Blood Songs Poems

.".".The look of love death has on its face and in its fathomless eyes as behind the burning irises legions upon legions of angels file up and down a spiraling staircase carrying love-notes and bringing back blessings and reprieves..."" I'm really not sure why this particular collection of my poems is called Blood Songs, the title it has had since beginning the first poem of the book written in October of 2000, and though, as with other titles of mine, not necessarily threading a theme throughout, yet the title stands notwithstanding... and so it stands.

"Katie Ford's is a finely-wrought lyrical beauty, a poetry of detail and care, but she has set it within an epic arc." —Poetry I lie still, play dead, am delivered decree: our daughter weighs seven hundred dimes, paperclips, teaspoons of sugar, this child of grams for which the good nurse laid out her studies as a coin purse into which our tiny wealth clinked, our daughter spilling almost to the floor. —from "Of a Child Early Born" In Katie Ford's third collection, she sets her music into lyrics wrung from the world's dangers. Blood Lyrics is a mother's song, one seared with the knowledge that her country wages long, aching wars in which not all lives are equal. There is beauty imparted, too, but it arrives at a cost: "Don't say it's the beautiful / I praise," Ford writes. "I praise the human, / gutted and rising."

Blood Song is the first full-length collection by poet Michael Schmeltzer. Praise for Blood Song: There is a radical nostalgia at the heart of Blood Song, a nostalgia that recovers the wounds of experience and brings it to a rich, imaginative culmination. In this way, the book's title is profoundly apt: on the one hand, Michael Schmeltzer's poems are about blood and the tragic consciousness that is the result of our being in time; on the other hand, the poems are about song, the reconciling artfulness that is the source of the best poetry. As one of Schmeltzer's canny speakers says, "I know / better. I'm no better." Equally unsettling and ravishing, Blood Song is a terrific debut. - Rick Barot author of Chord In Michael Schmeltzer's Blood Song we are confronted with the thrumming and violent fact of the body's music. From the haunting image of a father's wounded stomach, the metamorphosis of hornets into syringes, and the consolation passed to a grieving parent, we emerge from the book able to name our ghosts. Schmeltzer's poems are haunting love songs sung to children before sleep in the face of all the world's calamities. Poem after poem of this startling debut is filled with a tenderness capable of turning us to tinder.- Oliver de la Paz author of Post Subject: A Fable Blood Song is a perfect title for Michael Schmeltzer's powerful first book. Blood spills out of a man's slashed belly "like an open cocoon." Blood ties family together, for good or ill. "If you turn tragedy into story / you can survive it" sounds like a prayer, but the tongue can't be trusted, words slip from one to another: "scream" to "squirm," "insect" to "inflict," "hear and know" to "here and now." Familiar consolations fail: "How swiftly music / turns to stench; the things we cherish / how quickly they fly out of reach." And: "Not every movement is dance, / not everything swallowed sustenance." Images of salvation quickly become something else-a child freed from a closet's darkness sees "the bright blue throb of blue sky / with one cloud / marring it, / a dead dove / in the mouth of sky." It is no small thing, then, when the speaker looks around himself and says, "None of us are dead yet." This is a vision of what it is to be human that doesn't flinch from the hardest truths of what that includes: violence and rage and pain, but also tenderness and humor, innocence as well as experience. The poems themselves are evidence of the hard-won pleasures of making something of all that: making work, making love, making a family, making a meaningful life. - Sharon Bryan author of Sharp Stars In Blood Song, elegy continually resurrects the shadows, echoes, and misplaced memories of loss. Here, clouds cross the sky like a funeral procession, words brighten in the mouth, and children both bless and burn the innocence that most resembles them. Story is what we make of our survival, Schmeltzer tells us-we who see our sorrows hatching in each line. We who set fire to the nest as if the light we see could save us. - Traci Brimhall author of Our Lady of the Ruins Schmeltzer's poems wonder at the world as they grasp for the sacred, which may or may not be discovered. As the speaker states in Elegy/Elk River, "I've been here most of my life // and am no less lost." A keen-eyed biography boring into the cruelties we endure and inflict upon each other and ourselves, Blood Song sings with vibrant imagery and euphonic music. A familial vein interweaves these poems which stir us to wonder, what darknesses do we inherit as we hum along in our "minor key of existence?"- Matt Rasmussen author of Black Aperture

"Nate Marshall was paying close attention when Chuck D said, 'Rap is CNN for Black people.' In his hard-hitting chapbook, BLOOD PERCUSSION, Marshall takes the Hard Rhymer's words and masterfully applies them to poetry, turning his eye toward gun play, free lunches, skull caps, prayers, and praise songs. With wit and fierce music, these poems take on the subjects that can't find a space on the evening news, reminding the reader again and again that there is power and grace in truth- telling even when those truths are difficult to hear."—Adrian Matejka

A philosophical exploration of the power that poetry, music, and the erotic have on us.

One of the Greatest Poems in American Literature Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was considered by many to be one of the most important American poets of all time. He had a profound influence on all those who came after him. “Song of Myself”, a portion of Whitman’s monumental poetry collection “Leaves of Grass”, is one of his most beloved poems. It was through this moving piece that Whitman first made himself known to the world. One of the most acclaimed of all American poems, it is written in Whitman’s signature free verse style, without a regular form, meter, or rhythm. His lines have a mesmerizing chant-like quality, as he sought to make poetry more appealing. Few poems are as fun to read aloud as this one. Considered to be the core of his poetic vision, this poem is an optimistic and inspirational look at the world in 1855. It is exhilarating, epic, and fresh in its brilliant and fascinating diction and wordplay as it tries to capture the unique meaning of words of the day, while also embracing the rapidly evolving vocabularies of the sciences and the streets. Far ahead of its time, it was considered by many social conservatives to be scandalous and obscene for its depiction of sexuality and desire, while at the same time, critics hailed the poem as a modern masterpiece. This first version of “Song of Myself” is far superior to the later versions and will delight readers with the playfulness of its diction as it glorifies the self, body, and soul. “I am large, I contain multitudes,”

Imperial Liquor is a chronicle of melancholy, a reaction to the monotony of racism. These poems concern loneliness, fear, fatigue, rage, and love; they hold fatherhood held against the vulnerability of the black male body, aging, and urban decay. Part remembrance, part swan song for the Compton, California of the 1980s, Johnson examines the limitations of romance to heal broken relationships or rebuild a broken city. Slow Jams, red-lit rooms, cheap liquor, like seduction and betrayal—what’s more American? This book tracks echoes, rides the residue of music “after the love is gone.” Smokey the most dangerous men in my neighborhood only listened to love songs to reach those notes a musicologist told me a man essentially cuts his own throat. some nights even now, i’ll hear a falsetto and think i should run

Songs Of Blood ....This is Vinit Lavania's poetry collection which moves around different phases of life like love, hate, feeling sorry, regret, confession, etc. explains them in some natural ways, gives emotional touch......inspires you ......gives some musical touch too.........fantastic work.......gives sense of hard work.....