Some of America Traversed: Poetry

By Michael Lee Correia

It is a collection of poetry written by the poet, mindful of the epic proportions of poetry, the musicality of language, the seasons, and the evolution of America. The seasons forever form the structural sky, earth, and people of this poetry collection.

Part I: Autumn In America, epic in tone, sweep, setting, scope, language and myth relates the history of the Goddess of Autumn (autumn itself), as the season introduces the climate and induces cultural and social, religious customs- especially annual Thanksgiving, as well as Halloween. Throughout the poem, the Goddess of Autumn will be given credit as she gradually, day to day, generates our annual storms, frost, ice snow and winds, in the various regions of the Americas. Thanksgiving describes the Pilgrims and their arrival on the Mayflower from Plymouth England to Plymouth Rock and the resulting gardens grown in their plantation. Even prior to that event, Thanksgiving in Autumn in America: Introduction imagines and describes this resonating, resilient event as its practiced in many parts of the world. The poet celebrates and interprets its customs world-wide, conscious of emerging allusions to classical, biblical and primitive myth.

As to its structure, in the main body of this long poem, organized into ten, measured chapters (in the manner of a novel, due to its length and the familiarity of the educated reader with novels), the poet imagines the original scenes and values of Thanksgiving, as compared and contrasted now, with citizens annual remembrance celebrations. So the Native Americans generously shared their hunted, fished and grown food and some of their artistically crafted wares with the Pilgrims. They intended to assist and help these first immigrants to prevail the harsh New England winters and to exchange, as well as respect each ones culture and set of beliefs. In contrast and comparison, the poet describes what Thanksgiving has now evolved into and why those original values have today been synthesized, due to accelerated materialism and technology, and so lost to many of us.

The short poem, Autumn& Music In theWorld, attempts to enhance my theme of the seasons, within the differing regions of the U.S. and the Americas, and any links to the international community, throughout the repertoire of classical and popular music in general. The long poem, A Hymn to the Different Colors And Forms of Autumn Leaves (Une Hyme `a les Couleurs et les Formes de les Feuilles de lAutumn),expresses the aesthetic colors and forms of the autumn leaves found on the grounds of a Florida tourist resort. The poem, a reverie into the aesthetic autumn in its profusion, also poses the irony and question of a possible imagined future of all this beauty, in the discursive narrative terms of what that beauty might decay into with Time set in the future. What might archaeologists surmise, who might excavate the sight of the resort and its human artifacts and flora then?

3 Spenserian Sonnets on a Halloween Theme relates the personal narrative of a struggling employee at he same resort, who, gets off work on Halloween eve, and returning home, realizes the eerie hyperbole of darkened, bizarre images, that he associates with that night: green tree frogs, dark clouds, passing a crescent moon, and an orange-masked, giant moth on his trailer door screen. All of Nature there appears odd, and the sense of a Halloween by himself resonates with scary and freakish overtones. Yet he feels himself like Lazarus the next morning, awakening, realizing at he poems close that its now All Saints Day as well, when souls are resurrected.

Part II: Winter In America introduces the subsequent, mythical Goddess of Winter, who follows on the harvesting and decaying footsteps of her sister, Goddess of autumn. Who ushers in winters freezing and drying climate, as well as it marks the start of activities and celebrations- commercial as well as national, ethnic and religious. The an

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 18, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462842322

Michael Lee Correia

Born in Sydney, Australia, in 1946, then raised in Massachusetts, and in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, he completed three short story collections, two psychological, mystery novels, and a family novella. He attended Saint Leo College, Florida, Loyola University, New Orleans, The University of Alaska, Anchorage, Florida Atlantic University, and was a graduate in English at Saint Louis University, and at The University of South Florida, Tampa. He lives with his wife, Lynn, a former, college, librarian, in Zephyrhills, Florida. He completed a first collection of poetry, SOME OF AMERICA TRAVERSED, now being published by Xlibris Corporation Press of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is also currently at work, completing a second collection of poetry, that is related, in theme and subject matter, to this first book, and he is also at work on a third book of poetry, RECESSION POEMS: 2000-2004. Along with a composer and friend, he will contribute the lyrics for a musical cantata for men & women’s chorus, based on SOME OF AMERICA TRAVERSED.

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Copyright © 2009 by Michael Lee Correia.

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Contents

-A Statement of the Author’s Intentions-

Forward

-Author’s Nota Bene-

Excerpts from The Four Seasons

of Antonio Vivaldi

AUTUMN IN AMERICA

-EPILOGUE-

-Endnotes-

Autumn& Music intheWorld

4 Spenserian Sonnets On A

Halloween Theme

Spenserian Sonnets #5 & 6 on a

Halloween Theme

Three Pantoums of the Littlered Tractor

-Endnotes-

7 Pantoums of the Littlered Tractor II

Homage a’ Copland

Homage a’ Copland 2

Homage a’ Copland #3

Un Hymne a` les Couleurs et

les Formes Diffe´rentes de les

Feuilles de l’Automne

-Endnotes-

WINTER IN AMERICA

WINTER’S ANXIETY/

WINTER’S CELEBRATION

Frost’s Ladder Leading Up To

Winter’s Truths

SPRING IN AMERICA

WHATWAYWEST?

Selma To Montgomery

-Endnotes

Selma To Montgomery 2

-Endnotes-

SUMMER IN AMERICA

SUMMER IN AMERICA:

An American Calendar & Portrait

-Endnotes-

I Dreamt That I’d Arrived At A Terrorist Attack

Song of an Eldest Son

ELEGY OF THE WALL1

-Endnotes-

What Poetry Can and Cannot Be

 -A Statement of the Author’s Intentions-

America-

In all her overwhelming resounding diversity of land and peoples-

In her diverse multitudes—multicultural multiracial multireligious.

Kaleidoscopic microscopic demotic, yet multifaceted

-

& multiform country, possessing great expanses and manifold reaches-

Sheer range in her variegated landscapes

In fluctuating moods evoked by her seasonal changes

-

In her sometime internecine, sometime inter-mutual, evolutionary

Flow of

Processes-

Of a nation in riddling flux,

Yet anchored flexibly to its traditions, customs, and myths.

-

America-

Her ever-adjusting, ever-adaptive, ever-expansive

DECLARATION and CONSTITUTION and BILL OF RIGHTS!

-

-Both of them resilient and pliable

A country’s governing bedrocks, continuously interpreted

Exercised and protected; yet protecting within a wise

Olympian-strengthened diamond-toughened government,

Whose people & peoples never fail to question & question

The ever-eluding quest for freedom/equality/

Diversity/justice/ and peace, for all her

And her citizenry’s glabrous

And jagged journeys!

—

Forward

Creation of theAmericas-[Found in a future, American-Intl. space shuttle flight]

In

the near

beginnings

and long before

our earth evolved

for 560 million years

The word was with God

And God was the word

and he created the world.

Geographers, geologists

today now

name three, primordial con-

tinents: LAURASIA

GONWANALAND & PANGEA-

A super precontinental mass

Evolving in flux for some

270 million years;

Evolving vegetation spread

and encased the world’s lands.

… And once God had …

Even before our earth

Innumerable eons preceding earth

Created, set in motion

In the cosmos

& then on earth:

A cosmic mixture originating

From the first known explosion

(Big Bang)

From a microcosmic source-atoms.

Whose resultant explosion

(Both noun & action verb then)

Had Created our Universe

Composed mainly of elements:

Hydrogen/carbon/oxygen.

Each element structured by atoms

Of only one type.

From these elements & from the prop-

Erties of minerals

Such as iron and magnesium … … .

God had created, as no human would

… … … … . or could ever … … … .

That massive, Promethean, interconnectedcontinent

That would later re-morph into two Americas! Alotlater

God would create … … … … … … . . us

(We whose bodies yet contain all of these minerals)

===== =====

And much later a young nation–

The U.S.A. would emerge

And not just as abstract geometry

Perceived and felt in the core

Of the citizenry’s amorphous

Mythical, collective unconscious spirit!

=====

Geographers can now discern mapped-

An identifiable Africa

In prenatal form, some 130 million years ago.

It’s encased within the imprecisely (because

Never photographed by man)

Mapped Gonwanaland.

An Africa that fits

As if a brilliantine puzzle, land piece.

A birthing Australia and Antarctica-

Set puzzle pieces, drawn below Gonwanaland

And adjacent to each other.

South America and Africa back then, fit snugly

Together –––––––––––––––––-

Resembling two boomerangs.

All of earth’s original precontinents were like

Rougher- shaped youths

Contrasted to what form they take on today.

They sought nourishment

From mythic, MotherEarth’s underlying

Molten milk, through her volcanic crust

Everburning!

* * * * *

As soon as North America slammed into Laurasia

The Iapetus Ocean slipped out, slithered out like

A prehistoric crocodile in a flooding river.

The impetus in the earth’s molten crust

Thrust its undulant body & muscles

(12 tectonic plates)

Upheaving to deposit an oldest of old mountain ranges

Ranging from today’s Spitzbergen and Greenland

&Wandering South

Down through North America

To halt at (the Current) Southern Appalachians,

The elder of North American ranges.

That slowest of slow movements of millions

Upon millions of years also delineated Panthalassa

She, (the character of many a Pacific Island legend) forbearer

And prototype of our Pacific Ocean goddess, Panthalassa.

So Panthalassa has swayed and held sway wetly

An eight-armed mythic Giant Squid, protecting her young.

Largest of oceans, her arms, tentacles tentatively hugging all lands.

In Pangaea (nestled once in an evolving Western U.S.)

The Rocky Mountains broke MotherEarth’s crust; tectonic plates

Shoving peaks higher than her older cousin, the Appalachians.

They tell a lengthiest tale of supreme beauty, danger, soaring snowstorms.

They reveal to those interested, both geologic & geographic evolution.

The Andes form the spine of South America thrust higher than McKinley

The American Andes, Rockies&Appalachians like biblical prophets

Of ancient ages, are willing to relate inspired EpicPoems, Stories & Novels

Of one Geologic age to another

To the capable desirous, and inspired imagination!

*****

So that three continents at one time, had a connection 30,000 years ago

To our subspecies, homo sapiens sapiens. The last Ice Age like aprophet

Had proffered for humankind a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska.

Two Isthmuses-2arms connected; image a man’s two human arms

Reaching down at an island beach, under Caribbean waters

Where he stood knee-deep in water, scooping up a fish.

Then a wider Central America made a Pacificcoast connection facile

And traversable through to South America… . .for what and for who?

For the endless journey of organisms, flora & fauna insects, & dinosaurs

::::::: ::::::: :::::::

[ThefollowingistheSpaceShuttle’sVisualSmokePlume]

for homo sapiens’ contiguous and continuous trains of migrationsofsouls

(now gathered in communities of the spirit world), also traversing an

enlightenedenlightened/enlightened/enlightened/enlightened/enlightened/

many-many-many-generational-immigrationroad, toward understanding

each person’s raison d’etre & r- … … … … …

eal creator … … … … . . The tectonic plates

of the two brotherly continents … 2 isthmuses

2 isthmuses touching, starting North from Florida,

then due South, touching––––––––––

–––-North-South pointing.Then anisland figure- Cuba–––––––––––––—

1 isthmus continuing reaching, along the shape of the West Indies

Contacting whatisnow the Guianas … and Brazil’s NortheastCorner

–––

This poem (intentional shape of an American & Intl rocket-launch-in-

& 5 astronauts; &now etching a recent, vapor-

ous smoke-trail

blazoned widely across a topazblue sky above Cape Kennedy

& Merritt Island’s bananayellow, marsh marigolds … headed

over open Atlantic lightchop, the astronauts heedful of the NASACommand

Center’s computerized instructions

to construct manned-stations on the moon&planets) attempts to com-

memorate the beginnings of earth’s forming continents, its

evolutionary/evolutionary/evolutionary/evolutionary

journey, whose distant posterity of human-

kind, hadbeencompelled to traverse (like the poetcompelled

to write) through evolutionary time, from birth as various

species of hominid, through whom evolution had

traversed on MotherEarth’s Gonwanaland (Africa)

&, eons later, to the migrations of a multitude

of deaths of minions of homo-

sapiens-tribes, religions, empires.

Cro-Magnon Man buries its con-

cerned-for-dead w./its belong-

ings. Modern Man then evolves

discovers granite and rock

then bronze tools. Discov-

ers fire. Creates myths

in an oldest, living lan-

guage-75,000yearsold

of New Guinea. Abori-

gines paint&delineate

w./outback plantdyes

along the inner sea-shell- shaped walls

ofthe martianlandscape-burntorange

& arid, coolingcaves

ofAires Rock, Australia.

Rocks ofStonehenge verbally

ritualistically

recreate

tribal myths, built

within…

…

a city. An invis-

ible, yet psychic

umbilical cord

had, for 100,

000years

lent spatial-

temporal

cohesion

&meaning

to birth

& death,

sickness

& healing

(through

a shaman-led)

spiritlife,

birth & mar-

riage, oldagehunting/planting

/harvesting

hadlinked each peo-

ples Americanhistory

each tribes

raison d’etre

-its creation

myths recal-

ling their fate:

arrival to

settlement

in these (2)

connected

Americas.

Now

eachJuly

The U.S.

cel-

ebrates 1776

Independence

Day & each

seasonal

holiday

resonant with a

nation’s

collective

cultural &

religious-storied

myths. Myths

that

American

immigrants

have alsocarried

with them,

inherent

cargo,

shouldered

over here

wandering

from each …

homeland

wandering

overfrom

each …

home-

land

.

*****

 -Author’s Nota Bene-

. . . If we, eachpsyche &allofus, could just realize that:

I am a fortunate being in being fortunate

enough to have been born and alive in this punctuation mark

of Time in World History! Because

I’m a citizen of a civilized nation-democracy

that prospers, even if the lights of justice,

equality and morality should often suddenly, starkly, temporarily

be extinguished.

Imagine! Compare and contrast America’s short utterance of History-

our match struck in Plato’s dark, evil cave, as passages

of an American History

flickering with shadows of a, first, verbally groping,

then delicately hued and finely-tuned, sounded, written art;

a match to the accomplishments of any other Time in Human History!

For despite thousands of cultures that have homogenized

and strengthened it,

are democratic government, has endured with pitted scars,

scars and weakened joints. Some muscles have atrophied

like many another muscle;

yet it will not break down or vanish unnoticed.

We will be admired

for what freedom and justice we’ve allowed

to flourish in the rose & several flowers gardens of each psyche

within these contemporaneous times.

Allow that for what we attained, within our moral religious

and legal tolerance,

and for the necessary dignity of humanity.

Imperfect we’ve been, and even now

we will continue to generate misguided mistakes,

due to the greedy hubris of some U.S. Leaders, throughout American History.

pursued by some leaders, those motivated only by egotistical hubris.

But our form of government has prevailed

and has continued To re-shape itself,

always with a resilient flexibility, when needed for the general good.

Presently in the last term of a Republican president

the United States government shares (but it’s never enough!)

some of its abundance

and freedom with its writers and artists. It shares (but it’s never enough!)

that peculiar freedom to create, from un vieil homme et une vieille femme

in a young nation’s

and a young earth’s—nulle part au monde vous ne trouverez-

your own materials

reflected and expounded today

in each creative, artistic soul, expressing ever-flexible

and diverse, multi-dimensional, and multi-pointed views

because ever expansive

as are its technologies

enmeshed within the totality of our arts.

—

Excerpts from The Four Seasons

of Antonio Vivaldi

(Summer)

"Under the heat of the summer sun,

man and beast droop."

(Fall)

"Peasants celebrate with

dance and song

the joys of a successful harvest."

(Spring)

"Spring has returned and festivity

Is greeted by the birds in happy

song…

And fountain formed by little

zephyrs

that murmur… as they flow."

(Winter)

"This is winter, but such that it

brings joy."

Introduction

(Can Be Read Or Sung Aloud By Men And Women’s Chorus)

Oh, rekindledmythicflame-

Consciousness ofa nation’s pregnancy maternity & birth pangs

Oh, Americus Traversed!¹-³

Oh, Amerigo Vespucci, Recalled!

Oh, Americans!

Oh, America Discovered!

Oh. America Traversed!

—

AUTUMN IN AMERICA

(Narrator)

-Everybody comewithme in the everdarkening

Sobering, somberseason of autumn!

When wewill journeyto virgin bays

Beaches, sounds. When wewill also

Imagine therivers lakes

Mountains that

Our Europeanprecursors discovered

Inaspirit

Ofawe &hospitality.

Yes, theyexperienced asenseof

Entrancement

Wonder Danger Caution

& metwith gestured &conversedwith

This New Continent. It reminded

Them ofcreation in The BookofGenesis.

—

Theearthformed, as theyknewit

Even eonsbefore explorers mapped&discovered theAmericas

& eveneonsbefore our Americanforefathers

Experienced

Thecyclic renewal of the fourseasons in theNewWorld.

Iwill trace humankind’s association

With earth’shistory, then, from thetimeof thesefirstEuropeans

in memory & knowledge.

Evenbefore theseexplorations, we perceived themyths

Of the GoddessofAutumn (natural&poetic autumn itself)

& wereflected

Amongthemyths, rituals&celebrations

Initiatedwith Adam&Eve’s paradisiacal, mythical

Garden&fruitree

Continuedwith Cain’sattack uponAble

& consequentfights &struggles oftheirprogeny

Throughto theprophetsof principalreligions

Startingwith Abraham &hisprogeny.

—

THE FIRST STORY of humanity in humanhistory-