DWash
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The Facilitator/Counselor Edition of the collection Psychoactive Poetry, as with my earlier collection Hoisting a whirlwind, is formatted to be used as a poetry therapy and
creative writing resource book. It includes an Introduction which furnishes the intellectual and spiritual context of the poems. There are instructive suggestions on the use
of this book by counselors, as well as by creative writing teachers. The "invitation to write" feature at the base of each poem makes this a unique and invaluable resource in either setting.
Of course, none of this rules out simply reading and enjoying the poems.
This new edition will be available for download as of August 7, 2018 at:
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I am requesting a review of:
Psychoactive Poetry by David Washington
I am the self-published author.
ISBN: 978-976-95792-4-8; Published March 21, 2018 as an E book at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/795818; Print book published April 2018.
This is a collection of 28 poems or, in some cases, 'meditations' might be more accurate, The subtitle of the online addition is "Poetry Therapy Meditations on the Quest for Ultimate Meaning." This is a search I consciously embarked upon while working on a Black Psychology paper for a class I took as an exchange student at Fisk University in 1970. The campus
Black ideology movement was at its height at the time and the meaning of 'Blackness' the soul-searching preoccupation of many of us. My paper proposed that one could 'move towards', move away from', or 'move against' being in the search for identity. I asked the question, 'Which course leads to positive mental health?'. Psychoactive Poetry is a resume in verse of
key moments of my personal search for the understanding of what it means to be Black and, as my search continued, ultimate meaning in human existence. 'Psychoactive' in the title refers to my hope for a thoughtful reading of my poetry.
I was born in Florida in 1949. I received a BA in Psychology from Colby College in 1971 and MA in African Studies and Research (Anthropology) from Howard University in 1973. I have lived in Belize since 1991.
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https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/795818
PHENOMENOLGIE NOIRE
The wearying logic by which blackness
Is reduced to a minor term in a dialectic,
Led Fanon to feel entrapped by nothingness
The only way out of which was an eclectic,
Hegelian ideology mixed in with an empirical psychology,
Fertilized with adequate heaps of epistemology,
By which he grew wings, not eagle’s wings,
But butterfly wings of unrealizable color and forced levity,
In his unapologetically naked quest for sanity.
Happening upon it, I, uninhibited, save by the bars of a caged despair,
Flew about the parameters of his tantalizing propositions,
Making them the subject of more than one disquieted disquisition,
Found an anxious peace, along with a day’s wage.
The moments of our transience, the days that become years, bring,
Come what may, and we, in passing, like Turkish street vendors sing,
"I have come, I am going, I have come, I am going…"
Terrible business this living within the limits of knowing.
Street dreaming an ‘if only’ kind of dream which repeating itself,
Weary day after weary day and the nights, a hopelessly bereft
Generation curses the day it was born
Along with the day tomorrow like yesterday, would forlorn,
Had it not clung to the kind of hope extolled by King.
Now and then this hope being given voice in something
Someone said that compelled the undependable attention
Of those labeled attention deficient, yet timely mention,
Or just artfully said words of wisdom to those whose heads
Are in the sand, or to the sky turned, would need to hear said
Out loud so as to be heard over the din of the pain,
Something they wouldn’t stop thinking about, ever again.
By whomever, whatever might be said, by someone, friend or foe,
Or even someone we might not even know
And maybe wasn’t even talking to us, whatever it might be,
Attention-grippingly be, as long as we know it was meant sincerely,
Ponder over it, be frightened, or gladdened, saddened or maybe sent
Hurriedly scribbling it down in a way that unencrypted its hint.
Sometimes we might even draw it, using pastels or oil,
A picture carrying more of its weight than words by which we are smitten,
Telling far more of the thing heard than the thing said merely rewritten.
Thus may our minds enlarge, as over this new information we toil.
For me at least, thus was logic transcended, the weariness upended,
And better things to come portended,
Or so my contentious heart contended.
New release
in Black Literature
Posted
In 2018 I published Psychoactive Poetry @smashwords.com. Today I am releasing a 100+ sonnet cycle verse drama. Saffron and Nova: Beyond Myths and Stars
employs the ababccddeffegg rhyme scheme of Alexander Pushkin's delightful verse drama, Eugene Onegin. My book is an allegorical 'love story' depicting unification of the right and left brain hemispheres. It has been said that poetry is the language by which this unification is to be achieved. Indeed the momentary harmonies of cognitive resonance experienced when the sense of beauty is deeply stimulated reflects in my view a glimpse of this unification. Poetry is or can be 'psychoactive' in this sense. This sonnet sequence endeavors both to be evocative of this response and a dramatized a case in point. These experiences though varying in intensity and momentary,
nevertheless represent tangible 'brain gain'. (George Duke) "The tone of the mind is permanently raised; and we live with that general sense of steadfastness and resource, which is perhaps the kernel of happiness." (G. P. Santayana, The Sense of Beauty.
Check it Out Here:
Saffron and Nova: Beyond Myths and Stars