An Ode To My World

poetryliteraturephotographymusicartworldculture

[odetomyworld-blog]

A ranch in Southern California.

[odetomyworld-blog]

Antioquian Countryside

[odetomyworld-blog]

Our Father thou art in Heaven, in water, in air in all our silent and broad latitude everything bears your name, Father in our dwelling: your name raises sweetness in sugar cane Bolívar tin has a Bolívar gleam the Bolívar bird flies over the Bolívar volcano the potato, the saltpeter, the special shadows, the brooks, the phosphorous stone veins everything comes from your extinguished life your legacy was rivers, plains, bell towers your legacy is our daily bread, oh Father.

Un canto para Bolívar (Chant to Bolívar) by Pablo Neruda

[odetomyworld-blog]

I recently came across this album by the blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson with jazz guitarist Elmer Snowden. I was very surprised by this album, it is obviously blues but it has a nice, clean and smooth jazz feel that is beautiful and unique.

[odetomyworld-blog]

Edwidge Danticat

I recently saw Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian-American novelist speak at my school and I must say, I was impressed. She focused her talk on folktales which she heard growing up and how they have influenced her writing, that she then recited to us. She also spoke about how the 2010 earthquake in Haiti affected her and her family. I was surprised that she seemed to be such a cheerful person, since her life and her stories are filled with so much tragedy. I had read her book the Dew Breaker a few weeks ago, a book of short stories that are all interconnected in some way and that somehow, she masterfully brings together in the end. It was a really interesting work and really makes you think. She also spoke a little about her charity called Li, Li, Li! which is a read-aloud program for displaced children in Haiti. You can read more about it here.

[odetomyworld-blog]

Fall leaves

[odetomyworld-blog]

Photo I took of the Cauca River in Colombia.

[odetomyworld-blog]

All day the father said we rode through swanps seeing tupelo cypress standing in deep water and on higher ground plamettos mingling with pine deer and turkeys moving under the boughs and we dined by a swamp on bread and a pomegranate with stands of canna near us then poor timber for maybe a mile of the lowland which often the river overflows to the great loss of those who live there we lost our way and that was the day we found that tree with the beautiful good fruit nameless which I found never again it was then already advanced autumn and the grass exceding tall sand hills along the river you see only once whatever you may say winter has passed maybe twelve times over the wide river lands before the son returned to those regions when it was spring and that same tree was in perfect bloom while bearing even at that season its woody apples he said and the flowers were of first order for beauty and fragrance very large and white as snow with a crown or tassel of radiant gold stamens the lower petal cupped around the others until it allowed them to unfold and the edges of all the petals remaining waved of folded each flower set in the bosom of broad leaves never the son said did we find that tree growing wild anywhere else so it was fortunate that he gathered seed and cuttings and took them away to bring on in gardens for by the time he was fifty it had vanished from its place altogether only surviving here and there as a cultivated foreigner

"The Lost Camelia of the Bartrams" By W.S. Merwin

[odetomyworld-blog]

I recently came across this great album of Colombian music from the 60's and 70's called "Colombia! The Golden Age of Discos Fuentes" and I am very impressed. It is not often that you find a such great Colombian music. This album gives a wide range of Colombian music from that era and is great for anyone wishing to familiarize themselves with classic Colombian music.

[odetomyworld-blog]

Another shot of a street in the town of Guarne, Colombia.

[odetomyworld-blog]

On the sand a lizard with a sandy tail. Beneath a leaf, a leaflike head. From what planet, from what cold green ember did you fall? From the moon? From frozen space? Or from the emerald did your color climb the vine? On a rotting tree trunk you are a living shoot, arrow of its foliage. On a stone you are a stone with two small, ancient eyes- eyes of the stone. By the water you are silent, slippery slime. To a fly you are the dart of an annihilating dragon. And to me, my childhood, spring beside a lazy river, that's you! lizard, cold, small and green; you are a long-ago siesta beside cool waters, with books unopened. The water flows and sings. The sky, overhead, is a warm corolla.

Oda a la lagartija (Ode to the Lizard): Pablo Neruda

[odetomyworld-blog]

A photo I took of a door in a small town in Antioquia, Colombia.

[odetomyworld-blog]

I recently came across this interesting album, called Pirate's Choice by a Cuban influenced Senegalese band from the 70's and 80's. This is the lead track off of the album. The idea of Cuban musicians influencing Western African music, where they have their roots is fascinating, plus the music is just beautiful.