fun of its victims

And its heroes

Takes a look at them and passes by

This sea is mine

This moist air is mine

And my name-

Even if I spell it wrong on the coffin—

Is mine

As for me,

Now that I am filled with all the possible

Reasons for departure—

I am not mine.

I am not mine

I am not mine…

(Mural)

. . .I am not mine Mahmoud Darwish:

The Expropriated Poet

Introduction

I have been struggling with my own writing and poet.org and the Academy of American Poets is one of my main sources that allowed me to get an education in this area and for that I am grateful. I do know that, like in any area (I come from an engineering field and I earned a doctorate so I am quite familiar with the publishing process), there is a need to network with other poets, get review, refine its own writing and most of all nurture friendship and allow ourselves to express our joy and pain by constantly mastering the art of the language to frame our feelings.

I have enjoyed so much this excerpt from Pat Conroy from Why I Write—My Reading Life by Pat Conroy (2010).

I do not record the world exactly as it comes to me but transform it by making it pass through a prism of fabulous stories I have collected on the way. I gather stories the way a sunburned entomologist admires his well-ordered bottles of Costa Rican beetles. Stories are the vessels I use to interpret the world to myself. I am often called a storyteller by flippant and unadmiring critics.

Like Pat, I myself feel that I do not just record the outside world as it is but transform it through my wandering mind in different directions, different stories that I keep feeding or the world sometimes does and it gets to a point that I