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    Beach Synchronization:: Selected Poems by Len Blanchard
    Beach Synchronization:: Selected Poems by Len Blanchard
    Beach Synchronization:: Selected Poems by Len Blanchard
    Ebook155 pages1 hour

    Beach Synchronization:: Selected Poems by Len Blanchard

    By Len Blanchard

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    About this ebook

    The sixty poems collected in Beach Synchronization are set either on the ocean, or on the beach, or in transit to or from the beach or, finally, in the mind of the narrator when he is simply thinking about the beach and the ocean. The first person narrator of these poems is the poet. This suggests what is indeed fact, that the poet has spent a great deal of time enjoying the many beautiful beaches along the west central Florida coast.
    However, while the beach is often beautiful, anyone who has spent any time near or on the ocean knows marine weather can be harsh, even life-threatening. Indeed, the beach is an arena where dramas of life and death are played out daily. To truly appreciate the shore and the ocean, then, one must respect the marine environment and the lessons it has to teach us. One must, in other words, be in synch with the various moods of the sea and nature.
    The poems herein are loosely organized around the premise that the moods of the sea and marine weather have their various rhythms. An overarching theme of the poems is that one who is in tune with the rhythms of marine life will find himself or herself in communion with a transcendent reality. In other words, one who is synchronized to the natural world is likely to feel that the world of the senses is not the only world. In many of the poems in this collection, the narrator is overcome with a premonition or an inkling that the world he knows with his senses provides evidence of a higher reality, a reality in which the significance of his human experience whatever it has been -- will become fully clear and will be justified.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateJul 23, 2013
    ISBN9781481777254
    Beach Synchronization:: Selected Poems by Len Blanchard
    Author

    Len Blanchard

    Len Blanchard holds a B.A. degree in English from Washington and Lee University and a Ph.D. in English from Emory University where he was an NDEA Fellow. Employed for several years as a corporate and business writer in Dallas and Little Rock, he began writing seriously upon his relocation to Florida in 1990. Since 1999, he has taught as an adjunct instructor in the Department of Language and Literature at State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota. In 2001, Blanchard published through AuthorHouse An American Passion, an epic narrative poem on the life of Crazy Horse, the great war chief of the Oglala Lakota Sioux. He is also the author of hundreds of poems. A few of these poems celebrating the life of the beaches of the Florida coast were published in a collection entitled Provocations of the Birds and the Beach in 2005 by Bellowing Ark Press of Seattle. In 2012, Blanchard published through AuthorHouse a metaphysical drama entitled The First Day: Albert Camus meets Crazy Horse in the Kingdom and another collection of poems, People Matter: Sarasota Portraits and Others. His poems have appeared in numerous national magazines and journals, and he has been nominated on three occasions for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Connecticut, he is now at home in Bradenton, Florida.

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      Book preview

      Beach Synchronization: - Len Blanchard

      Beach Synchronization

      Selected Poems

      by Len Blanchard

      A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will

      purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may

      come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects

      of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and

      every form significant of its hidden life and final cause.

      ah.png

      AuthorHouse™ LLC

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.authorhouse.com

      Phone: 1-800-839-8640

      © 2013 by Len Blanchard. 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 07/15/2013

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-7727-8 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-7726-1 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-7725-4 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013912794

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

      Certain stock imagery © Shutterstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Contents

      Overtura:       Beach Synchronization

      FIRST MOVEMENT-ANDANTE

      The Truth in an Egg Shell

      Fishermen

      Varieties of Alienation

      (Diving In) Out of the Rain

      Solace at High Tide

      Amalgamation

      Beach Effect

      Winter Reminder

      SECOND MOVEMENT-MODERATO

      Weather

      With the Current, on the Tide

      The Celestial Altar

      Classic Delusions

      Beach Quest

      The Meaning of Hawai’i

      Teetering

      Aesthetic Principles

      THIRD MOVEMENT-VIVACE

      Beach Holiday

      Beach Sight

      Tidal Rhythms

      Apollo on the Beach

      A Cry of Gulls

      Lovers’ Play

      A Godly Fear

      Rose Shells

      The Tern’s Example

      FOURTH MOVEMENT-ADAGIO

      Ship Shape

      Gray Distinctions

      A Signifying Noise

      Comfort in a Southern Wind

      Reflections of Two Worlds

      Red Tide

      Intimations of Intimacy

      Caught Napping

      FIFTH MOVEMENT-PRESTO

      Erosion Lesson

      Simpletons

      Musing on a Day of Rough Surf

      Honestly

      Serious Fun

      Windbreakers

      Plover in Sand

      Alien Happiness

      Something in the Air

      SIXTH MOVEMENT-LENTO

      Pelican Kingdom

      A Troubled Paradise

      Seaside Daydream

      Blinded in Paradise

      Bright Lights, Sandy Beach

      Pastel Dreaming

      Lamentation in Season

      Reflection in Torpidity

      SEVENTH MOVEMENT-A PLACERE

      The Marine Self

      The Accident

      Feeding Frenzies

      Storms Brewing

      Swimming on Empty

      On Inalienable Right and Absolute Evil

      Sifting Illusion

      (Traveling) In Sacred Circles

      Coda: Water’s Word

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Poet, playwright and educator Len Blanchard is at home on the Gulf coast of Florida. After publishing hundreds of poems in various literary journals and magazines nationwide, he published through AuthorHouse in 2001 An American Passion, an epic narrative poem on the life of Crazy Horse, the great war chief of the Oglala Lakota Sioux. A few of his poems celebrating the life of the beaches of the Florida coast were published in a collection entitled Provocations of the Birds and the Beach in 2005 by Bellowing Ark Press of Seattle. In 2012, Blanchard published through AuthorHouse a metaphysical drama entitled The First Day: Albert Camus meets Crazy Horse in the Kingdom and, also that year, another collection of poems, People Matter: Sarasota Portraits and Others. Besides this third and current volume of poetry, he published earlier in 2013 through AuthorHouse a second play, Not Most People: The Pornographist’s Tale. Three of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Blanchard holds a B.A. degree in English from Washington and Lee University and a Ph.D. in English from Emory University where he was an NDEA Fellow. Since 1999, he has taught as an adjunct instructor in the Department of Language and Literature at State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota. A native of Connecticut, he now resides in Bradenton, Florida.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Several poems in this collection have been previously published in various literary magazines and journals as noted below. I extend my gratitude to the editors of these publications for their past support and encouragement.

      In Bellowing Ark, With the Current, On the Tide, Beach Holiday, Lovers’ Play, Rose Shells, The Tern’s Example, Gray Distinctions, and Alien Happiness (At the Beach).

      In PKA’s Advocate, The Truth in an Egg Shell, Intimations of Intimacy, Honestly, Windbreakers, and Bright Lights, Sandy Beach.

      In The James White Review, Aesthetic Principles and Swimming On Empty.

      In Habersham Review, Fishermen.

      In Mind Matters Review, Varieties of Alienation.

      In Gaia, Beach Sight.

      In The Poet’s Page, A Signifying Noise.

      In Chaminade Literary Review, Comfort in a Southern Wind.

      In Skylark, Red Tide.

      In Slant, Serious Fun.

      In Harp-Strings Poetry Journal, Plover in Sand.

      In Phase and Cycle, Water’s Word.

      All the epigraphs used as introductions in this volume, the one to the collection as a whole and those to the individual movements of the collection, are quoted from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay of 1836, Nature. While the natural world may be under siege in our 21st century, Emerson’s wisdom is as valid today as it was in his day. I am grateful both for it and for his timeless expression of it.

      I also wish to express my appreciation to my friend and collaborator Kenneth Anderson. Kenny possesses both an appreciation of the natural world and the clear perception characteristic of a true poet and writer; he brought both qualities to bear in his helpful reading and review of the poems in this collection.

      A NOTE OF EXPLANATION

      The sixty poems in this collection were written over a period of some twenty years, from 1990 through 2011. Many of these have been previously published in various journals and literary periodicals as noted in the Acknowledgments to this volume. However, the majority of the poems in this selection had been filed away out of sight of human eyes other than my own and those of a few friends, awaiting that time I should feel I was ready to organize them to form a statement regarding what the semi-tropical marine environment where I am at home means to me emotionally and spiritually.

      The earliest of the poems herein were written in Key West where, feeling something like a refugee from corporate life and Dallas, I first began writing seriously and publishing. Most of the poems, however, have

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