"Saluda Reflections" from Finishing Line Press My Most Recent Poetry Book

 https://www.amazon.com/Saluda-Reflections-Arthur-Turfa/dp/1635345480?ref_=ast_author_dp&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.jHfdZLygoGH7FjDYvN8-Z81mTS7zeZ--qe54HGMkhxq17oGcB617pl2JF8MoTPzTkx6ad73LhWeV4_qNaRmLUTrZWkCc2c8JvwwezkoGEjtSvDhQ9htGMlvWbpDXSZ6B.2U2Jasn2H7NhioixZDkJVeyVIJ06jR4-NcabV3Xppi0&dib_tag=AUTHOR

     In this one, I talk about some things going on in the world today. At the time we lived in Saluda County, South Carolina, on a lovely 2-acre wooded lot off the beaten path.

      By far is is the best-received poem from the book:

      One Morning You Will Decide

 

One morning you will decide

that this is the day to escape:

 

time to load the car, leave

the madness and mayhem.

 

Soon we will drive along

mesas, snow-capped mountains,

 

along the Natchez Trace

and the Appalachian chain.

 

Maybe we will leave the car

at the airport and fly to

 

that city on a cliff in Spain

you saw online or Vienna

 

where I will lure you to Sopron

and show you the family homestead.

 

Tell me when, my love and I will

get the bags from upstairs.

Arthur Turfa, ©2018 Finishing Line Press

My novel:

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

My other poetry books and short story collection:

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

    

"Gemini" My Metaphysical Poetry Book from Broad River Books

 https://www.amazon.com/Gemini-Arthur-Turfa/dp/1942081170?ref_=ast_author_dp&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.jHfdZLygoGH7FjDYvN8-Z81mTS7zeZ--qe54HGMkhxq17oGcB617pl2JF8MoTPzTkx6ad73LhWeV4_qNaRmLUTrZWkCc2c8JvwwezkoGEjtSvDhQ9htGMlvWbpDXSZ6B.2U2Jasn2H7NhioixZDkJVeyVIJ06jR4-NcabV3Xppi0&dib_tag=AUTHOR

     For what it's worth, I am a Gemini. Where some people see contradictions, I see an opportunity to create something new that contains the best of two seemingly contradictory positions. 

     I call this my metaphysical poetry book because I ponder some deep thoughts.

    This poem I share is lighter in tone, but not in meaning. It has been used in a post-secondary presentation about adjuncts.

    Scholarly Mercenary  from Gemini, Broad River Press © 2018   Arthur Turfa

  

From high school rooms rented out

at night to community or tech colleges,

with an occasional four-year

campus in the mix, I wander

shoulder bag crammed with

textbooks, papers, flash drive

instead of ammo and field rations.

 

Contracted from semester to semester,

lured by another check or recertification

points, perhaps more dollars poured

into the Holy Grail of retirement,

on the front lines of education can

we be found around 75% of the time.

 

No tenure secures us, Some of us have

only these classes. A few seek full-time

status. Not I’ my salary suffices.

 

When the curriculum changes, I change

enough to continue, unwilling to

challenge directly. I am needed, and

say to myself

Vive l’argent! Vive le métier scholaire

Vive les beaucoups savants mercenaires!

My novel:

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

 

Other books, mainly poetry with a short story collection

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

   

"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

"Places and Times"- My First Poetry Book

https://www.amazon.com/Places-Times-Arthur-Turfa-ebook/dp/B00VQUVS4U?ref_=ast_author_dp&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.jHfdZLygoGH7FjDYvN8-Z81mTS7zeZ--qe54HGMkhxq17oGcB617pl2JF8MoTPzTkx6ad73LhWeV4_qNaRmLUTrZWkCc2c8JvwwezkoGEjtSvDhQ9htGMlvWbpDXSZ6B.2U2Jasn2H7NhioixZDkJVeyVIJ06jR4-NcabV3Xppi0&dib_tag=AUTHOR 

At times I want to ride

At times I want to ride a chestnut horse

over wide, undulating, endless steppes,

with hooves pounding out a staccato beat,

our heads lowered to enhance speed,

pointing toward the elusive white stag

ever within our sight, ever out of reach,

leading to verdant valley far away.

 

Years ago I only kept the gas tank half-full

in my ’72 Duster slant 6.

Great was the temptation to drive beyond

the mountains hazy with residual smog,

looming as I dropped from the 55

on slender concrete ribbon down to the

San Diego Freeway towards Irvine.

The time had not come for me to leave.

 

Now my life no longer fits into a car.

The white stag has blended into the mists

and I am content to be where I am.

Dismounting, I set the horse to pasture

and sit sheltered by the tall pine trees.  Arthur Turfa, ©2017  eLectio Publishing

This poetry book has different forms and styles. I think it has weathered well after almost a decade.

My Novel:

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

"The Botleys of Beaumont County" Southern Lit- Family Struggles to Keep Their Social Position

 

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

     My first novel. The review is from Michael Stephen Daigle, author of the Frank Nagler Mysteries:

The Botleys of Beaumont County are such an important family that members carry the name of the country in their name, thus Slerd Beaumont Botley.

And as such welcome to the framework of Southern fiction, a space occupied by William Faulkner, Pat Conroy, Margaret Mitchell, and now Arthur Turfa, poet turned fiction author.

Change comes slow in Southern fiction: The themes of historic roots, family, the American Civil War, (which for some has never ended), religion, economic divisions, and racism, both subtle and overt, are as prevalent as barbeque, cornbread, sweet tea, and country music.

It is a rich territory and in THE BOTLEYS OF BEAUMONT COUNTY, his first published novel, Turfa both honors these traditions and rips them apart.

Full disclosure: I read this manuscript in an early form. The published book is far different writing than what I read.

The story opens in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama as U.S. President, the first Black American so elected. Overlying the local happenings is the economic decline of 2008-09.

Turfa works the societal changes deftly into the story: The Botley’s cement products factory is in trouble, local businesses face failure, racial incidents at the local school, and turmoil in the once steady local churches.

As such the story reflects the times of 2008-09, but also shines a light on America of 2021.

At the center is the Botleys, proud, heroically Southern, and a flaming mess of a family.

Turfa details these changes through the eyes of, first Slerd Botley, successful local attorney, decorated Army veteran and family patriarch, and his teen-age daughter Ashley Violet Botley.

Slerd is a fixer, trying throughout the book to solve numerous social and family problems, including his failing marriage. But in his own way, Slerd is numb to the building trouble because as a fixer he sees the concerns at times only as issues to be solved through logic and influence.

He is also distracted by his burgeoning affair with Jessica Sinclair Cavendish, his high school sweetheart.

The relationship is central to the hierarchy of the story: She is from the wrong side of town, from the wrong family and their deep attraction is the key that opens the secrets of the story.

Offering a different view is Ashley, whose observations are scattered as asides. Whereas her father Slerd muddles through, one foot trapped in tradition, Ashley breaks those bonds and through her eyes, the reader grasps the changes that are coming to Beaumont County.

Other books from me

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

"Epiphanies" My Short Stories Collection from Alien Buddha Press

 

                                 https://www.amazon.com/Epiphanies-Arthur-Turfa/dp/B0CW182ZK2

     Without planning or warning, something impacts life and opens the way for a positive new development. These stories relate how this happens to an aging singer-songwriter, a young graduate student far from home, a female pastor in an unsupportive congregation, a young woman pressured to give up her dreams and return home, and a single parent adjunct instructor in a professional rut. 

    Available exclusively from Amazon! Signed copies to US and Canadian readers- contact me!  

   A reading from the book:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUqsM3GepgI&t=296s

   Poetry books at:

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

  My novel at:

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

50 Years Ago Today Richard Nixon Resigned- Poem from "Accents"

50 Years Ago Richard Nixon resigned- I saw it in Trier, West Germany. We convinced the owners of our favorite pub to say open at 2:30 a.m. so members of Sommerprogramm Georgetown could watch. It was worth it for them and for us.  I was starting graduate school at Georgetown University in DC then. I never finished, but that is another story.

In June 1974 I went to Georgetown to finalize arrangements for participating in the program. Through a Penn State friend in graduate school at George Washington University, I was invited to a party in his apartment building where David and Julie (Nixon) Eisenhower attended; I said hello to David, and Julie made the rounds to talk with everybody. 

The poem is from my thematically best-arranged book.

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

Trier, 1974

 

From atop the Porta Nigra

you gaze into the centuries;

into narrow streets where

Constantine and Karl Marx walked,

at graceful vineyards climbing the hills

that hold a blue, scattered-cloud sky

over the Moselle looping its way Rhineward.

 

Days spent confined at the Uni,

preparing for life on the Potomac,

smoothing access to labyrinths

it turned out I would never actually enter.

Evenings roaming the streets

roaring with laughter and lager,

long weekend crowded in Citroën 2cv

straining to and from Amsterdam.

 

Romance along the riverside or

as Nixon’s resignation crept into history

and we greeted rosy-fingered dawn.

Reconnecting for some years with others

as we settled into our roles different

from what we had imagined.

 

 

Decades later returning to find

the irony of all ironies: restored

amphitheater and baths, ancient items

abounding to be appreciated,

but my haunts long-absorbed

by covetous neighbors and the like

with no trace of their existence

except in my memories.

 

Every once in a while I meet

someone who knows the city,

and who from atop  the Porta Nigra

has also gazed into the centuries.

We share the glistening prize

nestled between the hills

and the Moselle flowing west.

 

From Accents ©2017, Kindle Desktop Publishing