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