5 Things I Learned Writing a Poetry Book

I began writing poetry in 2011 after reading a beautiful book called "Galileo's Daughter" by Dava Sobel. The book was about the life of Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun who maintained a special relationship with her father, Galileo. The story so moved me that I wrote my first poem as a result, “Galileo’s Moons.” Not sure where it came from but it popped in my head and I wrote it down. The poem stayed hidden in my computer for about two years until I finally published it on my blog. I shared it with a few friends on Facebook and didn’t think much of it. End of story.

Not exactly. 

Fast forward to April 2016. While on a trip down to Miami with my two daughters, I became obsessed with the line: “I soar on wings of silver light.” (A potential new marketing slogan for American Airlines perhaps?) By the time we landed I had written the first four lines and thought they were so good they deserved an entire poem. During the next seven days I sat up nights trying to work it into a poem, mostly as an intellectual exercise. I would dutifully sketch it out on a piece of scrap paper until it started to take life. It was not something I could file away under “mental aberrations” or “what I did on my vacation.” For me it was serious and I couldn’t put it down until I had finished it.

This time I published it on my Facebook page and was surprised when it caught the attention of a famous Danish writer, who quipped, “Hey, you wrote that? Great!” Over the next two years I wrote many more poems. Usually I would find a nice photo on Facebook, like a bird or a flower, and I would think of a first line. Then I would spend the next several days working out the meters and rhymes and the general theme, until I created a poem that conveyed a complete thought or idea. The interesting thing is, the more I wrote poetry, the better I got at it. I also got a lot faster. Whereas it used to take me weeks to write a complete poem, after a couple of years I could write one in an hour or two, even on complex subjects. I also learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way. Here are five:

1) People still love poetry.

Though we live in the digital age, there is still a thriving market for poetry. People still love poetry. This is something that stunned me as it shows we all connect on a deeper level than we realize through our shared humanity and our shared feelings of love, longing, wonder, hurt, pain, angst, and joy. When you strip away all the layers we surround ourselves with, we are all still human. We are not cyborgs as the robotics industry would have us believe, with interchangeable parts. We have souls and psyches, and these intangible aspects of our humanity need proper feeding too. Poetry does that.

2) The poems of the past are still relevant today.

“If” by Kipling is the eternal parent’s guide to living a decent, honorable life. “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley reminds us that no matter what challenges or painful situations we face, our spirit can rise to meet them.  And “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley reminds us that in our era of creeping Totalitarianism, dictators have come and gone through the ages and the only thing that remains are eternal truths, which will still be here long after the dictators are buried in the sands of time.

3) Poems can teach a moral lesson.

A good poem can teach a moral lesson more effectively than a book or a lecture. A poem that touches you on a gut level can have a greater impact than even a great speech. It reaches a part of our brain that affects us on a spiritual level. Think of “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Bob Dylan, a protest song about peace, war, and freedom. Or “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2 about the effects of government oppression, or “You’ve Got a Friend,” by Carole King, about the qualities that make a true friend. The concepts could not be better explained than through these powerful verses.

4) If you want to write poetry, don’t force it.

The best way to write poetry is to read a book on any subject that you want to write about. Or look at a picture that conveys a feeling you would like to express. Let the information sink in for several days, then come up with a concept or an opening line that introduces the idea you wish to convey. Next, work out the meter and rhyme that will work for the subject matter. For every problem there is always a solution.

5) Poetry is not going away anytime soon.

Humans are almost hard-wired to love verse. It is built into our DNA and is not going away anytime soon. The success of “Hamilton: the Musical” proves that. The fact that in this day and age theaters can fill up with an eager public raring to see a play about a Founding Father told entirely in verse speaks volumes about the public’s fascination with poetry and story-telling. It taps into our shared human conscience. It connects us to something much bigger than ourselves.

On a Moonlit Night in the Antilles: Poems Inspired by the Caribbean is out now on Amazon.com.

L'Aristote de la Mer

L'Aristote de la Mer

Il y a un homme sage dans la mer

Un homme brillant et extraordinaire

Un maître de la philosophie d'Aristote

Une tortue tropique, mon brave compatriot!

Il avait au moins trois pieds de long

Et nageait comme un petit Poséidon

Il m'a tout appris sur ce sujet

“La nature ne fait rien sans objet.”

Oh, comme j'ai aimé sa brillante philosophie

“Qu’il n’y a point de génie sans un grain de folie.”

Bien plus qu’une leçon de zoologie

J’ai appris que “L’ignorant affirme, le savant doute, le sage réfléchit.”

Au-dessus de toutes les créatures cet Aristote brillait

En entendant sa sagesse, j'ai ri et pleuré

Chaque mot était comme une douce caresse

"Le doute est le commencement de la sagesse."

Oh, comme je voulais être son ami

Un étudiant de cette merveilleuse académie

Mais dit mon ami sage et profonde

“Ce n'est pas un ami que l'ami de tout le monde.”

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La Rose de Porcelain - Poem in French

Sur une petite île dans les Caraïbes

Vit une rose de porcelain

Dans son royaume vert et archaïque

Règne cette merveilleuse dame!

Sans courtisans ni serviteurs

Pour garder sa compagnie

Mais des milliers de progénitures

Garderont la mémoire de sa vie

Cette reine de la beauté et de la grâce

Garde son coeur si triste et si calme

Quand il pleut elle ne montre pas sa disgrâce

Elle est une femme pas plus ou moins!

Dans les tempêtes ou les ouragans

Elle garde sa foi si forte

Et dans ses bras si élégants

Elle offre toujours du réconfort.

 

Saint-Pierre, Martinique: The Sleeping Beauty

Reblogged and translated from UneSaisonenGuyane.com:

By Pierre-Olivier Jay

A century after the eruption of Mt. Pelee, the former "Little Paris of the West Indies" has not regained its former glory. It is still only marginally developed. This is perhaps what makes this pretty little sleepy town so charming.

MAY IN SAINT-PIERRE

The month of May in St-Pierre is punctuated by celebrations, commemorations, and festivities. And for good reason, on May 22, 1848, the Martinican slaves took their liberty even before slavery was officially abolished, and half a century later, on May 8, 1902, the city was entirely destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Pelee. These days of celebrations are all the more important in a city where, apart from a modest museum, few things allow the visitor to imagine the size of St-Pierre before the disaster. Here, it is not like in Herculaneum or Pompeii, where the bodies are frozen in time from the moment of their death. If the memory of the 30,000 inhabitants who disappeared in 1902 has not been lost, the visitor must reconstruct it from clues scattered throughout the city.

THE LITTLE PARIS OF THE WEST INDIES

St-Pierre is only the shadow of its past. It takes a good dose of imagination to plunge back into it. The city was a beacon and a cultural and economic capital of the 19th century West Indies. Its streetlights illuminated the streets with electricity, a line of horse-drawn streetcars circulated its elevated streets and, from 1879, they boasted a "vitascope," the first cinema of the French colonies. While today the heat is often overwhelming, in those days, this spa town was crossed by multiple channels of fresh-flowing mountain spring water that refreshed the atmosphere. On the industrial front, rum and sugar were the treasures of the city. Today there are 16 distilleries and their know-how is legendary throughout the Caribbean. Through this port, valuable commodities were shipped between South America and North America, including cocoa, orange wine (vin d'orange), indigo, cassava, and pineapple.

The city was a mythical stop for sailors, attracted by its festive and frivolous nightlife. At dusk, more than a hundred cabarets and pubs come to life. They became the cradle of a new kind of music known as "biguine." The libertine atmosphere was described in one of the only novels from that time, "Nuit d’Orgie à St-Pierre" (Night of Orgy in St. Pierre). The opera house was the pride of the bekes, the white Antillean aristocracy, of which St-Pierre is the capital. The city is also the seat of 11 of the 15 Martinique newspapers of the time. They dealt mainly with politics, one of the West Indian people's burning passions.

ELECTORAL FEVER AND SCIENCE WITHOUT CONSCIENCE

On April 27, 1902, the first round of elections was tight between the two candidates. Industrialist Fernand Clerc, a progressive candidate of the Democratic Republican Alliance, obtained 4,496 votes and his opponent, Louis Percin, Radical-Socialist candidate, 4,167 votes. Overlooking the city, the volcano known as Mount Pelee awakened for a bit and then erupted on April 20. First a lake appeared in the dry crater lake, and then the White River showed unusual flow variations. On April 30, earthquakes shook the city. They were accompanied by phreatic explosions, steam-blast eruptions caused by the sudden increase of temperature of the superficial waters surrounding the volcano and the extremely hot magma reservoir. From May 2, ashes began to fall on the city, then a mudslide overtook the Guérin distillery, taking Pelée's first victims.

For the elite of the city, despite these signs and a panic among the residents, it was vital to mobilize voters for the second round of voting on May 11. It would never happen. Due north of St-Pierre the island has little to no access to the rest of the island. The only way to escape by sea, but by then it was impossible. But the authorities continued to reassure the public and a pseudo-scientific commission published a report that concluded, "St-Pierre is no more in danger at the foot of the volcano than Naples is at the foot of Vesuvius." The governor of Martinique, Louis Mouttet, previously stationed in Cayenne, arrived in the city with his wife, hoping to calm the agitated crowd.

From May 5, the situation escalated at the crater. The magma reached the surface, glowing rocks are thrown from the crater, a mudslide engulfed part of Precheur, taking 400 victims during the night of May 7 to 8. The inhabitants were never informed.

On the morning of May 8, the city of St-Pierre was calm. The clouds around the mountain obscure the town. A ship, le Diament, leaves curiously a few minutes before the tragedy. Some also speak of a ship, the Grappler, which was loaded shortly before the disappearance of the city, with all the fortune of the Martinique aristocracy. But until this day it is still a mystery. 

At 8:02 am, as the mass ends in town, a pyroclastic flow, a cloud of hot gas carrying debris of all sizes, reaches St. Pierre in less than a minute. In addition to the heat of the cloud, which reached 500 ° F, the shock wave and the inhalation of gases and ashes caused instant death for the town's 30,000 inhabitants. The passage of this deadly cloud triggered a fire in rum stocks. For three days, the city burned. But the apocalyptic vision of the rubble photographed is in fact the result of the seven fiery clouds that fell on the city until August 30, 1902.

SAINT-PIERRE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, THE MAL-AIMÉE

If many people saw this cataclysm as divine punishment for the dissolute lifestyle and the mores of the time and a particularly libertine carnival season, for the scientific community it was the beginning of contemporary volcanology. An observatory was set up by volcanologist Alfred Lacroix, who investigated the eruption. He analyzed the phenomenon of the pyroclastic flows, whose process of volcanic eruption took the name "Pelean". This eruption remains in volcanology a reference  to explosive eruptions accompanied by viscous flows. Since the last eruption of the volcano in 1929, underground activity has been continuously monitored by the Morne des Cadets Observatory, which houses one of the largest seismographs in the world.

The city of St. Pierre was never fully rebuilt. At the time, it was losing its dominance to Fort-de-France, favored by its central location and better port facilities. In the 20th century, Martinique no longer wishes to look north; the trauma and tragedy are still palpable. The ruins of the old city are everywhere, but they are left to crumble.

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER SAINT-PIERRE

St-Pierre is now rich in its underwater heritage. The discovery of the wrecks of the many ships that were in the bay on May 8, 1902 is an unexpected treasure trove for the city.

Jacques-Yves Imbert arrived in 1981. He lives with his family in a small white house several feet from the bay. A pioneer of scuba diving, he founded a diving club. He relates, "In May 1977, Mayor Jean Bally and Michel Metery declared themselves" "inventors" of all the wrecks, but they were already known to fishermen. Since then, diving, especially in wrecks like the mythical Roraïma, one of the first big steamers, is one of the main assets of the city."

A "CITY OF ART AND HISTORY" VALUED AT LAST?

After acquiring the prestigious label "City of Art and History" in 1990, cultural projects are waiting to emerge. Archaeologists are also working on excavating sites, bringing with them their share of new discoveries. In September 2015, David Earle, an American screenwriter, received the Best Screenplay for "Pelee" at the Monrovia International Film Festival in California. It tells the story of the tragedy of 1902. Will the exceptional destiny of St-Pierre be rediscovered on the screens of cinemas through an American super-production? That remains to be seen.

Guagin's interpretation of St. Pierre bay.

You can read more about this Caribbean Pompeii in the new historical thriller "Island on Fire":

Hello Young Soldier of the Vietnam War - A Poem

Hello young soldier of the Vietnam War
What guides your noble swagger
In these dreadful foreign shores?
The courage of your mocking stance
Is not mere vanity
It shows your pride, your bravery
Your pure humanity!
Hello young Marine of the Vietnam War
What guides your fearsome prowess
In the jungles you explore?
Your boots, your rifle, are all you possess
In these tumultuous of days
They cannot hide your burning soul
A fire that’s set ablaze!
And in your sweat-drenched chest
There beats a heart of finest gold
Forged in the battles of Bunker Hill
Of Lexington and Concord
The breath of Freedom guides you now
And will until the end
I pray it guides you ever more
For on your courage we depend!

Why I Wrote a Disaster Thriller-and Why I Would Do it Again!

A few years ago, the writer Karen Dionne wrote an article for the Huffington Post about why she would never write a disaster thriller. Among the reasons she gives is that during a terrible disaster, the situation deteriorates to the point where the story cannot end well. She thinks the final confrontation with the villain (in whatever form), must be violent. She says, "Readers have limits when it comes to the amount of violence they'll tolerate in fiction." But at their heart, disaster thrillers are stories about survival amidst impossible odds. As readers, we want to experience the dangers our heroes are forced to confront. We want to see ordinary people braving impossible odds. Think of Rose and Jack adrift in the freezing ocean in "Titanic". Or Ernest Shackleton and his brave crew struggling to survive in the frozen wasteland of Antarctica. As readers, we want to see ordinary people braving impossible odds. The need for this is so great it is almost embedded in our DNA.

When I set out to write ISLAND ON FIRE, a disaster thriller set during the eruption of Mount Pelée that destroyed the city of St. Pierre, Martinique, I knew the story had to be based on individuals fighting for survival. Disasters thrillers like “Titanic”, “Dante’s Peak”, "Pompeii" and “The Day after Tomorrow" make for the most compelling drama because they are a microcosm of our own struggles. Disaster can strike at any moment, and in the end we have only ourselves to rely on. The government is not going to rush in and save us. The violence can be quick, indiscriminate, and brutal. The chances for survival may be minimal at best. The responses of the characters can show the widest range of human emotions possible: from calm to irrational, fearful to stoic, depraved to heroic. In the end, like the characters in these disaster thrillers, we have to use our wits to shape our own destinies. We have to find our own way out of danger. 

In the dungeon of Ludger Sylbaris, one of the few people to survive the catastrophic eruption of Mount Pelee in Martinique that destroyed the city of St. Pierre in 1902.

Whether we like it or not, disasters are part of the human experience. Since time immemorial mankind has been ravaged by hurricanes, volcanoes, tsunamis, cyclones, earthquakes, wars, and shipwrecks. Yet we persevere. Resilience is built into our shared human condition. Countless people have suffered sweeping tragedies yet find the will to go on. They rebuild from the wreckage and sometimes find redemption in the process. This is our shared heritage. What makes each story so fascinating are the individual tales of perseverance and triumph in the face of adversity. A disaster is not just about destruction; it’s about people fighting for survival without losing their basic humanity. Disasters teach us to look for our inner strengths and goodness despite the odds against us. A kindness and a favor rendered to another human being at the height of a disaster can bring redemption in ways nothing else can.

I believe disaster stories remind us of what’s truly important. Think of those final brief phone calls made from the Twin Towers on 9/11. Or those desperate passengers on Flight 93 knowing their self-sacrifice will save many more lives on the ground. Helping and comforting our fellow man in a moment of peril is one of the most selfless acts a person can render. Disasters show us the great depths to which humans can sink, but also the great heights at which they can soar. This is something we can all learn from. Without disasters there can be no heroes. And heroes are what inspire us to be better people. Sometimes it takes a disaster of epic proportions to remind us of that.

Treat yourself to ISLAND ON FIRE, the untold story of the Pompeii of the Caribbean. Paperback version $10.99 and e-book version $3.99.