Meditations
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Venus v. the Barbarians
I’m reading Bill Lavender’s book of poems, City of God, which combines commentary on our modern world and his thoughts on Augustine’s old book. at the same time I have found a blog, Via Negative, which frequently speaks to or shares images of the ancient Venuses whichever on my own mind of late. And somehow… Continue reading
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Otherly Love
Love. Lust. Limerance. Not adolescent or transient infatuation. The word I want is hiding from me. The ancient Greeks had a long list. Not Agape, the word for familial affection or loving kindness appropriated by the Greco-Romanized Christians; Philia is closer, that strong attraction of mind and heart as among best friends, which Plato thought… Continue reading
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Not a Demon-Haunted World
Not a demon-haunted worldof the astronomer’s warningbut one spirit informed,knowing we are the conscious universelooking at ourselvesin the mystery of a treeunmediated by machines Continue reading
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There is a light somewhere
“There is a light somewhere.”Charles Bukowski, “The Laughing Heart* How to write or paint the dark from the bottom of the tar pit of anthropocene extinction without resorting to the calling bottle of Poe-etics? When you remember spirits as disparate as Bukowski and Lenoard Cohen can see that glint of light like a star seen… Continue reading
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Green Pentecost
I was raised from childhood to place my hand in the Holy Roman wound and found it cold and hollow. Now I am waiting for that Pentecostal moment not in a close room but in the wood, for green fire like leaves to descend, teaching us the words of the birds and the subterranean language… Continue reading
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Drifting Into Brautigan
The more time I spend walking in the forest the further I’m drifting into Richard Brautigan. I don’t fish but I like to watch the herons do it and I sometimes write about it, too. He’s tonic to the orchestral noise blaring at what might be the last Fourth of July. It’s all John Phillip Firework patriotism here… Continue reading
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 