Monday, August 12, 2024

"Accents" KDP How I Became Who I Am


                            https://www.amazon.com/Accents-Arthur-Turfa/dp/1980326703


  Thematically, Accents is the most cohesive of my books. I look back on the people, places, and events that formed me. I felt so strongly about this book that I obtained my rights from the original publisher and put it on Amazon.


     The opening poem:

     Accents

 

I

 

For all my lifelong

leitmotifs wafted on the air

through sounds and silences.

As I read, watched, or listened,

recalling at day’s end

or in a sudden flash. often

beholding intersecting

routines and rituals

which drew the strands

together into a pattern.

 

Accents call my attention

away from secondary, even

tertiary matters. Forcing my

focus on life-transforming

moments that make

destiny seem natural.

 

II

On the sidewalk between shops

ten languages in my ears, I learned

distinctions between shtetl and steppe,

Danube and Don, Mediterranean

and Moldova, how they slid into

the English I spoke. But their English

resembled the sea shells containing

the sounds of the sea

from which they came.

Have you heard of Jesish, Artur?

He vaz HunGARIAN just like us!

Announced Grandma like Archangel Gabriel

As we stood in the long driveway.

 

III

 

Attuned was I to accents of

friends and strangers in hundreds

of streets, bars and classrooms.

Speaking on trains as countryside

Flashed by the window or in

the Mensa among clattering of trays,

discerning dialects, finding my

second voice then passing it on

to some who wanted to find

their own.

 

IV

 

For a time I tried to play

what I heard on a fretboard.

Chords and notes I knew

but fingers could not fathom

how the sounds actually formed.

The accents had no melody and

gradually I left the strings untouched.

 

V

 

Recurring themes stand out,

accentuating between what is important

and what is unessential.

I grasped that comprehension

did not always require

immediate participation. Far better

to wait, to preserve, and act

when a leitmotif recurred.

 

VI

 

Seeking connections where

none seemed to exist,

I wondered what land looked like

before the town arose

from fields and forest,

whether an author colored

a portrayal of an event

to enhance the plot,

who the painter was whose

portrait inspired the poem.

Bleiben Sie beim Text!

Stay with the text!

Sounded the shrill, unsatisfying

cry in the seminars, as if

the text only existed in a

secular Holy of Holies.

For me, the glass bead game.

Not for its own sake but

to find coherence amidst

all the loose ends.

 

Arthur Turfa, ©2017 KDP


My novel:

https://www.blurb.com/b/10799783-the-botleys-of-beaumont-county

Other books:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Arthur-Turfa/author/B00YJ9LNOA?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true



1 comment:

  1. Oh gosh, you are making this so hard. I now have to add this to my short short list. Stunning poetry Arthur! Wow

    ReplyDelete

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