PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE ROBERT SHEPPARD’S “POEMS FROM SPIRITUS MUNDI” FEATURED ON PYROKINECTION & POETRY PACIFIC

Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard

Three poems from Pushcart Prize nominee Robert Sheppard’s “Poems from Spiritus Mundi” are featured on the acclaimed poetry journal “Pyrokinection,” edited by A.J. Huffman. The “Poems from Spiritus Mundi” are an embedded integral part of the dual novel “Spiritus Mundi” and have also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize by “Poetry Pacific” a sister renown online journal of poetry.

To See Poems from Spiritus Mundi on the Pyrokinection site see: http://www.pyrokinection.com/2012/06/three-poems-from-robert-sheppard.html

To see three more of the Poems from Spiritus Mundi on Poetry Pacific see:  http://poetrypacific.blogspot.com/2013/03/3-poems-by-robert-sheppard.html

Poet & Novelist Robert Sheppard, Author of Spiritus Mundi

Pyrokinection

Where words come to burn . . .

Pages

Home
Submission      Guidelines
About Us
Kind of a Hurricane Press

                       

Three Poems from Robert Sheppard

Tree in Winter

Exfoliate of lives errant,

Exfoliate of dreams illusive,

Exfoliate of desires obscurant,

Exfoliate of loves derisive,

This only Tree

In Winter,

Inward flows its long sap,

Like the flowing of glass.

Far below, hung as on one branch,

City of Illusions,

Derisive, Buzzes,

Eternal dwelling place of subjective beings,

Stares out of windows, refracted honeycombs;

Do not believe they exist,

The men who pursue them.

The Lunatic of One Idea

In the Kingdom of the Blind,

The one-eyed man is King;

In the Empire of the Clouded Mind

The Lunatic of One Idea

Is tyrant dictator

And First Mover.

Hail the Saturnalia!

The First shall be Last!

Joyous Monomania!

Free at last,

Free at last,

Thank God Almighty,

Free at Last!

“Solip-sliding Away”

Over-much selving,

So lips, so lips, so lips

Sliding away,

Tongue, tongue, tonguing

Tonguing, engine of

Tongue,

Run-away, runaway, awaying

A weighing

Auto-drive,

Driverless,

Drive-train,

No one there,

Behind the wheel,

No one there,

Run away engine

Auto-pilot — tongue in the cheek of God.

**These poems first appeared as part of Robert Sheppard’s novel, Spiritus Mundi. They are being reprinted here, with the author’s permission, for the reader’s convenience and enjoyment. (Copyright 2010).

About the Editor
A.J. Huffman A.J. Huffman has published five solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her sixth solo chapbook will be published in October by Writing Knights Press. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2012 Promise of Light Haiku Contest. Her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation.


POETRY PACIFIC

a literary e.zine for true lovers of words & wisdom

Monday, 4 March 2013



3 Poems by Robert Sheppard

Moby Dick

Again,
the human need for
                                         surfacing
from meaningless
                                                                             voids.

Again,  She blows, She breaches!
Again,
                             must we float,
                                                     that we may live.

These depths bring not
                             enlightenment,
but death.

Flotsam and jetsam,
return
us
to
the things
Of this world.


_____



Zeno’s Paradox

Words have power
To arrest the flight of an arrow
And the arrival of death
Is deferred
In a word—-
The delimiting case
Of the world.
The approach of
Death
Hollows out
            Our present,
And the void
            From which we speak.
Life begins in silence,
Ends in silence,
Its obituary
Then told in a language–
But a further edition
Of silence on silence.


______



Ineffable Qualia

What is it like to be a bat?
In the dark dark to live,
Hanging upside down in caves,
Navigating blind—
By the sonar of our own shrieks
Echoing from a shrieking world?

It is like nothing.
It is like nothing—-
Nothing but ourselves.


_______

[Editors Note:  The above poems first appeared as part of the novel, Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard.]


————

















Poetry Pacific Founding Publisher/Editor-in-Chief:: Changming Yuan [pen name of Yuan Wumin], 7-time Pushcart nominee, grew up in rural China, began to learn the English alphabet at the age of 19 in Shanghai, and published several monographs before moving to Canada as an international student. While pursuing his graduate studies in University of Saskatchewan, he helped establish the Saskatchewan Chinese Monthly, and served as its chief editor until 1992. Since he obtained his PhD in English, he has been tutoring in Vancouver. Changming started to write poetry in English in early August 2004; since mid-2005, he has had poetry appearing in nearly 800 literary journals/anthologies across 28 countries, which include Asia Literary Review, Best Canadian Poetry (2009, 2012), BestNewPoemsOnline, In Other Words, Istanbul Review, Kwani?, LiNQ, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Kanto, Poetry Salzburg Review, SAND, Saraba Magazine, Taj Mahal Review, Threepenny Review and Two Thirds North. On the Remembrance Day of 2013, Yuan established Poetry Pacific Press (PP Press) at http://poetrypacificpress.blogspot.ca/ in Vancouver. Blogsite:: yuanspoetry.blogspot.ca.

Selected Publications:: 1. Chansons of a Chinaman [Paperback]. Murfreesboro, TN: Leaf Garden Press, 2009. 2. Politics and Poetics: A Comparative Study of John Keats and Li He [Paperback; Monograph]. Berlin: LAP, 2009. 3. Waiting [e.Chapbook]. Red Box Kite, 2012. 4. Landscaping [Paperback]. San Jacinto, California: Flutter Press, July, 2013. 5. Plein Air [Paperback; Micro Chapbook]. Origami Poems Project, 2013.