BOOK LAUNCH FOR DEAR MOM #books #indiepub #AuthorRT

A LONG TIME IN THE MAKING

Soul work is slow work. This memoir is no exception in that regard. R J Van Dress is a mere sixteen when WWII breaks out.  And when he hears the newsboy on the corner selling newspapers shout this news, he scarcely will fathom that two years later he will be part of the last battle to end the war, the battle for Okinawa.

When I first approach my father about writing this story and sharing it with the rest of the family as well as open it to a broader audience, he shuns the idea. Eight slow years go by before the idea surfaces again. This time he comes to me and asks if I will help him tell his story. We work together another three years to bring this short story to press.  

Eleven years in the making, mythopoetry.com, on behalf mythopoetics in culture, is honored to present to you now, "Dear Mom: A WWII Memoir", R J Van Dress, author, Water Forest Press Books, publisher; cover art: R J at nineteen, pencil sketch by Ricketta Van Dress; copy edit: Ann Marie Van Dress, introduction Stephanie Pope.

The book is $10 a copy and is on sale now through Amazon.

BY SMOKELESS FIRE BLESSED

Hungarian postage stamp  "1719 Tales 60" by Darjac -
Scanned by Darjac (personal collection)
Licensed under Public Domain via Commons 

HALLELUJAH

Remember when I moved in you and the Holy Dove was moving, too?
                   -Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah

     “rubbing”
   a leitwort, a
genuine response


©2015 Purposeful Repetitions  stephaniepope mythopoetry.com
In SIX WORDS or fewer, write a story about a wish granted #6words #writeprompt

notes

1. Leitworstil means “a leading word style”.  The term is coined by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. In storytelling it designates a purposeful word repetition; such a word and word repetition suggests a motif or theme important to a story and/or this story’s outcome. From the repetition of the leitwort meaning is apprehended and the story’s theme gains the reader’s attention. In a sense, lead by the leitwort, soul-making itself experiences something “as if” as it is here and now.
see David Pinault, Storytelling Techniques In Arabian the Nights, specifically p. 18.

2. See also Robert Lebling, Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar

3.  One kind of fire spirit are the jinn, the smokeless flames. From this imagination the words genuine, genie and genius come.  

Here’s Jeff Buckley singing Hallelujah

THE BIRDS OF ARES, THE 1ST GOP DEBATE & UNCIVIL DISCOURSE

WHEN USING WORDS LIKE WEAPONS

“Polyphonte became a strix ‘that cries by night, without food or drink, with head below and tips of feet above, a harbinger of war and civil strife to men’". [1]



Night h’owls strix-like
turning upsides↑
down↓

©2015 Decaying, Mythologies; Descending Series stephaniepope mythopoetry.com
#6words #writeprompt #poetTues


notes
1. In the Greek myth, Polyphonte (screaming) gives birth to twin sons, Agrios (the savage) and Oreios (the beastly). This (language) grows in size and strength and showing no honor to god(s) nor human beings alike, proceeds wantonly insolent of all.  Money does that; so does using one’s words like bullets to ask “gotcha” type questions in a presidential debate.  When Trump says of Megyn Kelly, “you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,”  he may have intended to imply that she used her words like bullets hunting prey. He may have meant, her medium, Fox News came screaming at him like the mythical Polyphonte. In her myth it is told she comes ready to feed on flesh and blood.  She is a metaphorical ‘bird of Ares’. In environs where the Fox News moderators of the GOP national debate willing tell afterword how they were targeting Trump, how they used their words to fire questions meant to draw blood (something Trump expresses metaphorically when he proclaimes he sees "blood coming out of her eyes" (Kelly's eyes) and also "wherever", also tells us it was a group effort to ask Trump such kinds of trivial questions with the specific goal of marginalizing his ideas we have yet to hear him address and repress his opportunity to address policy questions of any depth. How unfair to the entire citizen body and other candidates in the debate, moreover, not just GOP voters, but everyone else tuning in that night.  One can understand Trump's comment by knowing the minor Greek myth of Polyphonte.  As if like a bird of prey, warlike, Fox News came at Trump using words to formulate questions that moved like screaming bullets. In deed, a foul play; indeed, an uncivil discourse ensues.

 

2. For connections between law and the Strix, Lilith, vampires and Lamia images in collective, mythic imagination see Orit Kamir’s Every Breath You Take: Stalking Narratives and The Law, p55.

---

[1] Oliphant, Samuel Grant (1913). "The Story of the Strix: Ancient". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (The Johns Hopkins University Press). pp. 133-34. See http://www.jstor.org/stable/282549?&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents accessed, August 11, 2015 at 9:29am.

AN ODDLY HODGEPODGE JOURNEY #ohjDailyWord

GERAS EMERITUS

do a lifetime Geras emeritus
all but retire in dissonance

©2015 Active Aging stephaniepope mythopoetry.com
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