Poem n the Pangolin Review!

 Scroll down for my poem, "It Feels Like 1968" in the Pangolin Review!'

https://thepangolinreview.wixsite.com/.../issue-18-april...

Glad t be here again! Thanks, Pangolin Review!

Tomorrow is the day! Arts on the Ridge, Ridgeway, SC Saturday, May 1, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

 It's tomorrow!

https://www.facebook.com/events/2089091201201182

     Ridgeway is minutes from I-77. If you cannot come, contact me for signed copies and/or check these links! Thanks!

https://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Turfa/e/B00YJ9LNOA%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

https://www.blurb.com/b/10335105-all-in-the-family-2nd-edition

Getting Close! Arts on the Ridge, Saturday May 1, 10a-2p, Ridgeway, SC - Alll Poetry Books Available!

It's tomorrow!

https://www.facebook.com/events/2089091201201182

     Ridgeway is minutes from I-77. If you cannot come, contact me for signed copies and/or check these links! Thanks!

https://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Turfa/e/B00YJ9LNOA%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

https://www.blurb.com/b/10335105-all-in-the-family-2nd-edition

 

Interview today with other writers at 2-2:30 p.m. EDT South Carolina Writers Association

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl5vOXywR8RK59loMMmAuxg 

    Link for the itnerview. I will be with three other writers at the South Carolina Writers Association virtual conference. Thanks, Kasie Whitener!

Poetry Lovers are everywhere....and at Lexington ENT!

  

     While getting ready to leave Lexington (SC) ENT today, I chatted with Nilam, a health professional who loves poetry. While I was getting her a copy of Gemini, she had checked me out on Amazon!

     It pays to have some book in the car!  

     Also got my tent yesterday, so I am prepared for Arts on the Ridge in lovely Ridgeway, SC on Saturday, May 1, 10a-2p!

https://www.facebook.com/events/2089091201201182

   https://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Turfa/e/B00YJ9LNOA%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

https://www.blurb.com/b/10335105-all-in-the-family-2nd-edition

Arts on the Ridge, Saturday, May 1, 10a--2p, Ridgeway, SC

 

     My very first festival, and it has improved so much! Charming Ridgeway is near I-77 north of Blythewood, and not far from Charlotte, NC.

    I will be there with some of my fellow Aiken Writers Bloc friends, and all of my poetry books. Also, I will be talking about my upcoming novel from Blurb, The Botleys of Beaumont County.

    The event is outdoors, mask-mandatory, and guaranteed to be a pleasant experience!

https://www.facebook.com/Arts-on-the-Ridge-Ridgeway-SC-203403823726330

    

https://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Turfa/e/B00YJ9LNOA%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

https://www.blurb.com/b/10335105-all-in-the-family-2nd-edition

Six Years of "Places and Times", eLectio Publishing

     eLectio Publishing took a chance with this poet. Thanks, Jesse and Christopher, for steering me towards my first book. Fellow poet and friend Joanna Kurowska thought my poetry was worthy of being published, and I extend my thanks to her as well. Alicia Salabert, Stephanie Weisend, Katya Mills, and William S. Tribell contributed friendship and blurbs. Carol Worthington-Levy created what would be the first of many stunning book covers for me.

https://electiopublishing.ecwid.com/Places-and-Times-Paperback-*-p49408222

     eLectio will include an e-book with the purchase of the paperback! Other vendors will too, but the book is available with them as well.

    A recording of one of the popular poems from the book!

https://soundcloud.com/arthur-turfa-1/the-island

     

 

The Resurrection in Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks"

     I spent much of my early years with Thomas Mann and his family. As a teenager, I read him in translation, then as a German major in the original. At UC-Berkeley in 1975 (the centennial year of his birth), I took a course on him offered by his son Michael. Right after that course ended Michael was kind enough to write a strong letter of recommendation for me to UC-Irvine for a graduate assistantship. At UC-Irvine I started to write a dissertation on Henrich Mann, Thomas' brother, even conducting research in both parts of a still-divided Berlin.

     For several reasons that dissertation was unfinished, primarily because I ended a Lutheran seminary and was ordained in 1981. MY reading continued, as did my teaching career. 

     Mann was also Lutheran but developed a religiously-based humanism that was not bound to any particular confession. When I read Buddenbrooks, his first novel, the ending intrigued me. The novel is subtitled Verfall einer Familie/Decline of a Family.  As the surviving members mourn the loss of the last male heir, there is a surprising affirmation of the Resurrection from an unlikely source: Sesemi Weichbrodt was a schoolmistress to the Toni Buddenbrook and became an unofficial member of the family. She is extremely short in stature, old, malformed, and for all appearances, weak. 

    Yet she gives a ringing affirmation of the Resurrection. I am not saying that Mann himself thought so. But he is not using the character to spoof religious dogma. Long ago I did a short piece for a German Lutheran US/Canadian publication on the pastor figures in the novel. Mann was aware of Christianity;'s influence. 

     Not that I would use this in a sermon, since not many Americans know of Mann or this novel. But I wonder if Günter Grass or John Irving partially based Oskar Matzerath and Owen Meany on Sesemi Weichbrodt?

https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.96819/2015.96819.Buddenbrooks-The-Decline-Of-A-Family_djvu.txt

suddenly Frau Permaneder burst into tears. 

“I loved him so much,” she sobbed. “You don’t any of you 
know how much — more than any of you — yes, forgive me, 
Gerda — you are his mother. — Oh, he was an angel.” 

“He is an angel, now,” corrected Sesemi. 

“Hanno, little Hanno,” went on Frau Permaneder, the tears 
flowing down over her soft faded cheeks. “Tom, Father, 
Grandfather, and all the rest! Where are they? We shall 
see them no more. Oh, it is so sad, so hard!” 

“There will be a reunion,” said Friederike Buddenbrook. 
She folded her hands in her lap, cast down her eyes, and put 
her nose in the air. 

“Yes — they say so. — Oh, there are times, Friederike, when 
that is no consolation, God forgive me! When one begins 
to doubt — doubt justice and goodness — and everything. Life 

358 



BUDDENBROOKS 

crushes so much in us, it destroys so many of our beliefs — ! 
A reunion — if that were so — ” 

But now Sesemi Weichbrodt stood up, as tall as ever she 
could. She stood on tip-toe, rapped on the table; the cap 
shook on her old head. 

“It is so!" she said, with her whole strength; and looked at 
them all with a challenge in her eyes. 

She stood there, a victor in the good fight which all her 
life she had waged against the assaults of Reason: hump- 
backed, tiny, quivering with the strength of her convictions, 
a little prophetess, admonishing and inspired. 


THE END