Poetry from Steve Bloom



 

         
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(Last revised October 2019)
     

 

           

NEW:
     
Poetry/Music Videos on YouTube

     
“Mississippi” (2.5 minutes): https://youtu.be/JfhrP4E2wJ8
 
“Like a Sunset Sky” (4 minutes): https://youtu.be/SnkaYLJUJgg

    
“Reading Between the Names” (7 minutes): https://youtu.be/eQOVcTO4H5I
   
          

       

Click Here for Archives of Previous Home Page Poems
     

Please visit Steve's page on-line at www.eco-poetry.org/steve_bloom.

     


Excerpt from the poem "If You Are One": 

Let us take a moment to imagine, together,
the magnitude of what we
might someday accomplish
if ever we join hands,
each with all of the others,
and form ourselves into a great circle
          of poets.

To see the entire poem and find out about
the "circle of poets" project
that it inspired click here

     
     

     

The Prison Artist

1.
The prison artist works away
in her cell on her latest creation,
intensity identical to any artist
wherever she may be working:
home, studio, even out
          in the open air.

For to the artist it matters not, we know,
where she may find herself in space
so long as the mind is free to wander
among the shapes and the colors.

          (Her brush shifts a line here
          a bit to the left, the tint
          of the area that it borders
          just a hair more
          toward the violet end
          of the spectrum.)

Wherever she finds herself in space:
out in the open air, in a studio, or at home―
but especially when home is
the inside of a prison cell―
every artist, working on her latest
is, you see, painting the gateway
         to freedom.

2.
The prison artist
coats a square of glazed bricks
in the wall of her cell with black paint,
hangs a sign:

I have painted the gateway to Hell,”
it reads

          “Do not open.”

Steve Bloom
September 2014


Steve Bloom and Dominic Newsome:

This poem was not written about Dominic Newsome. Dominic is a prison artist, but the poem was written years before I had ever heard his name. When the Meeting House Gallery in Columbia, Maryland, decided to display some of Dominic' artwork the person putting the exhibit together asked if they could also hang the framed text of my poem. Of course I said "yes." On Saturday, June 1,  an open house took place during which the public could meet some of the artists. I decided to attend, and started to learn more about Dominiceven though of course he was not among the artists who was able to be present that day. If you too want to learn more about Dominic Newsome and the exhibit click hereSteve.

     



Guest Essay:

Remembering Geraldine Lucas

by Terri Harper

 

State Correctional Institute at Muncy PA, June 2015: I went from a citizen and human being to prison in 1991. So . . . I asked myself: “At what stage of my existence am I no longer a liability? How can I be of value, at least as much value as the inmate next to me?”

 

Today I think of those questions again, because I have had the absolute blessing to have spent the last two years engrossed in caring for Gealdine Theresa Lucas: my little “Ornery Bird” as I so lovingly called her.

 

Right now she is in the care of strangers, soon to be in the care of Almighty God. No words can describe the void I feel from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. I’m restless, heartbroken, angry—and full of  questions that begin with the word “why.”


Click here to read more, and for comments


Essay:
   
       
“Ears and Hearts” Revisited
or: The Under-Appreciation of Greatness
    
by Steve Bloom
     
April, 2015—My poem, “Ears and Hearts,” (written in 2008, see below) raises the question: Why is great art so often under-appreciated in its own time? I am not the first  to ask this question, of course. But up to now I have not heard anyone offer a reasonably satisfactory explanation. Obviously this is not a universal phenomenon. Shakespeare’s plays were well-loved in Elizabethan England. Mozart was an acknowledged genius while he was alive—even if the people of Vienna had some difficulty judging the quality of his music compared to that of Antonio Salieri. Still, we are dealing with a common enough phenomenon.

Click here to read more, and for comments

       

 

He writes with an exacting eye
and a generous heart

—Pam McAllister, feminist author

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   For information about individual classes or group workshops in:

  • Poetry writing
  • Appreciating poetry
  • Making your own books at home

   or about

  • editorial assistance with your book, chapbook, or other manuscript

   send an email to: Steve@stevebloompoetry.net
         

     

     

 


 


"Steve at Work"
Photo by Pat Jordan

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