Night Thoughts: The Collected Poems of Ted Kotcheff - Volume 3

By Ted Kotcheff

The poems in Volume III of the COLLECTED WORKS can be grouped quite naturally under the heading of either darkness or light. There is plenty of material on the dark side to invite despair: but Kotcheff does not succumb to that temptation. Instead, he chooses to enlist with life and ride under the banner of Life and Love and Beauty.
Among the selections included in Volume III are: the poignant story of a young boys love for a precocious and eccentric work horse; haunting memories of a summer spent working in an abattoir; a vignette of a young man and an older woman whose two souls are transmuted into one through music; tales of unspeakable cruelty dredged from Kotcheffs ancestral Bulgarian past; the magical beauty of myriads of pure white butterflies convening for regeneration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514434062

Ted Kotcheff

Ted Kotcheff always had two overriding artistic passions in his life: to make films and to write poetry. For the greater part of his life, he has directed a panoply of feature films that cover a wide range of genres, from comedies such as Weekend at Bernie's and Fun with Dick and Jane, to intense dramas such as Wake in Fright, First Blood and North Dallas Forty. He has achieved significant artistic recognition, with two of his films, Wake in Fright and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz receiving the ultimate accolade of the film world, being declared Cannes Classics. He was inducted into the Canadian Film and TV Hall of Fame. Law & Order: Special the TV series that he produced for 12 years and frequently directed, won many awards. But always, he harbored an unrelenting passion to fulfill his lifelong dream to create poetry. So in 2011, he authored his first volume of verse, followed by two others. This is his fourth volume: the poems within are quintessentially different from all that has gone before, poems that achieve a philosophical profundity reflecting a passionate lifetime involvement with life, socially, culturally and politically. Ted Kotcheff has recently published his memoirs, entitled "Director's Cut", reflecting his colorful, dramatic, diverting and diverse, variegated life.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Ted Kotcheff.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015920505

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-3408-6

               Softcover        978-1-5144-3407-9

               eBook             978-1-5144-3406-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/06/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

730603

CONTENTS

God’s Confetti

Night Thoughts. Why?

Condemned

Moose, A Portrait

Abattoir, The Eyes

Blindings

Memorandum On Memory

Doris, A Love Story

Time! Time!

I would like to

dedicate this volume of verse

to my very dear friend, Florence Richler,

in memory of her beloved husband, my treasured friend,

Mordecai Richler.

There are several people to whom I would like to express my warmest gratitude:

Francis Chapman, my lifetime friend, has made extraordinary contributions to all three volumes of my poetry. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of English poetry and its prosody, and an exquisite ear for le mot juste. It gives me tremendous pleasure to write a poem about my relationship with his wonderful mother entitled Doris, A Love Story, for it was at his insistence that she and I get together to play.

And once more, I extend my thanks to Dylan Sheridan for his remarkable design work for the cover and within that has made each of my three volumes of verse works of aesthetic originality.

Thanks also to Zack Turnquist, my assistant, for his endless dedication in typing, and re-typing the many transmogrifications that each poem went through. And for being such a reliable sounding board for all my ambivalent ideas.

And thanks, finally, to my cherished wife, Laifun, who is my continual inspiration and loving support. She was always there with her keen intelligence, fine aesthetic taste, and insightful ideas in the creation of this volume of poetry.

40955.png

GOD’S CONFETTI

What mystic bond

Made possible

This cryptic synchronicity?

What the lodestar?

What the timepiece?

Clouds and clouds,

Stream in from the four quarters,

From distant parks and prairies,

Gardens, roadside ditches,

Fields and meadows,

Crossing cloud-capped mountains,

And ruffled ocean waters,

Buffeted by storms,

Eluding wasps and lizards,

Dragonflies and rats,

Spiders, snakes,

Rapacious birds,

And us,

Voracious Homo Sapiens,

Who seek you out

For a tasty comestible.

Finally, you home in

On your enshrined destination,

Coming to rest

In this humble tangled woods,

Descending like thistle down

Upon the groves and copses,

On every bole and branch

And twig and leaf and cone.

Soon every consecrated tree,

Arrayed in lustrous vesture,

Glows resplendently.

A blur of fluttering wings

Has robed these hallowed woods

In a mantle of living snow.

And still more and more arrive,

Pearly, slender-bodied lepidopterans,

A vision of delicate magnificence,

Swirling in eddies of gossamer,

Merging,

Conjoining,

Entwining,

Interweaving.