Duende: Odes of Intimacy and Desire for the Shadow Punctuated with Images of Illusion and Reflection
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About this ebook
N. Thomas Johnson-Medland
N. Thomas Johnson-Medland is an end-of-life specialist and doula. He is the author of Wayfaring Stranger; River Bending; Coming Back Home; In the Same Place; Bathed in Abrasion; Bridges, Paths, and Waters: Dirt, Sky, and Mountains; Cairn-Space; Entering the Stream; Along the Road; From the Belly of the Whale; Danse Macabre; Feed My Sheep: Lead My Sheep; Windows and Doors; For the Beauty of the Earth; Duende; and Turning Within. He lives a stone's throw from the Susquehanna River in Columbia, Pennsylvania-just outside Lancaster-with his wife, Glinda. Tom and Glinda have two adult sons, Zachary Aidan and Josiah Gabriel. Reach him here
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Duende - N. Thomas Johnson-Medland
Duende
Odes of Intimacy and Desire for the Shadow Punctuated with Images of Illusion and Reflection
N. Thomas Johnson-Medland
Photos by Bob Cook
7248.jpgDuende
Odes of Intimacy and Desire for the Shadow Punctuated
with Images of Illusion and Reflection
Copyright © 2013 N. Thomas Johnson-Medland. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Wipf & Stock
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-143-4
EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-581-7
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prefatory
Introduction
A Rough Poem At the Death of a Mentor’s Mentor
The Bag I Drag Behind Me
Holding Out Against the Storm
Masters of the House; and Other Such Trolls
How Would We Learn
There is Rampant Chaos Everywhere
It is the Burning
Only Stay
Crawling Out from Under
Down to Egypt
Dear Mr. Woolly Mammoth,
The Writing of This Line
The Poets I have Met
O Federico, O Lorca
Early Morning Displacement and Hankering for Hope; or, Indra’s Net
Through the Opening In the Heart—
Out of the Darkness; Into the LIGHT
Fiddleheads
Uber-Worker
Among the Ivory and Lavender
I Pass Myself Into
Back Then
What Do I Do With the Sands of Time
Acacia
Whitman Sings The Wind
There is a Wisp
Moon-Bow
Across the River—Somewhere in the War Between the States
Dedication
Tom’s:
For Glinda, Zachary, and Josiah - you have kept the joy in my heart alive like an ember against the cold.
Bob’s:
To my wife, Sarina. Thank you for keeping a light on in the window to help me find my way home.
"The duende I mean, secret and shuddering, is descended from that blithe daemon, all marble and salt, of Socrates, whom it scratched at indignantly on the day when he drank the hemlock, and that other melancholy demon of Descartes, diminutive as a green almond, that, tired of lines and circles, fled along the canals to listen to the singing of drunken sailors."
—Federico Garcia Lorca, Theory and Play of Duende
"Seeking the duende, there is neither map nor discipline. We only know it burns the blood like powdered glass, that it exhausts, rejects all the sweet geometry we understand, that it shatters styles…."
—Federico Garcia Lorca, Theory and Play of Duende
"The duende is a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive, all that the performer is creating at a certain moment….It manifests itself principally among the musicians and poets of the spoken word, rather than among the painters and architects, for it needs the trembling of the moment and then a long silence."
—Christopher Maurer, from the Introduction of Lorca’s In Search of Duende
Prefatory
This new volume of poetry is going to be tricky. The theme is a bit beyond the usual construct for the modern reader of poetry. DUENDE.
It is the concept that does not come immediately to fore of peoples’ ken. But, that is just to the cognitive side. It clearly does come to the fore of the unconscious mind because it is wrapped all around the role and function of it.
DUENDE is the shadow side . . . it is all of the personality that is really about making up that alter ego. It is the BATMAN side of Bruce Wayne. It is the weakness, brokenness, and darkness we go through and embody to make us whole.
And yet, in terms of poetry, it is the very thing that poets are putting out from their own being. It is the ethos, penthos, and pathos of every word/image of all poets of all times. It is at the heart of what mesmerizes us in the poems we are called to write, read, and hold deep within as meaningful, truthful, and alive. It is what we modern folk would call ROBUST INTEGRITY.
In scriptures, it appears as the prodigal son tales. It is the person who wanders away and then has an awakening and comes back to himself (but now he is more HIMSELF), but in a fuller way. Many faiths have this sort of broken open wholeness theme in them.
It is that part of a person that is just beyond being able to grasp, to hold, and to tether. It is that odd or undefinable characteristic in a person that somehow makes them seem more whole and settling than other people. It is the stuff that roots our perception of