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#poetry

180 posts139 participants6 posts today

Oceans.

I have a feeling that my boat has struck, down there in the depths, against a great thing.
And nothing happens!
Nothing…Silence…Waves…
Nothing happens?
Or has everything happened, and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

— JUAN RAMÓN JIMÉNEZ TRANSLATED BY ROBERT BLY

No. 158

Painted house numbers
on an old stone house’s wall.
Cobblestone river tumbles
in a sloped street waterfall.
The wooden door swings, widens
my glimpse into darkened house’s hall.
A young girl steps out, arriving
in the street‘s light from the pall.

👁️ A wooden door in an old stone townhouse opens slightly on a cobblestone street
📍 Hradčany, Prague
📅 11 Jun 2025
📸 Nikon D5600
⚪️ Nikkor DX 35 mm ƒ1.8G
🎞️ ISO 100, ƒ15, -0.3 ev, 1/60s

did not have nearly enough time to do a great job for it (learned about it last week) but applied to the FSG Fellowship

if youre a writer and you can throw together either 8-12 pages of poetry or 40-50 pages of fiction or nonfiction together and a 500 word statement of purpose by tomorrow you should do it! (youd get $15k spread out over two payments. theres also something about mentors and publishing and stuff but i was focused on the money part lol)

FSG logo on green
FSG Fellowship · Apply (2025) - FSG FellowshipThe FSG Writer's Fellowship

Today in Labor and Writing History 7/15/1381: The authorities executed Peasants Revolt leader John Ball by hanging, drawing and quartering. They later stuck his head on a pike and left it on London Bridge. Ball was a radical roving priest who routinely pissed off the Archbishop of Canterbury. As a result, they imprisoned him at least three times and excommunicated him. He helped inspire peasants to rise up in June of 1381, though he was in prison at the time. Kentish rebels soon freed him. The revolt came in the wake of the Black Plague and years of war, which the government paid for by heavily taxing the peasantry. Furthermore, the plague had wiped out half the population.

Ball and his followers were inspired, in part, by the contemporary poem, “Piers Plowman,” (1370-1390) by William Langland. Ball put Piers, and other characters from Langland’s poem, into his own cryptic writings, which some believe were coded messages to his followers. Ball is mentioned in the poem, “Vox Clamantis,” (also 1380-1390) by John Gower:

“Ball was the preacher, the prophet and teacher, inspired by a spirit of hell,
And every fool advanced in his school, to be taught as the devil thought well.”

Ball was also the main character in the anonymous play, “The Life and Death of Jack Straw,” (1593), which is about the Peasants’ Revolt. And socialist, William Morris, wrote a short story called “A Dream of John Ball.” John Ball is also referenced several times in “The Once and Future King,” (1958) by T. H. White.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #peasant #revolt #rebellion #uprising #JohnBall #prison #rebels #execution #poetry #books #fiction #novel #author #writer @bookstadon

"I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving."

Poet Andrea Gibson exited life this week, leaving behind a legacy of words, insight, compassion, and love. The world is richer because they were here.