ORDER: FACING the WAVES: Transforming Political Chaos With Art
The project is scheduled for release this MAY. It includes a deluxe limited edition hardcover. There is also a 14-track album featuring original music and spoken word. Additionally, there is a signed limited art print of the cover illustration by renowned Scandinavian surrealist painter Katarina Anderssen.
PRE-ORDER NOW BEFORE TRUMP IMPOSES A TARIFF ON ART ! ! !
All music composed and performed by Gilad Atzmon
Words Composed by Igor Goldkind
All work is Copyright 2025, Igor Goldkind, Katarian Andersson and Gilad Atzmon
Pre-Order FACING the WAVES: Art & Music Edition by Award Winning Poet Igor Goldkind
The Mass market digital edition is out in April, but I’m only signing the $54.95 limited edition. $34.95 for the cheap, print on demand edition out in April, 2025
Original cover by Norwegian Surrealist Painter
Katarina Anderssen
(Also available as a fine art print, signed and numbered by Katarina )
Original music and spoken word album composed by the magnificent Israeli Jazz composer Gilad Atzmon available in March for download, CD and Vinyl entitled The Broken Star, a musical and poetic indictment of the current state of Israel.
Album cover design by the designer, illustrator, comics artist, visual god Dave McKean. (Arkham Asylum, Sandman, Cages).
International signing and performance tour of Spoken Word and Live Music coming in the Spring of ’25
This is Art.
Sample the Stone Soup:
Rumi’s Mirror
the reflection of a reflection is your reflection.
upon the mirrored surface of a pool,
that is being slowly filled
by the very source of the life
you reflect upon
Now jump in the pool!
Modern Haiku
A boy goes to school
And tears his schoolmates apart
With metal piercing bullets.
This is normal now.
Facing the Waves
Waves are your faces
Crashing in real time,
Raising the tide
Against your complacent shore.
Waves are your faces
Curved towards you:
White-bearded men,
Relentlessly knocking on your front door
Reality, an unknown intruder
Upon your inner core,
Beats rhythmically, poetically,
Drowning you in what you do not know.
Waves are your faces
Melting into one and the other;
Beating, imploring you,
To open your locked front door
Waves are your faces
Beating on your front door
Eroding your discomforts
Seeking to drown your inner core.
Beating senselessly, endlessly
Against locked doors,
Waves are abandoned faces
Beating on your front door.
(Email info@themissionarts.com
To be added to our pre-order list.
order in January for a 99.50% discount!!)
Look for it sweetheart, you ain’t seen anything like this before!
(Email: igor@themissionarts.com
To be added to our pre-order list order in January 2025 for a 99.50% discount!!)
Hey, No one does math the way we do!
Clique-Bait: The San Diego Poetry “Scene”
prelude to the storm
San Diego is a city-by-the-sea with a population of 5 million. It has spaghetti freeways numbered like 5, 8 and 805. These firmly establish the metropolis as a driving town. I grew up in San Diego in the 60s and 70s. We first rented an apartment in Point Loma named Loma Palisades. I attended Barnard Elementary School, which has since been converted into high priced condos, like everything of value in San Diego. Life was relatively laid back. The beach, particularly Ocean Beach, was close by. I began attending the early Comic con meetings in Ken Kruger’s science fiction, comics, and porn bookstore. My new friend Barry Alphonso joined me at the nerd-meets. The founder Shel Dorf would regularly give his moral sermons to us geeks, freaks, and comic book hounds.
I didn’t actually read comics at the time. I was kind of snobbish about them. However, my friends Barry and Bryan Smith did. They consumed comics ravenously. My parents didn’t give me an allowance. They were strict about where their kids spent their hard earned money. Science Fiction was another story. This genre I consumed like a dehydrated camel at an oasis. First Edgar Rice Burroughs and A Wrinkle in Time but soon it was Harlan Ellison, Theodor Sturgeon, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick (who I barely understood), Philip Jose Farmer, Kurt Vonnegut and then there was Ray Bradbury. Of all the fantasy, horror and SF authors I read, it was Bradbury who spoke deepest into my soul. I saw Bradbury as a kindred spirit. Along with Baudelaire, Poe, Rimbaud, Malarme and Zola who I also consumed with ravenous glee.
But Bradbury’s poetic novels forge my writing and poetry to this day. The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, and the devastating Something Wicked This Way comes. These stories infected my dreams. I recall having vivid dreams of sitting next to the illustrated man. I also dreamed of being on the carousel of youth in Wicked and meeting the Martians on Mars.
It was his short film “Dial Double 0” about an actual artificial intelligence (NOT that misnomer marketing term AI!), born in a phone box haunting a terrified man with phone calls that animated my imagination. That and the first series of Star Trek (yes, I am old enough to have seen the first series when it was broadcast, sitting next to my dad who was equally mesmerized by heroic space exploration. My actual dad and I bonded over Star Trek AND Ray Bradbury.
Deeply profound imagery, is what Bradbury delivered and my being the son of a painter, it was the paintings he put in my head that I could not get enough of.
My father, a professor of Anthropology at SDSU, encouraged me to read. He had taught me how to read English. I learned Spanish first in a Costa Rican Catholic school.
My father loved Science fiction, being a scientist and he reveled in the fact that I would empty the SF section of the downtown library every two weeks when we took a family outing to the library.
I eventually met Ray Bradbury at the age of 14 (or 13). It was thanks to my serving on the Comic Con steering committee. Walking up to the man in the ice cream suit and white fedora took all the nerve my nerd self could muster. He was standing by himself on the first morning of the Con, next to the El Cortez interior swimming pool. (Not in-door, but outside under a windowless sky light in the center of the hotel lobby. I walked up to Mr. Bradbury in terror. Here was this magician, this shaman of words who had entered my dreams at night and took me to far flung peaks of aesthetic bliss mixed with mystery and terror. Of course Mr. Bradbury was always Mr. Bradbury to me. Even when I got older and saw him briefly before his death, I never called him ‘Ray’. I deemed it to be a desecration of his powers.
I did summon the nerve to get him to sign my first edition paperback of Something Wicked This Way Comes and found him shining his benevolent smile into my eyes and face. He wasn’t a powerful, dark, intimidating wizard after all! Ray Bradbury was a kindly, warm, sincere man who cared about his fans. The artist as saint. He returned my paperback to me and smiled. I knew that I was safe from his dark magic. I could venture to ask him what I really, desperately needed to know.
“Mr. Bradbury”, I said before he turned to go to attend to his convention duties. “Mr. Bradbury, can I ask you a question?” Ray Bradbury stopped in his tracks. He turned back towards me. Leaning over my form, he replied, “Why of course, young man. What is it that you would like to know?”
I hesitated for a split second. It occurred to me that he was mentally anticipating a question about one of his stories, some character, or plot twist. But I had a bigger question in my 14 (or 13) year old hungry mind.
“Mr. Bradbury, tell me, how can I become a writer like you? Is there a special school I need to go to?”
Now it was Ray Bradbury’s turn to be enchanted; by little old me.
Mr. Bradbury motioned me over to two pool lounge chairs cruxed by the blue fluoride pool of creation. He sat down and faced me. He examined my face intently. Then he uttered these words:
“First, young man, you’ve got to get the name of my profession correct. It’s not writing, I’m not a ‘writer’, I’m a re-writer. The vocation is called re-writing for a very good reason. Because that, my son, is what you’re going to spend most of your waking life doing. Some of your dreaming life as well!” I became so mesmerized by meeting my hero. I didn’t remember what he said after that. It was about a 20 minute conversation and then he left to attend to his celebrity duties.
And That, My Friends, is how I became a writer. I was baptized by the worldly experience of a kindly, white-haired, be-speckled magician. He wore an ice cream suit and a white panama hat in the San Diego sun that blazed all around us, through the skylight at the very center of the El Cortez Hotel in the summer of 1972 (or 73). The El Cortez Hotel of legend, mystery, and comic book panel has become over-priced condos. This change happened because money is money. Culture and history are really just for the poor.
THE REAL STUFF NOW: (Hold onto your Horses!)
As the previous heading sign-posted, this was all just the prelude to the true subject of my dissertation:
Which is in fact, the Poetry Futures Poetry Festival I attended only yesterday, hosted by the San Diego Poet Laureate Jason Perez and held at the Cross Cultural annex of the UCSD campus.
There was no publicity covering the event, no posters or flyers to guide the poesie aficionados, but I was able to navigate my way to the upstairs set of conference rooms.
On my way up the stairs I found myself at pace with a young, well dressed Asian man with horned rim glasses. I asked him if he knew where the poetry festival was being held. He smiled an affable smile. “That’s where I am going as well,” he said. He reassured me that I was heading the right direction through this academic labyrinth.
Upon entering the reception room and pausing to shake Jason’s hand to thank him for inviting me, I found that the horn rimmed well dressed Asian man was actually the poet Lee Herrick! The Poet Laureate of California! Which I really cared nothing about. What I cared about was that he was an honest, good poet who had truth to tell in his writing. I had only read a few of his poems in an academic journal but he was the real thing. An adopted Korean child who had grown into a gentle, sensitive man.
Lee was not only a formidable wordsmith but the very man I had wanted to connect with in order to further my plans for the first international poetry festival to be held in San Diego: The Balboa Park International Poetry Garden Festival .
But more about that later. I plan to leave San Diego in 2025. However, I am also resolved to leave a lasting monument to the culture of quality in literary arts. A yearly Poetry Festival could continue long after I relocated back to more civilized climes. In conjunction with the festival, I also want to organize a poetry competition. The proceeds from this competition would go to building a Rumi’s Poetry Drinking Fountain in the center of the Prado. This fountain would be accessible to the general public. It would feature a stone sculpture of the Greek Pegasus, the symbol of poetry.
Donald (Dumb Hitler), Trump’s triumph in last November’s election convinced me. I realized that I was no longer suited to the American nightmare. For the first time, he secured a majority of the popular vote by only 175,000. I knew a nightmare was about to be unleashed.
The day after the tragic election results, I made two long distance phone calls:
The first to my ex wife, Felicity Brooks, the Managing Editor of Usborne Books with whom I had a tempestuous separation some ten years previously. As soon as she answered the phone, I didn’t have to say a thing.
“I’m so sorry, Igor, I’m so sorry about is happening to your country. What do you need to get out? I’ll help you with the home office to re-establish your residency and your work permit. I’ll even tell them that we’ve reconciled and are back together as a married couple.
“Whatever it takes”, she continued.
“I’m so sorry, I know that you loved the US but the time has come to make the hard choices you have to make to survive”. My heart leapt at her kindness and generosity of spirit.
How many men can count on their ex-wives as reliable friends?
But I also understood what she was saying and why:
Both of our parents had lived through WWII and understood the reality of political upheaval. They knew the plight of refugees escaping political oppression and tyranny. Now it was my turn to be a political refugee. My ex-wife knew that some forces in life are stronger and more important than mere marital squabbling.
The second call I made was to my never-actually-met-him Facebook friend, the musician Richard Torres. Richard was a punk rocker in the 1980s London scene and had had a hit. A big hit. But bad punk rocker that he was, he didn’t spend all his money on drugs, alcohol and womanizing. Instead, he betrayed his genre by buying a mansion in the Gothic quarter of Alicante, Spain!
What a loser!
3 years ago, I was illegally evicted from a house in Clairemont. This was after the passing of Louise Karsten. She rented me a cheap room in exchange for tending to her massive yard and building a vegetable garden. I also paid for the restoration of one of her three bathrooms. I had found myself vaguely homeless. Couch surfing from friend to friend and eventually anchoring myself to the outdoor couch of my bike mechanics overpopulated two bedroom rental.
His family and he were avid meth consumers. Every morning, I used the bathroom coming in from the front garden. I would be greeted by billowing clouds of smoked speed. I was invited to partake. Eventually, my polite abstinence proved to be an unalterable faux pas. I was inevitably asked to leave for not conforming to the social norms of their meth-smoking “community”.
Which is directly relevant to my account of this festival.
After shaking hands with Lee, I wandered through the space. I was looking for poets to invite to my festival. They could teach as guest teachers at the Pegasus Poetry Workshops. It starts the last day of January 2025. They might even contribute to my new poetry journal, The Mission. I began to recognize some familiar figures of the San Diego Poetry “scene”. Poetry Underground had constructed a long table promoting their books and events. I avoided the eye contact of Anthony and “Sunny”. My last encounter with them was when they barred me from their underground open mic poetry reading. It was because I read my anti gun poem. THE BULLET FROM MY GUN. Anthony and Sunny founded Poetry Underground. They are proponents of the school of thinking that believes everybody who even tries to write a poem deserves accolade. I’ve always believed in support and encouragement for young artists; but support without critical discernment, without discipline, is no support at all.
Poetry takes work, not complacency. Each to their own but Poetry Underground’s so called “mental health” agenda leaves me a little bit worried. My concerns might not have a cause. However, it’s healthy to recognize your limits. By doing this, you can surpass them and grow as an individual and an artist. The slogan for Pegasus Poetry Workshops is straightforward. Poetry Underground blatantly rebuffed it. We will teach you the rules of poetry. Then, you will know how and when to break them. Poetry is not a nightclub, it’s a hard earned craft that requires discipline, focus and dedication, not constant applause.
My anti gun poem I read at my last ever ™”stand up tragedy” at Poetry Underground is reproduced above.
Anthony had took umbrage at my poem and its contents. He was especially upset at his audience’s reaction.
The audience was visibly excited by my heart-felt honesty. I had exposed the mental problems of gun obsessives. My poem highlights their detrimental impact on American society. We have too many guns and not enough gun control. The number one cause of childhood mortality in this country are gun deaths! That is obvious even to servicemen and women. However, Anthony did not see it that way. As MC, he seized the stage after my performance. He denounced my poem with a tirade about Second Amendment rights. My poem called out the gun nuts who want to spread even more death and mayhem. Gun violence is a reality, not an opinion in America. We experience a pandemic of gun violence every day in the US. This is a fact, not a perception. Gravity can be an experience, but it is not a perception or an opinion.
It is the truth.
I was pleased that my poem had triggered (sic) some kind of reaction but Anthony was adamant in his denunciation. As an ex military type, he had always eyed me with suspicion and barely concealed hostility. He could smell my liberalism and it made him sick. Some time later, I called Sunny to invite her and Anthony to my Pacific Beach Poetry Workshop. She found my invitation insulting. Her attitude towards me was evidently infected by the same hostility. She informed me that if I decided to return to their open mic ritual, “Anthony wants a word with you, first.”
That was enough for me.
Unlike some of the aspersions cast in my direction, I am an adamant pacifist and avoid conflicts at all costs. What I have learned is that if you turn away from “trouble” to avoid it, “trouble” will often follow you down the alley way anyways. It might even mug you from behind!
Needless to say, I never returned to the Underground. (Take notes, Dostoevsky!), These days, I keep my feet above, not under the ground.
The Poetry scene in San Diego is parochial at best; and that, relatively speaking is a compliment!
San Diego as a whole, is a metropolis sized city with the mentality of a small town. It has no real literary or arts scene comparable to San Francisco, LA, Oakland, Sacramento or even Fresno. In Southern California, artists are seen as stunted adolescents. They are treated as if they won’t grow up and get a real job packing groceries at Whole Foods. Most other major California cities have thriving poetry and expressive arts scenes. Poets stand together in brother and sisterhood and help and support each other.
San Diego Poetry “scene” has been and is still, more like an open dog fight between warring and self-aggrandizing factions.
The gatherings and readings tend to be mutual admiration clubs of gratuitous glad-handing applause. It reminds me most of the participation awards of the 1990s when everyone wins just for having partaken. On a few occasions, I’ve heard a young poet with promise recite an amateur piece. I approached them afterward to encourage them to “Rewrite” and think about who they are writing the piece for. I am then admonished by the host poets and told off for being “negative”. Critical thinking is abhorrent to the San Diego poetry scene. Writing is too.
Curan was a rare exception. Sadly, he is now deceased. He was a white Buddhist gay poet. Curan ran the Mission Hills Library monthly workshop. He was genuine and real and we are publishing his work now posthumously in The Mission monthly. Curan was the exception. The rule in San Diego poetry readings is that there are featured “stars” backed by their publishers to sell products. And there’s the so-called “Open mic” monthly gatherings guaranteed for applause.
This is regardless of merit, and discussion or feedback is profoundly discouraged.
At one such “open mic” reading I asked the assembled audience of would be poets, to hold their applause. That if they wanted to give me feedback to approach me after the reading and tell me what they honestly thought. This caused the bah-bah-ing, amateur sheep to deride me as I was challenging their ritual. The veterans at the same reading openly mocked me for even suggesting such a trespass of their precious norm.
All of this petty-clique behavior is more worthy of a bad high school TV drama than a literary tradition. This has inevitably led to an impoverishment of poetry as a craft in San Diego. A vocation which in fact takes literally decades of hard work and endless failures to achieve anything of merit. Art is a vocation, not a dilettante’s hobby.
The owner of Verbatim Books was at the festival, there with her entourage. Of course, she avoided my path. I had tried to get her shop to stock my books. Then, on one occasion, I invited a homeless street poet reeking of alcohol. Former Beat Poet Laureate Chris Vannoy and I had heard him reciting incoherencies outside their reading. We asked him to come inside and recite his insane, psychedelic, beautiful ramblings. The owner did not take kindly to what she misconstrued as an attempt to sabotage her event. Apparently, you can’t be drunk and read poetry in San Diego. Sorry, Charles Baudelaire, Dylan Thomas, Charles Bukowski. You’re not wanted here!
After Avoiding the Poetry Underground & Verbatim, I said hello to Ted Washington who was going to be reading for the Fighting Poetry panel (which was my highlight of the festival. Ted and I have known each other for years. We do detect that we’re not exactly friends. However, we do share a begrudging respect for each other’s work. I would publish Ted Washington in a blink. His voice is angry, political and authentic, an African American raging against The Machine. Hey, we don’t have to be “Friends” with everyone. People don’t have to “like” each other; we just have to not kill each other.
Poetry is a forum, a medium of expression wherein people with differences can air those differences in lyric, rhyme and reason.
Jason’s Poetry Futures festival proved to be just that: political, engaging and inspiring. I met some great poets and some great human beings there. Mainly from LA, Portland, Anaheim and the Bay Area. I found myself applauding loudly, wildly at the voices of mainly women poets. I also found myself randomly running into complete strangers. We would exchange a line of verse in rhyme and reason.
“Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hands.” Robert Hunter
The out of town readers were amazing, truly wonderful, sending shivers down my spine and music to my ears. In contrast, the academic poets both students and teachers, presented a stark contrast. Some of the UCSD graduates buried themselves in their own self-righteous academic graves. They pronounced their degrees like ancient Egyptian curses. These poets tried to conjure magic that wasn’t theirs or of any lasting potence. At best Art and Academia are uneasy bedfellows and can lead to abusive relationships as the only steady income an artist can muster while they perfect their craft is by teaching. Which is fine except that higher education in California (and probably throughout the US) is a business. The products are students and credentials that lead to paying jobs. That can be alright except when the credential is a token of conforming to an inorganic, bureaucratic entity that just wants to control the thoughts and actions of others. That’s when the relationship between art and academia becomes an abusive co-dependence.
Unrelated, Michael Klam and his San Diego Yearly Poetry Annual entourage of county editors were there too. I like Michael, even though I don’t have to. We’ve had over the years, a disagreement or two, but he’s always remained an affable sort. Besides, the Annual has published my poetry 4 years running and you don’t shoot the horse that lets you ride him. I gave up submitting to the annual a few years back mainly because ones poetry gets lost in its voluminous thickness. I don’t really know who actually buys the annual apart from the poets who are published in it. Some of its editors are friends and support what I do. Others despise me for my work, my dedication to critical thinking and my politics. I am devoted to Poetry and this poet’s life like it was my parent. Having lost both, Poetry has taken their place in loving me, in caring for me; poetry has nurtured my body, soul, and mind; without it I most likely would have taken my own life years ago.
(If not for my daughter Olivia as well; who I could never inflict such trauma upon.
In the end, it is our children who save our lives from dissolution and despair.
The San Diego poet I now most admire is Sonia Gutierrez, who recognized me when she was first approaching the center, outside while I spoke to an Arab who happened to be the buyer for the La Jolla Barnes and Nobel and who I had given a copy of Is She Available? and was raving about it, asking where he could order more copies for his store.
Sonia Gutierrez wasn’t quite sure where she recognized me from but insisted that I was familiar to her. She asked me a question about where the event was (Signage, people, signage!!). Sonia Gutierrez peered at me and told me that I looked familiar. Later when I heard her read at the Fighting Poetry panel brilliantly hosted by Ted Washington, I recalled that the great Mexican muralist Victor Ocheo had introduced her to me over 5 years previous. Victor was always pushing me to celebrate my Latino, Costa Rican heritage. My uncle being the now deceased Costa Rican muralist, painter and sculptor Francisco Zuniga. (I come from Art Aristocracy!)
He wanted me to connect with other “Chicano” poets. This was the very first occasion I heard Sonia Gutierrez read. I was literally and pleasantly blown away. A non academic, self taught poet. She is now a poetry teacher. She exuded her culture like a wafting perfume. There are too many phony Chicanos in this world; too many Latinos laying claim to a uniquely Mexican American heritage. People like Peruvian painter Mario Torero who insists that he’s a Chicano “Artivista” when there isn’t a drop of either American or Mexican blood in him.
Sonia Gutierrez filled the room with sounds and almost smells of her Mexican heritage.
She is a real poet in every sense of the term, as she serves her words up as a vehicle for her people’s history, her people’s culture, her people’s sounds. A woman’s sounds (like my mother singing in the bath tub, cantina songs), I wanted to embrace Sonia after her reading; and breath all of Mexico in.
Instead, I invited her to come teach at the Pegasus Workshop as a guest teacher and gave her a blank cheque as to how to fill the two hours. I admired her spunk. She bluntly asked me if there was a stipend for teaching. There is not, as the workshop is a semester long and free to the public. The event is held on the premises of a public building, which the tax payers pay for. Poetry should be free.
Poets do have to eat. Their words may feed the spirit, but the flesh is also wanting. Poets should be paid for their work. Buy their books, it makes a big difference!
So I told Sonia I would see what I can do. Her poem “Perspective” should be mandatory reading in San Diego’s classrooms. It is a monument to hypocrisy. It highlights the disingenuity of the new right as they sabotage our thinking, our ability to reason. They gaslight us into accepting racism and bigotry as just a matter of “perspective.” In today’s post Trump intellectual wasteland, all opinions are valid even house that would strangle opinion at its source.
The panel called Fighting Poetry was a little distracted by a ‘transitional” (transgender?) poet, who’s name escapes me. She was a striking woman with a beautiful face.
But the transgender poet had marred her own face with a frozen smug, plastic smile. I have had friends within the transgender “community”, (Not my choice but It is their’s and I would fight to protect that human right.), But there was definitely something false, something wrong with this particular poet’s self presentation. She proclaimed the righteousness of her gender choice as if it was a weapon to be used on her audience. Her answer to fighting poetry, in which real truths were being told, was to lead the group in a contrived “breathing exercise in an off-the-shelf mindfulness.
Her poetry was mediocre although her pain and composed anger were real enough. If she had not taken affront I would have shared with her some constructive feedback. The politics of sex, of gender, and identity are volatile like nitroglycerin. A single misstep by a boring straight man like me could spell disaster. I chose to avoid the risk of confrontation.
A young Vietnamese poet, whom I have lost track of and could not find, breathed air into the room. She did this by reciting a poem that mixed English and Vietnamese words. The music beautifully infiltrated the comprehension of the poem. I am a devotee and follower of Thich Nicht Han, the monumental Vietnamese Zen monk. I have met, sat, and walked with him in London. I was well disposed to the sound of her vowels. Even without understanding the meaning of her words, they were sheer poetry.
The highlights for me were Jason himself. He bid farewell to his position as poetry laureate. Then I was captivated by the sublime psychological work of Lee Herrick. I had only read him before and never actually heard him read. His voice opened up his exploration of his own heritage, his own adoption and adaptation to my heart.
A lesson for us all: if you can always hear the poet read his or her work aloud, do it! The human voice carries the breath of the soul. Like Homer, we are all blind to the written word when it can instead take flight. It flies on the winds that come from within us into the wide, wild world.
But don’t believe me when I sing Lee’s praises; Listen for yourself.
Listen to the wings of poetry unfold and take flight!
Experience life’s moments on your own.
The universe doesn’t expect much from us but it does want us to pay attention and listen….just listen.
Thank you for reading this far, now please if you will, comment below.
The Poverty of American Arts: The Main Threat to American Mental Health
I have only had two editors in my life. One was the now deceased artist Eleanor Brooks. She was the widow of the great novelist Jeremy Brooks, and a friend of Ken Kesey’s and Robert Stone. Eleanor was a British Beatnik, an official Friend of Wales, and a former Duchess of Gloucester. She renounced her title and seat in the House of Lords to marry Jeremy, a commoner.
The other and now my current editor is Dr. Miles Krogfus. He won first place in a national poetry competition back in the 1950s. This achievement paid for his entire university education. AND his PHd in Yeats, an the Romantics. At 83, he can detect the Classical within the contemporary. He keeps my poetry disciplined within the legacy and structures of poetics.
Part of The Mission is to publish the monthly Mission. My newly incorporated company will include comics, poetry, prose, and art. Mile’s work will feature in it and then after a year, we will publish a book of his poetry.
Not for his sake or mine.
For the sake of the American people. This is especially true for Americans under the age of 30. They have been denied the richness of art and culture. They continue to be denied access. Art and culture are how any civilized society tends to its emotional and psychological challenges.
I am utterly certain that many Americans are mentally ill due to poverty in arts and culture. Some are lethally so. This society has ultimately commodified arts and culture into extinction.
It is difficult to pursue a career as an artist anywhere. However, it is next to impossible in America. It didn’t always used to be this way. It’s a change I’ve seen happen slowly, really just in the last 40 years. The only socially acceptable vocation in America today are institutional ones or corporate jobs. Or science, engineering and technology. because we value our tools more than we do our fellow human beings.
We treat dogs like people and people like dogs in America.
Anything else is derided as “not a real job”. With the rare exception of musicians and recording artists who are viewed as potentially money-spinning. Painters and writers and sculptors are treated like complete shit. We are advised to stop practicing our craft. Instead, we should get jobs loading paper bags at Trader Joe’s for rich hippie vegan scum.
Once when I was being processed after being arrested in San Diego for one of my many nefarious crimes (I will die before I tell them where I buried the 4th body!), I was at the booking desk and I was being asked what profession I claimed, I said “Poet” and the desk sergeant guffawed, laughed loudly and turned to the other deputy as they both belly laughed.
THAT is what Americans think of and how they treat the arts in this tragic land.
All to the detriment of the mental health and well being of our society. Yes, the word ‘Society’ does actually refer to a real thing, you just can’t buy much of it.
The last time America had an arts-based culture that pervaded society was from the late 1950s until the dawn of the 80s. This culture was admired and emulated by other cultures far and wide. Whats loosely referred to as the 60s. Nobel Prize Winning Poet Bob Dylan completely revolutionized the music industry with his songs and music. He turned the 
Beatles onto LSD, and we all know where that led: cultural, spiritual, and social Revolution!
Ken Kesey wrote Sometimes a Great Notion and then Cuckoo’s Nest, was experimented on by the US military with LSD and decided that not only did he like it, he would give it to everyone else!
And the Merry Pranksters and the Grateful Dead were born, Giants of cultural upheavel and enduring art. Yes, I’m saying that Jerry Garcia wasn’t just a great guitarist like Jimi Hendrix. (Another America icon to the arts, our “Mozart” of the electric guitar.). He was an artist plain and simple. He intuitively grasped the dream nature of art, how to embrace chaos and allow the growth of form to emerge out of content. There was nobody ever like his band The Grateful Dead and there will never be another like them. 
Jerry Garcia was a Boddhisatava who changed the lives, improved the lives, alleviated the suffering of millions upon millions of people. For which he took no credit or accolade because he knew that it wasn’t him,, he had no ego, he was just Jerry doing what Jerry wanted to do.
Because “if you’re not having fun doing what you’re doing, you’re not doing it right!”
Jerry Garcia and Ken Kesey were artists using humanity and the people as their canvass. They improved people’s lives, period!
Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ton Carter, Sonny Rollins, Lee Morgan, Anthony Braxton (and too many more black musicians to list here), took the suffering and political humiliation of the African American people, absorbed it deep within their soul and then produced something more beautiful, more African American, more valuable than all the suffering of all their generations had endured could quell: Modern Jazz. The only uniquely indigenous American cultural product, ever. And it was our underclass, our N**g**s that produced it, that created our cultural heritage
White folk produced it and took most of the money and sometimes, on occasion aligned with it in emulation and imitation. But it was black people, African Americans who created it, from the blood and sweat of their masters lashes, the only lasting cultural worth America has every produced.
The Blues and Jazz will endure all of us for the next 2 thousand years. If humanity still exists in 2 thousand years, you can be certain. They will be listening to Jazz. Maybe ‘their’ Jazz, but they wouldn’t be listening to anything without the creative fountain of the African American artist.
Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keefe, Jackson Pollock, (and please list painters that changed your life in the comments) didn’t just create visual art that sold for high prices. They changed the way people SEE and think about art. Consequently, they altered the way people viewed their lives as they are living.
Charles Olsen, Alen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Walt Whitman, Eugene O’Neil. John Reed, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Carver, Carolyn Forche, Jack Kerouac. Lillian Hellman, Shirley Jackson, Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Stein, Bessie Smith. Billy Holiday, Lenny Bruce etc. etc. etc.
These were all writers and artists creating the raw material that makes up our soul. They weren’t just singing songs or spinning rhymes. They offered up, from the depth of their souls, the remedies for living. They provided the cure for our social illness! They taught us how to live better. They guided us in leading more rewarding lives. They helped us overcome the slings and arrows of our outrageously over-priced fortunes.
They were and still are our shamans. They are our urban witch doctors, our counsellors, and our therapists. Without them, without more generations of artists, we are all going to languish. We will whimper and suffer in our straitjackets, in one big WHITE lunatic asylum. It is ruled by the insanest WHITE king of them all: mad Donald Trump.
Today “art education” consists of “you better pick up a skill you can fall back on”. It has taken me 40 years of hard graft. Daily work, rejection, and overcoming rejection have brought me to this point. Now, I can look the cop in the eye. I can proudly say, “yes, I’m a poet, I’m an artist. You gotta problem wid dat”?
These days I mainly talk to young people, meaning people younger than me.
Guys and gals, working odd jobs, standing outside of restaurants barking customers. Because San Diego is so fucked up, the management gets weird when I talk to young women my daughter’s age. People give me hostile looks. I’m asked not to return to the establishment to spend my money.
Generational isolationism is a real social problem in San Diego. But I don’t give a shit, I’ll talk to whomever, whenever I want regardless of their age or mine. Unless they don’t want to talk to me and then I apologize and go away. But young people need their elders to give a shit about them, to talk to them to ask them what’s on their minds.
That is how a civilized, healthy society functions. You go to any other developed nation in the world. You’ll find ancient town centers in England, France, Spain, Italy, and Greece. In these places, the neighborhood’s children run free. Their parents sit at outdoor cafes or at tables or around fountains gossiping away. The children run free, feeling both free and safe. They know, without even being conscious of it, that they are the village’s children. They belong to the community, and the community will care for and protect them.
Socialist? You’re damn right that’s socialist. It is much better and healthier than the fear and paranoia that dominates current American parenting. Our teachers are prison guards. Our parents are overworked overlords. Our police are soldiers. They view every citizen and every member of the public as an antagonist.
How many cops does it take to change a light bulb?
None. They’d prefer to just beat up the room for being dark!
America has lost its soul along with its way.
Now it is just about the money; not even about what the money buys, just the frigging money.
When I last ran a company (or more accurately, ran after my company to make sure it didn’t go off its own rails!), I used to hire what were then a new breed of worker: the code, the computer programmer, the software developer. This was very difficult for me. Although I served my investor’s interests and followed my detailed business plan, I knew little about actually writing code. At the time, I didn’t even know how to write html. It’s not a code, but a mark-up language for the web.
So I had to hire some dozen coders very quickly to execute an array of electronic publishing projects, on CD-ROM at the time as DVDs had yet to be invented. So I interviewed everyone who came to apply for a poisition as I did with all of my staff. Anyone who ever works for me, who is paid by me, has a direct contact with me. A direct human to human connection is crucial in order to maintain a cohesive working environment. I do not delegate Human Resources. Because Humans come first, before even the money.
So I would typically take two strategies to discern whether or not I wanted someone working with me. The first was to sit in front of a screen and a keyboard with the individual and ask them to show me what they did that affected the screen,. Like I was an idiot. I called it my “Colombo” approach.
If the young candidate (typically college graduates in their early to mid 20s), balked and told me that I didn’t know enough to understand what they did; or try to waffle me with computer code jargon or resisted explaining anything to me; I would thank them for their application and say I’d be in touch.
I never was ‘in touch’.
If you can’t explain what you do to a 12 year old child, much less your potential employer, then you don’t really know what you’re doing yourself
My second approach is relevant to the point of this essay.
At the time I had secured over a million and a half £s in corporate investment. Enough to develop, produce and market an electronic publishing platform of 8 new interactive titles.
I coined the term INTERACTIVE DRAMAS to avoid the computer game association. Ironically, it was the computer Game MYST that was our great inspiration. It inspired the development of these interactive titles. I had the superb artist, designer and my aesthetic mentor Dave McKean as my nonsalaried Art Director. I also had a team of hard working, London working class designers.
They were “My Boys”. (along with a couple of girls). My Boys is my reference to Garth Ennis’s superb comics series and now Netflix series (The Boys; highly recommended if you hat super hero movies as much as I do)
So I was a happening dude in London in the early 90s. Which was a success that was all too shortlived, as all successes ultimately are. Nothing lasts forever, baby, apart from the Moon, the mountains, the ocean and the stars.
But back to the interview process relevant to my point about money and its intrinsic valueless-ness. So I had a company cheque book at the time when people still wrote cheques. My candidate would come into my office and sit in front of me and I would ask the usual questions about their backgrounds and experience. Then we’d do the computer screen test. Finally I would lean forwards and look them straight in the eyes (and smile).
“Tell me, what is it that you really want out of life, what is the real reason that you’ve applied for this job; what do you want?”
Without exception, the candidate would drop their guard and answer with one word:
“Money”
And these were British kids, mind you. Working class, self-educated or middle class college graduates. Not Americans. With Americans, its ten times worse.
Now the lesson would begin:
I would smile and say
“But of course, what would be the point of going to a job every day if you weren’t being paid. I want money,, I like what money buys me”.
The informality would open the candidate up:
“I want loads of money, I want to be rich by the time I’m 30 and I’m so good at what I do, I’m going to make that real” (or some paraphrase to that effect).
So then I would start the game. I would look seriously at the candidate and say:
“Would you consider a million pounds enough money?”
Inevitably, they would be confused by the question.
I would repeat myself while I opened my desk drawer and extracted the company cheque book.
“Would you consider a million pounds enough money to make you happy to achieve your dream?”
The answer was always the same. So I would begin to write out a cheque so that they could see my writing, for a million pound on the company cheque book, logo and all. Then I would rip the cheque out and being to hand it to the candidate.
“I’m going to give you this million pounds, it’s yours and you can call the bank right here and now to verify that the cheque’s good. It’s a real cheque for a million pounds and I’m going to give it to you, right here and right now on one condition.”
The candidate was never sure how real this game was but they knew for certain it was a real cheque; one guy actually called our bank and was told that the funds were liquid. But I wasn’t taking any pleasure in the startled eyes and nervousness of these young people. Instead I had an invaluable lesson to impart.
“One condition and the money is yours”, I repeated.
And I would hand them the cheque so that they could feel reality in their own hands.
Some would ask “What’s the catch”?
Some wouldn’t.
Then I would explain:
“You can have this cheque. You can have a million pounds on one condition. You must accompany me directly to the airport. We will go without interruptions and with no stops. At the airport, we will grab the first flight to Cairo. Once in Cairo there’s a helicopter awaiting us (there wasn’t, I lied). The helicopter journey will take some 3 or 4 hours to the heart of the Sahara (‘Sahara’ means desert, so to say Sahara desert is redundant). Once we have reached the centre of the Sahara, we will land. Or we will hover about 5 or 6 feet above the desert. You will jump a short distance. The sand will cushion your jump. And then we are going to leave you in the middle of the Sahara with your cheque but no water, no phone and at least a hundred mile walk to the nearest oasis.”
And then the punch line, which I would deliver while meeting the person’s eyes full on:
“So what is your million pounds worth to you now?”
The AHA! Moment
(the one word that Allen Ginsberg wrote on my first edition City Lights copy of Kaddish when he signed it and invited me up into his room; I didn’t go, its another story. Always been a touch homophobic)
The day to day epiphany available to all of us any time of day, “if you look at it right”.
The moment of realization of enlightenment and understanding happens when you grasp not just something new but when everything you had been thinking crumbles away. Everything that you thought to be true up to that moment crumbles away. Those scarlet begonias are a touch of the blues.
And your mind is just blown wide open to the fact that what you knew was certain wasn’t very certain at all.
You can’t hide that moment on your face.
And I knew with utter certainty that the look on my candidates face was their passing grade. If they ‘got it’ I could work with them.
I’m friends with some of my ex employees to this day and recently one of them, a girl now a woman, reached out to me to remind me of my little employment game and how it made her start to see her life in a totally different way.
I told her that no thanks were needed.
That I was just doing my job
The best way I knew how.
Thanks for reading.
Leave your comments below and I will respond.
Still human that way.
The Cultural Marxist Revolutionary Circus is Coming to YOUR Town. Resistance is Futile!
Just a quick update to tell you developing news in the world of my crusade to take over the world and change it into a world of poetry, art and aesthetic convictions. Once we have infiltrated the power structure, we will enact our cultural Marxist conspiracy by getting key political figures to at first become more concerned about the color of their hair, their wardrobe, office furishings and back ground decor during their press conferences. 
This represents phase one which we call
the iron fist of Fashio-nismo.
As key political leaders become obsessed with the arrangements of flowers in their vases, the subject matter and artists of their wall hangings. Shoe color and accessories will become crucial, time consuming judgement issues.
The next phase we called Confused Identity Syndrome is when we get our targets to actually begin to question whether they truly exist, or not. Based largely on the exemplary work of our previous agents Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Andre Breton, CIS will start with leaving copies of the Japanese Poet-Monk-Warrior Hakuin Ekakaku’s essays and aphorisms lying around on coffee tables and near water coolers within the White House, Pentagon and Congressional offices
.
Boredom, while waiting for meetings to begin, will inevitably lead to bureaucrats and functionaries glance at the works of Hakuin and soon become immersed in a Zen literature that will render them confused and uncertain of even their own existence in reality. They will begin to doubt if anything they’ve ever known or believed to be true is in fact, real. Their sense of Self will be rendered void.
They will gasp for breath in the vacuum of their own Being!
Finally, left sprawling and crawling on carpeted floors, tears streaming down their faces, our targets will be rendered inoperative as they crawl on the floors laughing uncontrollably while muttering incoherently, ‘there is no self, there is no self, there can be no Self, there is no Self!”
This is when we may our move.
Our crack team of Ninja Seals, Jewelry Makers and Dolphins will strike from their underground locations at the very heart of the power structure. They will be armed with books and art prints, tarot decks and astrology charts, prepared to bring the new order of Poetry Workshops, Expressive Arts seminars and forced aesthetic training into play. The targets will be interrogated with impossibly vague questions for which there are no answers.
The questioning itself will be the answer.
Targets will be constrained and forced to watch reruns of Gilligan’s Island and My Mother the Car. William Burroughs reading his work in an endless, monotonous, tape loop will become our background training will sound, never ending day in day out.
Poetry will be read to them over and over and over again until they shriek, beg for mercy and break down. We will show no mercy. What does not kill us makes us strong.
When they are broken we will rebuild them into better beings. Mainly with water color, clay sculpture and improv classes. They will please for mercy (or death), at first but then thanks to us, once the Macrame and knitting regimes are introduced, they will become pacified.
We will force them to wear outlandish fashion trends, force the men to dress in drag and wear makeup (which we will teach them how to apply), and make the women dress in appropriate formal evening and day casual wear that does not accent their breasts or rear ends. Girls will be taught how to run not like a girl, but like a human being. Boys will be taught how to cry in public, or else!
Finally the once effective political operatives, business lobbyists, generals and high placed bureaucrats will be assigned new roles as poets, philosophers, tarot card readers, astrologers, day care workers and after school program directors.
Once the revolution is achieved, peace will return to our nation and to all nations. The earth will resume its spin and stars will fill the sky in splendor and celebration at the return of the human species to its natural sanity. 
May SHE (who is not perfect but tries very hard indeed and deserves a thank you card now and again), look down on us from her cosmic kitchen table and bless us with the good fortune to overcome our enemies.
I submit to you, my dear comrades and circus clowns, our plan.
Choose which side of the barricades you will be on.
Pack up your water color brushes and acrylics and tarot decks and prepare for Revolution!
btw, I’m shutting down my X (Twit) account because Elon Mollusk is a traitor to America, an Afrikaner racist and an enabler of fascism. But I don’t like what he looks like either and he fucked Amber when Johnny Depp was filming, so fuck him!
Find me: https://mastodon.social/invite/nhjRLzbQ
& @igorgoldkind.bsky.social
Momma’s Boy
Anaphora for Margarita Zuniga Chavaria.
I’m a momma’s boy
I’m a momma’s boy.
Always was.
Always am.
Always will be.
I’m a momma’s boy.
Momma gave me my name.
After a passionate afternoon.
Sun streaming through the blind
My daddy on top of her
Thrusting his bow to the strings
of Stravinsky’s joyous rights of Spring
I’m a momma’s boy
I’m a momma’s boy.
Always was.
Always am.
Always will be.
I’m My momma’s boy.
Sucking warm milk and egg from a plastic nippled bottle
Eating the peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwhichs
She made to watch over me at the school cafeteria
No sloppy Joe’s for me
I’m a momma’s boy.
I’m my momma’s boy.
Dinner on the table
Daddy gobbling his food
Momma serving her family
Loving her family with her food
I’m a momma’s boy
I’m a momma’s boy.
Always was.
Always am.
Always will be.
I’m a momma’s boy
Daddy punched his fist through the living room wall,
My momma plasters over
Daddy cries at night
While momma holds his head in her hands
Ignoring the bruises on her cheeks.
I’m a momma’s boy
I’m a momma’s boy.
Always was.
Always am.
Always will be.
I’m a momma’s boy
She slaps the faces of the mocking boys
My daddy tells me to ignore
As they kick me on the lawn
Green grass staining jeans like blood
I’m a momma’s boy
She’s my vengeful angel
Who stares policemen in their eyes
I’m My momma’s boy
When she stands behind me
Telling teachers
To love her boy
Telling authorities
To ignore her boy
Telling Doctors
To heal her boy.
Walking 5 miles through the hot sweating jungle to fetch ginger ale for her little boy
I’m a momma’s boy
I’m a momma’s boy.
Always was.
Always am.
Always will be.
I’m a momma’s boy
When I wake up in the hospital bed
When I see her tears stream down her face.
When I see my sister’s scared eyes.
When I know like a freight train that I made the biggest mistake of my young life.
I’m a momma’s boy
I’m a momma’s boy.
Always was.
Always am.
Always will be.
I’m a momma’s boy
When I catch a glimpse
Of her cleavage
Through the curtain of her night dress.
When I see her clutch her dress to her breasts
Ignoring my childish gaze
I’m a momma’s boy
I’m a momma’s boy.
Always was.
Always am.
Always will be.
I’m a momma’s boy
Even when she closes her studio door
And I beg her and beg her to come and play with me
She kisses me on the top of my head and smiles
Then closes her magic door, anyways.And I cry and I cry pounding my tiny fists against her magic door.
How can there be something other than me that she loves more ?
I’m a momma’s boy
I’m a momma’s boy.
Always was.
Always am.
Always will be.
I’m a momma’s boy
When daddy moves out
I stay with her
When she cries I hold her head
In my hands, on my shoulder while her shoulders shake
In the only love in the universe that will never leave me.
Even when momma’s mind leaves me.
Even when momma’s breath leaves her
Even when her eyes leave me
To close forever.
Momma never leaves me
She never, ever, never ever leaves me.
Momma was more Man than me or daddy will ever be,
I’m a momma’s boy
I’m a momma’s boy.
Always was.
Always am.
Always will be.
~ Thursday Morning, 5:00 am, October 2024
Igor Goldkind ©2024
Dropping Out to Drop In
A Facebook Dialogue with Rebecca Behar
My art is also poetry and short “fiction”. And I am head on confronting this very issue every day of my working life. I turned my back on academia where you can get paid to regurgitate curriculum while you do your real work.
Why?
Because ultimately academia is a crutch that consumes your mind and soul after a while if you’re trying to be an artist. I call academia the artist’s meth. It feels great while you’re smoking it; status, paycheck, the admiration of the young….but ultimately your artist’s teeth fall out, you get uglier from compromise, and the admiration of youth makes you psychotic when you start actually believing it.
So I decided 6 years ago to starve to death.
No, let me tell you the truth.
I determined that the undervaluing of poetry by the mainstream (commercial) was a social malaise, a symptom of a wider social problem compounded by the monetization of popular culture.
I looked at who was actually reading and writing poetry first by hitting the poetry readings circuit. There I found the old clutching at reminiscences and the young clutching at life and strait jackets.
The number of young people 16-26 earnestly writing and writing confessional poetry struck me. Especially young women. They were confessing their angst and being young, about being raped, about being molested, about living in a world weighed down by the gravity of the male gaze. There were also cocky young men, rapping and slamming their hearts away.
So I started writing for them.
The same age group that suffers from historic levels of suicide, anxiety and depression, gave me fodder for my writing.
I wrote and read to them in public and my piece Suicide Note gained an audience of lonely girls who would approach me after my reading to highlight how that poem in particular struck them as they didn’t realize that other people felt as they did.
I also began carrying copies of my modestly selling my author copy books with me everywhere I went, signing and selling copies by hand at readings. But also if I met someone new in a cafe or party and the conversation got to the “and what do you do”? part, I’d answer, “let me show you” and pull out a copy of my latest.
“I’m a poet, would you like to hear a poem?”
IOW, regardless of the market, I decided to take my professional seriously and not try and disguise the thrust of what I do. I always have enough author copies of my books within reach so that when someone asks where they can buy one of my books, I list the usual Amazon, Barnes&Nobel, bookshops local to me and then I add “or you can buy a copy from me and I’ll sign it for you”.
At this point, I am ahead of the market because I have numerous direct contacts with my buyers. I talk to them. I find out who they are and why they read and what they need from an author.
Laborious, yes. Low yielding revenue, yes. Time consuming, yes. But I would match my market research on my audience against any data crunching publisher, any day of the week.
I am determined to make poetry pay.
Not a lot, but enough to make a bare boned living at.
I stopped buying things.
I stopped trying to be middle class.
I live in a meager apartment.
I collect food stamps and any other government assistance I can talk my way into and I have absolutely no shame. The government is paying me to be a poet, a writer and an educator.
That’s my government subsidized job, in the long standing, centuries old tradition of the patronized arts.
There is never any shame in survival.
How many fast food jobs did Socrates work? Or Ovid or Homer. Did Dante pack groceries at Trader Joe’s in one of his circles of hell?
I teach independent poetry workshops at libraries for non mandatory donations. I lecture on poetry. I do readings and signings. I collaborate with a music producer in Stockholm, Frederic Iriarte who records my readings to mix with his music and publishes them on line as albums for download streaming. Do they make any money? No. Barely enough to justify the effort.
But I am getting paid to write and read poetry, just not very well.
I love my work and the place it puts me mentally and spiritually to labor through, more than the comforts of middle class continuous consumption I have had to leave behind.
I am totally dedicated to improving upon and perfecting my work for the sake of an unseen audience. For the sake of readers I haven’t even met yet.
I am not unemployed, although I collect unemployment.
I write and teach poetry and writing.
That’s my job.
Here I am: http//igorgoldkind.com
Don’t get me wrong, it’s much harder to be an artist than a businessman. But over 6 years, I have built an audience. I have 5,000 FB followers, nearly a thousand subscribers on other media, including my blog.
I now run into people both on and off line who knows someone who bought one of my books. I also get anonymous phone death threats, obscene emails and am persona non grata among my local amateur poetry community.
But these are small prices to pay for being to hold up my head and answer “Poet” when someone asks me what I do for a living.
I like to add “But I’m only in it for the money”.
Rebecca Behar:
“Igor Goldkind You are just describing the life of dropouts who succeeded, why not – my best friend was like this, but she went to Italia. Depends on the place. Also in some countries you cannot do anything directly with a bookshop or a library – the distribution is perfectly controled, no freelance accepted.
But it does not matter, I belong to this underground and we did wonders, and now slam and spoken word are still great. So I agree that it is very difficult to kill poetry – like weed. But just compare with Victor Hugo – not only his poetry paid for a big house in Guernessey, but for his expensive way of life. And anyway he believed that he was a kind of prophet. But there is something else which is what ppl can accept and understand, called “reception” in general. I think that a real poet provocative and misunderstood by definition.
About an audience and ppl reacting, this became quite easy with internet, but again all these video kids are relying on marketing. My concern is that written, hermetic, creative poetry is obviously confidential. PS – I just visited an exhibition on surrealism, this is exactly what is missing : a big bang, a scandal, a movement breaking all this business & technology boredom. I think that it is happening in Iran, with the movement “women, life, freedom”.”
Rebecca Behar, look at the life and lifestyle of Stephan Mallarme, at a time in Paris where Poets were rock stars. He didn’t compromise his art for the sake of his acquired wealth and fame. The Roll of the Dice, his last work was perhaps his greatest masterpiece inspiring CharlesOlsen and the Black Mountain Poets, as well as my first book, Is She Available?
Rimbaud was a great poet too, but died poor in Africa. And Charles Baudelaire lived off of his mother’s money his entire life. This didn’t qualify his genius nor the fact that he gave world our Edgar Allen Poe; who without Baudelaire’s promotion would have been buried in obscurity.
The general point being is that financial reward and market value has very little to do with art and nothing to do with talent.
It’s funny that you would refer to my naked confessional as “Dropping Out”. I worked decades at corporates, in publishing in academia as a professor at the University of Liverpool. I always earned good money for marketing and publishing other people’s work. (Ever heard of the “Graphic Novel”? I coined the term in the mid 1980s and made publishers billions!)
And earned steady income teaching students how to be artists.
But I never had the balls to walk the line myself and it does take balls (or the equivalent female genitalia). And I was never completely happy with my life, having had wanted to write for a living since I was a child.
Now some 45 years later, I get to do this.
And I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. Because now regardless of my food stamps, I know that every working hour I live is dedicated to my authentic being, to the truth of my experience.
(I also live 4 blocks from the beach and go there a lot to swim and stare at the horizon).
So no, I haven’t dropped out; I was a drop out, I’ve dropped in.
I’ve dropped out of the ‘real world’ of stable salary, constant consumption, obeying the dictates of fools and being happy chattel for human crushing machine Ginsberg named the demon Mollock, in Howl.
And I’ve dropped into the actual world, behind the real world, where poetry and art connect me intimately with 10,000 years of my compatriots from all over the world.
I’ve dropped into the world where me and Rumi can share a bottle of wine while watching the sunset.
You can call me a drop out if you want; but in my experience, I had to drop out to drop in.
I would like your permission to republish this dialogue on my blog. Igorgoldkind.com
Breathless: A Nostalgia for Oxygen
I’m a Poet, a Producer and lately a Publisher of aesthetic, sometimes eclectic content that speaks to the truth of living your life in today’s moment of existence. Beyond the Real World is the Actual World, which I prefer to inhabit. There really is only one world but social delusions, language and mathematics make us concoct a duality between the “Real” and the “Actual”. It’s just a trick of the light on our senses.
Oddly and recently, I’ve received a lot of flak and unarticulated hostility from people who just like the way things are. Either they get some advantage out of our current state of disconnect or they’ve become so habituated to futilely struggling, to being dehumanized that they prefer what they’re familiar with rather than facing the unknown of change.
Having a back ground in ‘technology’ I do know one universal truth about ‘systems’ and that is ‘systems’ can always be improved upon. In fact if ‘systems’ aren’t being perpetually improved, they fall by the way side and become impediments to useful change.
As is with technology, so it is true of the human community and its social structures. My father was an anthropologist and a sociologist at a time when the very word ‘society’ was being challenged as having no meaning.
My work is about returning meaning to the term “society”. to the set of complex interactions we consider collectively as the norm and worth compromising our individuality for. Society is us and what we make of it, every day of every interaction you have with another human, either well known or a stranger to you. How you treat others out of fear or openness is multiplied by millions and the sum total consists the society we are all part of and are all living in.
No man is an island and no woman can be exiled to one.
This is not about politics or ideology, this is about awareness and mindfulness as to how each of us is as part of a whole. There’s only one race, the human race and you are part of it. The only question is with what degree of awareness are you running in the human race?
Looking backwards, in hindsight, I now realize the the steady stream of anonymous antagonism and threats I’ve received over the past year all started when my album BREATHLESS – A nostalgia for Oxygen was released last year on Bandcamp by my spoken word producer Frédéric Iriarte and largely composed by my art brother Jair-Rohm Parker Wells.
I believe it is the most popular track from the album, I CAN’T BREATH, the last words of George Floyds recited as a spoken word, ‘found’ poem by a ‘white’ voice that triggered the attention that all to soon became menacing and I have had to take unprecedented steps to protect myself from.
It is a tremendous album and well worth the free fee by which you can listen to it. I assure you that you’ve never heard anything like it before although I’m sure you’ve heard Ornette Coleman, Laurie Anderson, Willian Burroughs, David Byrne and Anthony Braxton. If not, you should listen to them too as they are the inspirations for our album.
Thank you for your attention, it’s the most precious commodity in the universe: your attention.
COMING SOON! The Cure for Pandemania
Take a Deep Breath – Living With Uncertainty
A book of poetry and art, fables and philosophies aimed at the pandemic of crisis anxiety so many are facing.
In uncertain times people turn to uncertain means. This is a book of poetry and art, of fables and philosophies aimed at the pandemic of crisis anxiety so many of us are going through right now in our daily lives and in our inner spaces. We are all of us and each us in this together.
The sciences but also the arts do provide remedies. The ancient Egyptians wrote curative words on fragments of papyrus to feed their burnt ashes to the afflicted. Lacking morphine, Walt Whitman read verses to fallen soldiers on the battlefields of the first Civil War.
At their best, the right words are more than therapeutic, they can be curative. Take a Deep Breath emulates this ritual here in administering remedies for living in these times of crisis, in living with uncertainty.
Bounce
My ego is a ball I like to bounce. When play is over, I have to take my ball back home. Where we both live.
'Take a Deep Breath. Living With Uncertainty'
Poetry Therapy: Towards an Uncommon Sense
A Brief History of Poetry Therapy
From the collection of poetry, philosophy and art TAKE A DEEP BREATH: Living With Uncertainty
by Igor Goldkind (Chameleon Publishing, 2021)
Poetry Therapy, or poetry which is used for healing and personal growth, can be traced back to primitive Man, who used religious rites in which shamans and witchdoctors chanted poetry for the well-being of the tribe or individual. It is documented that as far back as the fourth millennium B.C.E. in ancient Egypt, words were written on papyrus and then dissolved into a solution so that they could be physically ingested by the patient and take effect as quickly as possible.
The first poetry therapist of historic record was a Roman physician by the name of Soranus in the first century A.D., who prescribed tragedy for his manic patients and comedy for those who were depressed. It is not surprising that Apollo is the god of poetry as well as medicine, since medicine and the arts were historically entwined. For many centuries the link between poetry and medicine remained obscure. The poet John Milton wrote in 1671:
“Apt words have power to swage The tumours of a troubled mind And are as balm to festered wounds.” Pennsylvania Hospital, founded in 1751 by Benjamin Franklin and the first in the United States, employed many ancillary treatments for their mental patients, including reading, writing and the publishing of their work. Dr. Benjamin Rush, called the ‘Father of American Psychiatry’, introduced music and literature. The writing of poems was was encouraged, and the results were published in The Illuminator, their own newspaper.
On the battlefields of the American Civil War, Union field medic Walt Whitman would administer recitations of verse to fallen soldiers who were well beyond hope long before the use of morphine. He was later to pen the classic Leaves of Grass, the greatest celebration of humanity in the midst of its own despair. Pennsylvania Hospital employed this approach as early as the mid- 1700s.
In the early 1800s, Dr. Benjamin Rush also introduced poetry as a form of therapy to those being treated. In 1928, Eli Greifer, an inspired poet who was a lawyer and pharmacist by profession, began a campaign to show that a poem’s didactic message has healing power. He began offering poems to people as prescriptions, and eventually started “poem-therapy” groups at two hospitals with the support of psychiatrists Dr. Jack L. Leedy and Dr. Sam Spector. After Griefer’s death, Leedy and others continued to incorporate poetry into the therapeutic group process, eventually coming together to form the Association for Poetry Therapy (APT) in 1969.
Librarians also played a major role in the development of this therapeutic approach. Arleen Hynes was a hospital librarian who began reading stories and poems aloud, thus facilitating discussions on the material and its relevance to each individual in order to better reach out to those being treated and encourage healing. She eventually developed a training program for those interested in teaching poetry therapy.
In 1980, all the leaders in the field were invited to a meeting to formalize guidelines for training and certification. At that meeting, the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT) was founded. As interest grew, books and articles were published to guide practitioners in the practice. Hynes and Mary Hynes-Berry co-authored the 1986 publication Bibliotherapy — The Interactive Process: A Handbook. More recently, Nicholas Mazza outlined a model for effective 188 poetry therapy, also discussing its clinical application, in Poetry Therapy: 189 Theory and Practice.
The Journal of Poetry Therapy, established in 1987 by the NAPT, remains the most comprehensive source of information on current theory, practice, and research. There is also a relationship between psychological healing and incantations, either repeated as a musical chant by the patient or recited by the attending medicine man. Of course, modern medicine and science consider the notion of magical incantations possessing healing or restorative powers as so much superstition.
But this, of course, begs the question that if recitations and incantations had no evidential result and no beneficial property then why would have nearly every human culture have adopted the method and repeated it for thousands of years? Surely if there was no value to vibrating the air with the sound of one’s breath, rising from the abdomen, pushed upwards by the lungs, shaped by the throat, mouth and tongue, with the added stimulation of associative meanings being understood cognitively by the patient’s mind, we would have given it and its sisters, singing and chanting, up aeons ago.
I am not advocating a supernatural or spiritual causation for the effectiveness of poetry as a healing agent, but rather the supra-natural mystical cause which is grounded first in human nature and cognition, and for which there maybe a myriad of imprecise explanations, none of which can fully explain why it works. Today, poetry therapy is practiced internationally by hundreds of professionals including poets, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, social workers, educators and librarians. The approach has been used successfully in a number of settings — schools, community centers, libraries, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and correctional institutions, to name a few.
SO HOW DOES POETRY THERAPY WORK? 
• Poetry is beneficial to the process of introspection, and can be used as a vehicle for the expression of emotions that might otherwise be difficult to express
• Poetry promotes self-reflection and exploration, increasing selfawareness and helping individuals make sense of their world.
• Poetry helps individuals redefine their situation by opening up new ways of perceiving reality.
• Poetry helps therapists gain deeper insight into those they are treating.
In general, poetry therapists are free to choose from any poems they believe offer therapeutic value, but most tend to follow general guidelines. Some poems commonly used in therapy are: The Journey by Mary Oliver Talking to Grief by Denise Levertov The Armful by Robert Frost I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Turtle Island by Gary Snyder as well as the poetry of Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg and Antonin Artaud.
TECHNIQUES USED IN POETRY THERAPY
Different models of poetry therapy exist and are being refined all the time, but one the most popular is the model introduced by Nicholas Mazza. According to this model, poetry therapy involves three major components: Receptive/Prescriptive, Expressive/Creative, Symbolic/Ceremonial.
I. In the Receptive/Prescriptive component, the poet merely introduces the subject of how to focus on their own issue. The aim is to establish concentration and cognitive focus on the details, none which is revealed to the poet. Only when the poet feels confident that the subject is cognitively attuned to and non-verbally focused on the problem or issue of concern does he or she begins to ask suggestive questions as to how the subject feels, not thinks, about their issue. This provocation of tangible emotions usually comes in three distinct phases of emotional content. First is the predicament, when the subject becomes aware of the existence of the issue. This is a gateway phase, where anticipatory feelings are illicit and registered by the poet.
II. Then there is a further stage when anticipation of the issue has given way to the full experience of all the emotions, anxieties and fears related to the issue. This is usually overwhelming (or it wouldn’t be ‘an issue’ in the first place), and it is paramount that the poet guides the subject through distinct words to describe the layers of emotions experienced by the subject. The poet must ground the subject’s emotions in language. Language and the use of words is the key here, because emotions always come in complex clusters that make it difficult for both poet and subject to distinguish them and focus on the underlying causes.
“What kind of anger do you feel?”, “How would you describe your sadness?”, “How much shame do you feel? What would you compare it to?” This is a sophisticated method of word association, but rather than creating bridges between seemingly disparate words the goal is to drill down to the core emotions of the issue by refining the language, as led by the subject. Achieving exactitude of description is the task at hand. The poet makes careful notation of everything the subject says in regard to describing their emotions. It is important to keep them focused and not to succumb to intellectual distraction. Thoughts are illusions and often lies, whereas emotions are facts. Get the subject to correctly describe the facts of the matter. All meaning is metaphorical.
III. The final stage is waiting for an exit strategy. How do the feelings begin to recede? How does the issue move back into the background? What are the parting emotions? Is there anxiety about the leaving? Anticipation of an issue yet unresolved? Or is the issue impermeable, and subject to a rhythmic return? Again, the subject’s wording, their adjectives, adverbs and phrases are the material of the poem. At this point there is usually a short break to give time for the subject to recover from the emotional transitions and for the poet to briefly skim their notes and begin to focus on the flow of adjectives. It is preferable, if possible, to compose what amounts to a first draft, a flow of words which the poet can read back to the subject to confirm its accuracy. 
At this first reading stage it is possible to start interjecting logical bridges between the emotional descriptors. This is the creative factor 194 unleashed. The poet, assisted by the subject, creates coherent sequences 195 between the emotional states. The poet suggests and the subject confirms or vetoes the phraseology, one line at a time. Now we arrive at a second draft which is the property of the subject. It is their poem. The preference is that the subject now reads the poem aloud and takes ownership of its content. The subject can redraft the poem a third time, or many more times, claiming it as their own. The poet has merely provided poesy prompts, the poem is the creation of the subject.
The expressive/creative component involves the use of creative writing — poetry, letters, and journal entries — for the purpose of assessment and treatment. The process of writing can be both cathartic and empowering, often freeing blocked emotions or buried memories and giving voice to one’s concerns and strengths. Some people may doubt their ability to write creatively, but therapists can offer support by explaining they do not have to use rhyme or a particular structure. Poets can also provide stem poems from which to work, or introduce sense poems for those who struggle with imagery. A poet might also share a poem with their subject and then ask them to select a line that touched them in some way, and then use that line to start their own poem. In groups, poems may be written individually or collaboratively.
Group members are sometimes given a single word, topic, or sentence stem and asked to respond to it spontaneously. The contributions of group members are compiled to create a single poem which can then be used to stimulate group discussion. The symbolic/ceremonial component involves the use of metaphors, storytelling and rituals as tools for effecting change. Metaphors, which are essentially symbols, can help individuals to explain complex emotions and experiences in a concise yet profound manner. Rituals may be particularly effective to help those who have experienced a loss or ending, such as a divorce or death of a loved one, to address their feelings around that event. Writing and then burning a letter to someone who died suddenly, for example, may be a helpful step in the process of accepting and coping with grief.
HOW CAN POETRY THERAPY HELP?
Poetry therapy has been used as part of the treatment approach for a number of concerns, including borderline personality, suicidal ideation, identity issues, perfectionism, and grief. Research shows the method is frequently a beneficial part of the treatment process. Several studies also support poetry therapy as one approach to the treatment of depression — it has been repeatedly shown to relieve depressive symptoms, improve self-esteem and self-understanding, and encourage the articulation of feelings. Researchers have also demonstrated poetry therapy’s ability to reduce anxiety and stress. Those experiencing post traumatic stress have also reported improved mental and emotional well-being as a result of poetry therapy. Some individuals who have survived trauma or abuse may have difficulty processing the experience cognitively and, as a result, suppress associated memories and emotions.
Through poetry therapy, many are able to integrate these feelings, reframe traumatic events, and develop a more positive outlook for the future. People experiencing addiction may find poetry therapy can help them explore their feelings regarding substance abuse, perceive drug use in a new light, and develop or strengthen coping skills. Poetry writing may also be a way for those with substance abuse issues to express their thoughts on treatment and behavioral change. Some studies have shown poetry therapy can be of benefit to people with schizophrenia, despite the linguistic and emotional deficits associated with the condition. Poetry writing may be a helpful method to describe mental experiences, and can allow therapists to better understand the thought processes of those they are treating.
Poetry therapy has also helped some individuals with schizophrenia to improve social functioning skills and foster more organized thought processes. It is important to note in many instances, especially in cases of moderate to severe mental health concerns, that poetry therapy is used in combination with another type of therapy and not as the sole approach to treatment.
TRAINING FOR POETRY THERAPISTS
Poetry therapists receive literary as well as clinical training to enable them to be able to select literature appropriate for the healing process. While there is no university program in poetry therapy, the International Federation for Biblio-Poetry Therapy (IFBPT), the independent credentialing body for the profession, has developed specific training requirements. Several studies support poetry therapy as one approach to the treatment of depression, as it has been repeatedly shown to relieve depressive symptoms, improve self-esteem and self-understanding, and encourage the expression of feelings.
However, the only qualitative measure of effective poetry therapy is in the poesy and the results. No accreditation can guarantee or substitute for the quality of cognitive empathy that is achieved during a successful session. Ultimately, there can be no real separation between the experience of the poet and the subject. This methodology provokes a meeting of mind in confrontation with universal truths. The poet is there merely to reassure the subject that there is no hocus-pocus, no supernatural or alternative reality, and that the cognitive associations that ring true are true in the present mind of the subject. The poet is on hand to reassure, to validate the responses of the subject to radical new perspectives into their own most intimate selves, and to relieve and dispel any accompanying trauma as grounded in the normalcy of human experience.202 203
CONCERNS AND LIMITATIONS OF POETRY THERAPY
In spite of its widespread appeal and broad range of applications, some concerns have been raised about the use of poetry therapy. 
Some critics have pointed out it is possible for people to analyze a poem on a purely intellectual level, without any emotional involvement. This type of intellectualization may be more likely when complex poems are used, as a person might spend so much time trying to decipher the meaning of the poem that they lose sight of their emotions and spontaneous reactions. Poems that are unoriginal or filled with clichés are unlikely to stimulate individuals on a deep emotional level, or challenge them to think in ways promoting growth.
Just always keep in mind that poetry therapy may have little or no value for those individuals who simply do not enjoy poetry.
References:
Chavis, G.G. (2011). Poetry and story therapy: The healing power of creative expression. Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Gooding, L. F. (2008). Finding your inner voice through song: Reaching adolescents with techniques common to poetry therapy and music therapy. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 21(4), 219-229.
International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy. (n.d.). Summary of training requirements. Retrieved from http://ifbpt.org/obtaining-a-credential/getting-trained
Mazza, N. (2003). Poetry therapy: Theory and practice. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Olsen-McBride, L. (2009). Examining the influence of popular music and poetry therapy on the development of therapeutic factors in groups with at-risk adolescents (Doctoral dissertation).
Rossiter, C. (2004). Blessed and delighted: An interview with Arleen Hynes, poetry therapy pioneer. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 17(4), 215-222.
https://www.facebook.com/realpoetrytherapy
realpoetrytherapy@gmail.com
TAKE A DEEP BREATH by Igor Goldkind and Frederic Iriarte
The Cure for Pandemania is Here!
An Album of Original Spoken Contemporary Poetry and Music
– Making Sense Where Nothing Else Does –
Original poetry by Igor Goldkind
Music by Frederic Iriarte and Igor Boyko
Launching September 5th at The 2020 International Beat Poetry Festival (Normally in Boston, now virtually everywhere!) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCilhqGXf2CAARg7N7EjwNQg
The Festival Will be streaming 3 original music videos from the album for the first time.
TAKE A DEEP BREATH is available for download exclusively on Bandcamp
9 Tracks, 40 Minutes, $18.00 $15 EU
Original Words, Music, Video and Antidotes for Living With Uncertainty
Internationally renown fine artist and producer Frederic Iriarte and American Poet Igor Goldkind have collaborated on 9 original tracks of musical interpretations based on Igor Goldkind’s forthcoming collection of poetry also entitled TAKE A DEEP BREATH.
The album of 9 tracks is being launched as a complete work at this year’s International Beat Poetry Festival and will be released for download at midnight this coming Saturday, September 5th.
This unique multimedia work was written and produced during the pandemic in Stockholm, San Diego and Moscow. It is intended as an artistic attempt to help us live with uncertainty and survive catastrophe living.
“TAKE A DEEP BREATH is most important piece of Spoken Word Art to come along at just the right time: right when we all needed it the most!”
– Henry Rollins
TAKE A DEEP BREATH and step out of your comfort zone.
Just don’t look down.
2020 has been a year of both social, economic and psychological upheaval. Humans have been required to adapt to drastically changing circumstances without forewarning and without certainty as to the outcomes.
We are being challenged as a species to adapt.
Adaptation is our genus but it is also painful and exhausting.
TAKE A DEEP BREATH is a guidebook: a pause for a moment of reflection. Take a break from panic and get a clear view of where we are as individuals, as a people and as a species.
Covid-19 has literally attacked our humanity however in doing so has done us the service of reminding us of our shared humanity, our common mutual vulnerability. These are hard lessons to learn and uncomfortable changes to be made for us to survive. TAKE A DEEP BREATH is a pause in the gloom and a chance to regain our strength and resilience to all carry on.
TAKE A DEEP BREATH is a step backwards in time when poetry and music were used and appreciated as tools for contemplation, meditation and reflection on the most crucial factor in our lives. Now that we are being confronted and overwhelmed with multiple catastrophes, is the time to return to using poetry for what it is designed for:
Reflection, Meditation, Contemplation
Self-Healing and Recovery
We will survive.
Death in My Garden
Death is in my garden again,
Whispering to my flowers as he pulls away the weeds.
Plotting and potting each stem as it grows
Making certain that the roots are shaken of clinging regrets and life’s debris.
Only to cut my life short more easily.
Does death have a sweetheart? I wonder.
A beautiful woman who he woos and waters with my love?
He gathers my blossoms into a beautiful bouquet
Of lost souls and freshly cut lives.
To gift to the one who holds him closest.
She presses his dead heart to her breast with one hand
The bouquet that surmises my life with the other.
She holds his weight against her body.
Until death sighs and buries his head between her breasts
So she is certain that he will return to his labours in the morrow.
Poetry Therapy
Everyone wants to be free.
ven from the things that once gave us comfort.
We are like children who swap our blankets
For softer ground.
So why do you wait to be free
When the keys to your cage
Are hanging right outside your front door?
Reach through the bars with your hand
Stretch your fingers far and bend your will around the bars.
Your mind is your best friend, your best teacher, your best doctor,
Whether you believe it or not.
In spite of everything you’ve done to yourself,
Your mind really does care about you and often thinks of you, quite fondly.
Just let your mind mend itself
Heal yourself with a few choice words.
Your own words.
When you say:
The truth is not a cold tombstone
The truth is not a judgement
The truth is a flowering realisation inside your own living mind.
Pulling you outwards, & forwards, enraptured by Time.
When my breath and
My will are as one,
The universe swallows me
Whole.
The Stars
There are few shreds of dignity left
When you drown face down in your own back street gutter.
You can cry out as loud as an archangel’s horn, if you like.
It won’t do you any good, or any harm either.
You still can’t silence the wind or turn back the tide.
Fate is nothing personal.
It’s just the universe catching up and then passing you by.
Your dream of yourself evaporates,
Forming clouds that obscure the night’s sky.
The stars are leaving you now, blinking out one by one.
This is the last moment of your own
self-awareness.
Your last chance to figure out what the fuck’s been going on.
It’s very much like the moment you first awoke
Although your mother’s smile is nowhere to be found
All that remains of her unlimited love is your fast fading memory
The sound of her voice calling out to you to come home now,
In the far distance,
From where the stars have gone to mourn your passing.
Our Lady
You are our lady
And now your dress
Is flames.
The beauty of your sunken dome from a drone
Is a poem in itself.
Written by us and
Destroyed by chaos.
This is what we do that rivals the stature of the gods:
To astound ourselves and each other,
With the wonder of
Pure enduring creation.
The sacrifice we all make to our better selves
Who gave buildings wings and
Lay the foundation stones of
Our own perfecting.
Epiphany is not found in the act of worship
It is found in the insight gained by a gratitude for the world.
Exactly the way we built it.
Exactly the way we know it to be.
Whispered prayers are but poetry
That none other than you will listen to.
It is good to talk to yourself,
To sing in harmony with all the selves who are listening,
Wearing
Not false, but true masks
Revealing the kind of truth that can only be told with a lie.
The subtler architecture that carves heavens into the spaces on this earth.
Reconstructing what can be seen behind your faces,
Behind all the saints who guard you,
Behind the divine grace of your stature.
The sensuousness of your catastrophe is breathtaking.
© Igor Goldkind 2019
Let Your Mind Run Free!
Let You Mind Run Free
If you love your mind just let it go.
If you lose your mind, don’t worry.
It will find you again, eventually.
Trekking across the tundra,
Scaling the icy ridges
Crossing a vale of tears.
At midnight in the Dead of the Night.
Just to get back home to you.
Merely moonlight pausing to reflect upon still waters
No need to be concerned.
In future, make sure your back gate latch is secure
Before letting your mind run free.
Let Your Mind Run Free II
If you love your mind just let it go.
If you lose your mind, don’t worry.
It will find you again, eventually.
Trekking across the tundra; scaling the icy ridges
Crossing a vale of tears.
At midnight in the Dead of the Night.
Your mind will tap you on the shoulder
You’ll jump
And your mind will say ‘Well, here you are’!
Sitting alone in the last place I looked.
While I am
Merely moonlight pausing to reflect upon still waters.
There’s no need to be concerned.
Next time, just make sure your back gate is securely latched
Before you let your mind run free.
This is What Happens After You Die
This is What Happens After You Die
I’m still choking on my own blood.
As it slowly fills my lungs.
I am drowning inside myself
The blood is mine;
the air is gone,
Now so am I.
After death, there’s nothing more than that same familiar empty space
waiting for your thoughts to refill it
Infinite & Eternal
in every direction;.
both up and down and beyond before.
encircled by the horizon.
This emptiness where your awareness doesn’t so much ‘go’
as recollect that it’s always been here.
Look through this persisting dream!
there is no afterlife because nothing,
not even memory, is really destroyed.
just transformed.
Into particles
into wavicles
into higher frequencies,
your mind no longer fathoms.
so you leave it,
your mind, behind.
Crystal
liquid,
gas,
plasma.
aware is the fifth state of matter.
Being is Becoming Still
Existence is a limitless screen of emptiness,
Jubilant celebration
And gratitude for the joyous exhaustion in the rolling of a boulder up a steep hill.
Tripping over our thoughts like loosened cobblestones,
The truth is a truce we struck with uncertainty ages ago.
After losing our desperate struggle…
To cling to some kind of hope buried deep at the root of our own awareness
I am fearful of fully failing myself.
But I love myself best when I am alone with eternity.
Secure and supported by this very clarity.
A Short History of Poetry Therapy: Practice and Perfection by Igor Goldkind
On FaceBook, a discussion where questions are posed and answered: https://www.facebook.com/realpoetrytherapy/
The healing effect of words has long been recognized. As far back as 4000 BCE, early Egyptians wrote words on papyrus, dissolve them in liquid, and gave them to those who were ill as a form of medicine. In more recent history, reading and expressive writing have been employed as supplementary treatments for those experiencing mental or emotional distress. Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital established in the United States, employed this approach as early as the mid-1700s. 
In the early 1800s, Dr. Benjamin Rush introduced poetry as a form of therapy to those being treated. In 1928, poet and pharmacist Eli Griefer began offering poems to people filling prescriptions and eventually started “poem-therapy” groups at two different hospitals with the support of psychiatrists Dr. Jack L. Leedy and Dr. Sam Spector. After Griefer’s death, Leedy and others continued to incorporate poetry into the therapeutic group process, eventually coming together to form the Association for Poetry Therapy (APT) in 1969.
Librarians also played a major role in the development of this approach to therapy. Arleen Hynes, one pioneer in this area, was a hospital librarian who began reading stories and poems aloud, facilitating discussions on the material and its relevance to each individual in order to better reach out to those being treated and encourage healing. In 1980, all leaders in the field were invited to a meeting to formalize guidelines for training and certification. At that meeting, 
the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT) was established.
As interest grew, several books and articles were written to guide practitioners in the practice of poetry therapy. Hynes and Mary Hynes-Berry co-authored the 1986 publication Bibliotherapy – The Interactive Process: A Handbook. More recently, Nicholas Mazza outlined a model for effective poetry therapy, also discussing its clinical application, in Poetry Therapy: Theory and Practice.
The Journal of Poetry Therapy, established in 1987 by the NAPT, remains the most comprehensive source of information on current theory, practice, and research.
There is also a relationship between psychological healing and incantations; either repeated as a musical chant by the patient or in fact recited by the attending medicine man. Modern medicine and science of course scoff at the notion of magical incantations having healing or restorative powers as so much superstition. But this, of course, begs the question that if recitations and incantations had no evidential resort and no beneficial property then why would every single human culture have adopted the method and repeated it for several thousand years? Surely if there was nothing to vibrating air with the sound of one’s breath as well as the added stimulation of associative meaning being read cognitively by the patient’s mind; we would have given it and its sisters, singing and chanting aeons ago.
I am 
not advocating a supernatural or spiritual causation for the effectiveness of poetry as a healing agent but rather the supra-natural mystical cause which is grounded first in human nature and behavior for which can be a myriad of imprecise explanations; none of which explain why it works.
Today, poetry therapy is practised internationally by hundreds of professionals, including poets, psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, social workers, educators and librarians. The approach has been used successfully in a number of settings—schools, community centers, libraries, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and correctional institutions, to name a few.
How Does Poetry Therapy Work?
As part of therapy, some people may wish to explore feelings and memories buried in the subconscious and identify how they may relate to current life circumstances. Poetry is beneficial to this process as it can often be used as a vehicle for the expression of emotions that might otherwise be difficult to express
•Promote self-reflection and exploration, increasing self-awareness and helping individuals make sense of their world
•Help individuals redefine their situation by opening up new ways of perceiving reality
•Help therapists gain deeper insight into those they are treating
• In general, poetry therapists are free to choose from any poems they believe offer therapeutic value, but most tend to follow general guidelines.
It is recommended selected poems be concise, address universal emotions or experiences, offer some degree of hope, and contain plain language. Some poems commonly used in therapy are: “The Journey” by Mary Oliver “Talking to Grief” by Denise Levertov “The Armful” by Robert Frost “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman “Turtle Island” by Gary Snyder The poetry of Alan Watt, Allen Ginsberg and others.
Although the selection of material is often by the therapist, those being treated might be asked to bring to therapy a poem or other form of literature they identify with, as this may also provide valuable insight into their feelings and emotions.
My Technique in Poetry Therapy
A few different models of poetry therapy exist, but the one I’ve had the most success with is a Four Phased Progression of Attention:
Recognition – Focus – Intention – Action
In the receptive/recognition phase, the poet therapist merely guides the subject to focus on their issue. The aim is to establish concentration and cognitive focus on the details of the issue which are not revealed to the poet/therapist. Only until the poet/therapist feels confident that the subject is cognitively attuned to and non verbally focussed on the problem or issue of concern that they begin to ask suggestive questions as to how the subject feels, not thinks about their subject.
This provocation of emotion usually comes in three distinct phases of emotional content:
I. First is the one of the predicament, then the subject first becomes aware of the existence of the issue. This is the gateway phase where anticipatory feelings are registered and ideally conveyed through the prompting of the poet/therapist.
II. Then there is the full throttle stage when anticipation of the issue has given way to full experience of all emotions related to the issue. This is usually overwhelming (or it wouldn’t be “an issue” in the first place), and it is tantamount that the poet/guide leads the subject through distinct words to describe the layers of emotions experienced by the subject. Language and the use of the words is the key here because emotions always come in clusters of complexity that make it difficult for both poet/therapist and subject to distinguish and focus on underlying and suppress emotions.
“What kind of anger do you feel?”
“How would you describe your sadness”
“How much shame do you feel?
“What would you compare it to?”
Are typical of the questions a poet therapist would ask the subject.
This is a sophisticated method of word association but rather than creating bridges between seemingly disparate words, the goal is to drill down to the core emotions about the issue by uncovering and refining the language the subject has chosen.
Achieving exactitude of description is the task at hand. The Poet/Therapist makes careful notation of everything the subject says towards describing their emotion. It is important to keep them focused and not to succumb to intellectual distraction. Thoughts are illusions, emotions are facts.
Getting the subject to correctly and precisely describe the emotional facts of the matter at hand is the objective
III. The final phase is the exit strategy.
How do the feelings commence to recede? How does the issue recede back into the background? What are the parting emotions? Is there anxiety about the leaving? The anticipation of an issue yet unresolved? Or is the issue impermeable and subject to a rhythmic return?
Again, the subject’s wording, their adjectives, adverbs and phrases are the material of the poem.
At this point, there is usually a short break to give time for the subject to recover from the emotional transitions and for the Poet/Therapist to briefly skim their notes and begin to focus on the flow of adjectives. It is preferable if possible, to compose what amounts to a first draft, a flow of words which the poet can read back to the subject to confirm the accuracy of the flow.
At this first reading stage, it is possible to start interjecting logical bridges between the emotional descriptors. This is the creative factor unleashed. The Poet must be led by the subject to link coherent sequences between the emotional states. The poet suggests and the subject confirms or vetoes the phraseology, one line at a time.
Now we arrive at a second draft which is the property of the subject. It is their poem for which it is crucial that the subject now read the poem aloud and take ownership of its content. The subject can redraft the poem a third time in making it their own. But the physicality of uttering the words they have chosen to express their emotional state is an act of ownership and closure.
The Poet/Therapist can either email the finished poem to the subject, hand them his/her notes or rewrite the poem into a legible form. In any case, it is important that the Poet/Therapist ascribes the authorship of the poem to the client. If the client is hesitant to put their name to the poem than something is lacking in the poem and must be redressed or indeed started over again.
The key to the entire exercise is freedom of expression, honesty and then refinement; exacting the poem.
Other Approaches and Other Models
The process of writing can be both cathartic and empowering, often freeing blocked emotions or buried memories and giving voice to one’s concerns and strengths. Some people may doubt their ability to write creatively, but therapists can offer to support by explaining they do not have to use rhyme or a particular structure. Therapists might also provide stem poems from which to work or introduce sense poems for those who struggle with imagery. A Poet/Therapist might also share a poem with the individual and then ask them to select a line that touched them in some way and then use that line to start their own poem.
In group therapy, poems may be written individually or collaboratively. Group members are sometimes given a single word, topic, or sentence stem and asked to respond to it spontaneously. The contributions of group members are compiled to create a single poem which can then be used to stimulate group discussion. In couples therapy, the couple may be asked to write a dyadic poem by contributing alternating lines.
The symbolic/ceremonial component involves the use of metaphors, storytelling, and rituals as tools for effecting change. Metaphors, which are essentially symbols, can help individuals to explain complex emotions and experiences in a concise yet profound manner. Rituals may be particularly effective to help those who have experienced a loss or ending, such as a divorce or death of a loved one, to address their feelings around that event. Writing and then burning a letter to someone who died suddenly, for example, may be a helpful step in the process of accepting and coping with grief.
How Can Poetry Therapy Help You?
Poetry therapy has been used as part of the treatment approach for a number of concerns, including borderline personality, suicidal ideation, identity issues, perfectionism, and grief. 
Research shows the method is frequently a beneficial part of the treatment process. Several studies also support poetry therapy as one approach to the treatment of depression, as it has been repeatedly shown to relieve depressive symptoms, improve self-esteem and self-understanding, and encourage the articulation of feelings. Researchers have also demonstrated poetry therapy’s ability to reduce anxiety and stress in people.
Those experiencing post-traumatic stress have also reported improved mental and emotional well-being as a result of poetry therapy. Some individuals who have survived trauma or abuse may have difficulty processing the experience cognitively and, as a result, suppress associated memories and emotions.
Through poetry therapy, many are able to integrate these feelings, reframe traumatic events, and develop a more positive outlook for the future. People experiencing addiction may find poetry therapy can help them explore their feelings regarding the substance abuse, perceive drug use in a new light, and develop or strengthen coping skills.
Poetry writing may also be a way for those with substance abuse issues to express their thoughts on treatment and behavior change. Some studies have shown poetry therapy can be of benefit to people with schizophrenia despite the linguistic and emotional deficits associated with the condition. 
Poetry writing may be a helpful method of describing mental experiences and can allow therapists to better understand the thought processes of those they are treating. Poetry therapy has also helped some individuals with schizophrenia to improve social functioning skills and foster more organized thought processes. It is important to note in many instances, especially in cases of moderate to severe mental health concerns, poetry therapy is used in combination with another type of therapy, not as the sole approach to treatment.
Training for Poetry Therapists Poetry therapists receive literary as well as clinical training to enable them to be able to select literature appropriate for the healing process. While there is no university program in poetry therapy, the International Federation for Biblio-Poetry Therapy (IFBPT), the independent credentialing body for the profession, has developed specific training requirements. Several studies support poetry therapy as one approach to the treatment of depression, as it has been repeatedly shown to relieve depressive symptoms, improve self-esteem and self-understanding, and encourage the expression of feelings.
Concerns and Limitations of Poetry Therapy
In spite of its widespread appeal and broad range of application, some concerns have been raised about the use of poetry therapy. Some critics have pointed out it is possible for people to analyze a poem on a purely intellectual level, without any emotional involvement. This type of intellectualization may be more likely when complex poems are used, as a person might spend so much time trying to decipher the meaning of the poem that they lose sight of their emotions and spontaneous reactions. Poems that are unoriginal or filled with clichés are unlikely to stimulate individuals on a deep emotional level or challenge them to think in ways that promote growth. Just always keep in mind that poetry therapy may have little or no value for those individuals who simply do not enjoy poetry.
The Advertising Pitch:
Words are the Most Powerful Magic There Is
Sometimes Your Mind Has a Will of Its Own
With PEGASUS POETRY THERAPY you can
Learn How to Read Your Own Mind!
Confusion bringing you down?
Is manic depression touching your soul?
You know what you want, but you just don’t know how to get There?
Poetry therapy is what you need when the medication, the yoga, the guided meditation, the crystals, the chakra alignment and other Somatic treatments just aren’t working.
Some things only work when you let them work:
• Restore Self-Confidence
• Achieve Closure from Painful Relationship Breakups & Lost Loved Ones
• Find a More Meaningful Direction to Your Life
• Get Unstuck and Out of Your Own Way
• Overcome Fears and Anxiety
• Control panic attacks
• Change Addictive Behavior Patterns, like OCD
• Re-Write bad Scripts
Recognition > Focus > Intention > Action
There is no trick to listening to yourself and learning how choosing and rearranging your words can unlock darkened doors, de-clutter basements and clean out the attics of your life. Sometimes in merely one session.
Every Tuesday from 11:00 am until 6:30 pm at the
Inner Temple Inner Healing Center
at Eve’s Vegan Cafe 575 S. Coast Highway 101 Encinitas, CA
Contact: realpoetrytherapy@gmail.com or
Call 858 349 6429 for an appointment.
$50- 1/2 Hour $80 – 1 Hour 
EXAMPLES & ENDORSEMENTS
PEGASUS POETRY THERAPY has only recently launched its online version via FaceTime, Skype or Facebook video. 
Just add <poetry therapy> to your Skype contacts and schedule a date. Payments accepted through PayPal or Facebook cash. Here are some examples of the poetry achieved through PEGASUS POETRY THERAPY:
I.
Narcissus in a Nutshell
I’ve lost the person locked within the situation
Like a nut dwells within its hard shell of fearful anger.
Escaping vulnerability
Hiding from the unknown.
Hard shells, hard feelings, hardness itself
The excitement of living days in the present
Belonging to the past
I will not let go of what I can recall but not relive
My belonging to that which encompasses myself
Another nut within its shell.
To belong is to exist
Without belonging there is Nothing and
I fear nothing most of all because I do not know it
And I fear what I do not know more than
I would remedy the pain of this loss with trustworthy tools
When two liquids are bonded as one
A single drop of poison poisons the whole glass
And betrayal is always poison no matter how little or how much
The glass of Narcissus’s tears is now empty
He has blinded himself rather than drink his own poison.
Instead he has left me to sip the bitter poison
Of fading better days.
Like a cat
Poised in stillness
Distracted by nothing
Ready to pounce
I will not surrender the pain.
I will not surrender the pain.
Because the pain is my memory of the happiness
We’ve now lost
A sweet nut within a bitter shell.
II.
The Martyr
Last night I saw you beatify a martyr
With a magical brush of gold belief.
You were serious and determined
But your brush strokes were light caresses
On a sky blue span of canvass
As you gently coaxed another image into being.
You remind me of my mother earth
Stern in her compassion
Willing to tolerate just so much from me
Before reining in my love
With her brushes.
And where you have drawn your line
‘Be careful’, you said to me on parting
But all the care in the world could not stop
My bulb from bursting
Rendering me blind in the speeding night
But still seeing with the golden light
Of the martyr you have shown me.
III.
Snake Heart
This sadness, this hopelessness
Will not be swatted away
Nor drowned by the busy work
Of the day to day.
It persists
Even when I am submerged in my bathtub.
The warm water rising from the bottom of my lungs.
Until I lose the will to breath
And the sadness becomes anger
Rising to the very top of my horns
Of my red-hot raging exhaustion.
How good to be angry!
I used to be afraid of snakes but no longer. I am hissing from the centre of my snake-heart
As you try and step over me.
Your eyes fail to see as you tread on my tail.
On my snake heart.
On my resolution without confrontation.
Without the owning of emotion
All that’s left for us is the hissing sound of machinery.
igorgoldkind
FACING the WAVES
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March 29, 2025 | Categories: books, comments about poetry, death, Existentialism, Igor Goldkind, Illustrated books, jazz, literature, Meaning of Existence, Meditations, Mindfulness, new poetry, poetry, Poetry Therapy, Self-Therapy, sex, spoken word, Transmedia, Transmedia. multimedia, Uncategorized, world jazz music | Tags: consciousness expansion, Existence, Existential, Igor Goldkind, Jazz, literature, Love Poetry, philosophy, Poem, Poetry Therapy, Self, Spoken Word | Leave a comment