C.E. Chaffin, etc.

C.E. Chaffin is my favorite poet. I used to not admit this, because he is so little-known, but I get more out of his poetry than I do from anyone else. He published two books of poetry: Elementary and Unexpected Light. I think Elementary was published in 1997 and Unexpected Light was published in 2008. Elementary is a book of nature poems. Unexpected Light is much more internal. I own both books. Unexpected Light is a better book, and it is longer. If you want to read some of his poetry you can Google "C.E. Chaffin."

Chaffin published two of my poems when he edited the Melic Review. The Melic Review is no longer available online. The Melic Review had an online poetry workshop that I participated in. It was a fun place to get feedback and to write critiques of poems. I learned a lot there. 

C.E. suffered from bipolar disorder and ended up committing suicide in 2013. He had a sunny disposition despite the gloomy spells. I would say he was an extravert. He had three daughters and one grandson. He spent some time living in Mexico and wrote about it from time to time. I got to know him in 2006, when I had a brief correspondence with him.

Another little-known poet whose work I admire is Jeffery Bahr. I was active in a poetry workshop with him as well. He died in 2017. So many good people are gone.

Me Reading One of My Poems on Youtube

 Here I am reading one of my poems on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jYshniqCEYA

A Poem

A Husband

My back supports a family of five.

My wife and children nestle close to me

as I tell stories of how we escaped tyranny.

My words balance misery and mystery,

stirring muddy boots with cold 

suppers and long stares, my life

tired and third-world, a script

written by a starving man for his needy

mother. Why can I only repeat lies? 

My religion is sex. 

I am a pilgrim to women whose skin

is pale and freckled, whose hips 

harbor careful rhythms, each eye

a destination beyond the dilation of time.

I am bound for borders I cannot cross,

through skies I cannot see, against the 

backdrop of a land I am not worthy 

to touch.

My son asks me what it means to be a man.

I tell him it means having a belly like a boiling pot 

and a mind like a grassfire. I tell him it means

appetite and the calculations of instinct.

I tell him it means communism

and equality with every wretch on the news.

I tell him until he stops asking.

Joel Fry

*To read more of my poems Google "Joel Fry poetry."

How I Became a Poet

In the summer of 1995 I was hospitalized for a manic episode. I was only sixteen years old. During that time I had been keeping a journal in which I wrote all sorts of erratic stories and poems. Actually, I'm not sure what I wrote, as I don't remember it well. I do, however, remember writing one story in which a goat was the speaker. 

When I was in the hospital I read "To a Waterfowl" by William Cullen Bryant and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. Up until that time pretty much the only thing I had read in depth was the Bible. But I greatly enjoyed both of these works.

By the time I was a senior in high school I had written my first coherent poem. And by the time I was 21 years old I decided to become a serious reader. I started reading novels and poems in depth. I read two novels that year: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and Breadgivers by Anzia Yizerska. I am a slow reader, so this took me a long time. I also began reading poetry every day.

I became active in an online poetry workshop called the Gazebo. (I don't recommend that poets participate in online poetry workshops anymore, because magazines no longer knowingly accept poetry that has been publicly posted online.) Anyway, my poetry greatly improved, and later that year I had my first published poem. I was published in the Melic Review, which was a high-quality online literary review. 

From here on out I kept reading every day and writing when I was inspired. 

A Poem

A Trip to McDonald’s

Take this Quarter Pounder for what it is—

a place to start, a place to be honest.

Your blue hair gives way to blushing cheeks, and 

we both know what to feel next. The script we follow

has us in mind. Glazed eyes and full bellies tell

a story of where we have been in this land of thrift.

Nothing means theft to us. Nothing tells us hem 

or haw. America is the finest place to meander 

and be made. There is a home for our rage here,

bodies to be filled and emptied, a spot on the globe

where beatings make sense and suicide makes 

its impression with baby teeth. I’m not asking you

to listen. That’s hard work. I’m asking you to settle

into the slouch of your choice and think of the ways

you could be alone. Your company means nothing 

else. Just be here with me.

Joel Fry

*Note: Hemming and hawing means being indecisive or hesitant.

A Poem

A Trip to Walmart

I keep the habit of living in my pajamas, walking

down the aisles of Walmart, my face unshaven

and old, beaten, weathered, my breath molded 

with my words. I come here often seeking frozen fish, 

pizza, bacon, ground beef, instant coffee, chocolate, 

condoms. I no longer expect to find myself 

in the convenience that holds me to my word. Work 

is distance I cannot cross. What mystery singles me out 

for ill health, for rotten molars, for an aching back? I breathe 

through barriers of ice. I don’t have tragedies; I have 

annoyances, none of which involves a woman. Before 

I became disabled, before the shuffle from my couch 

to the store complicated my life, I repaired cars. 

I had my own garage. My expertise beckoned the county. 

Now I wonder what holds the world together, what shoestring 

I have to untie to watch shopping malls collapse. Time 

is my only expense. I grow fat on my watch. No one cares.

No one bridges the space between herself and me with fingernails

that could cut teeth. I get by on my own. Seeing is something

I cannot control.

Joel Fry

*Currently published in Eclectica.

A Summary of My Second Book of Poetry

Here is a summary of my second book of poetry, The Sound of Rain, which is out of print. I plan on adding some of the poems published in my second book to this blog. I wrote this summary because my publisher, Cyberwit, requested it. By the way, Cyberwit is still in business, I think.

Dear Editor,

This book of poems comprises poetry written over the past year and a half (from 2020-2021). It is concerned with many different subjects, as any good book of poetry should be. Some of the poems have to do with my recent obsession that reincarnation may be possible given a materialistic philosophy (even though I am not a materialist). In these poems, however, I use the word “physicalist.” The two poems that address reincarnation from this vantage are “Reincarnation According To a Physicalist” and “A Physicalist Ponders Reincarnation.” They illustrate the working of the mind of a physicalist as he gropes with the concept of rebirth, and his possible immortality.

This book will have a broad appeal to many people, especially those interested in reincarnation. My last book sold 44 copies on the internet, and I expect this book would sell more. I have a blog and am active on Facebook and Quora. I also know a great many people personally who would be interested in buying copies of the book. 

The other poems deal with problems plaguing a mentally-ill person. I am bipolar, and I am well-acquainted with issues like anxiety, which I write about here. In my poem “Anxiety” I borrow an idea from Shakespeare—that of playing the fool in my own home where the door is shut upon me. But in this case I have internet access, meaning that I no longer have the option of being alone with my foolishness—not even that. I am subject to the constant temptation to get online and parade myself around for other fools to react to, other fools who are in the same situation as I, so that there is no rest from social inspection and reaction. The poem totally delves into this idea. This poem has been published in a small venue, but it deserves a larger audience. It is an idea that is totally relevant to this day and age in which we find ourselves washed ashore like marooned sailers. 

Another Idea I explore is the idea of life in the Ice Age. I explore what it must have been like for my ancestors and what that experience would be like if it were relived in a modern dystopia. I list the chores of an Ice-Age hunter-gatherer and include sex with the wife as a chore, because it must have been that in order to produce enough children to survive and increase the population.

In “An Incel” I probe the plight of a lonely boy marooned in his parents’ house. He thinks of those poorer than himself as well as those richer than himself and finds that he is worse off than both of them. All this is implied in the way of wishes and imagination—in the things he tells himself. 

In “Your Selflessness” the speaker explores the plight of a boy his partner knew in high school—someone no one could help, a boy who is identified as a “closet suicide.” The poem roves and expands rapidly through an understory of memories and possibilities that come flooding in. At one point the poem says, “Water, as a generalization, is as hard as iron,” letting the reader know that nothing is certain. 

I also have the essay on reincarnation, “Recurrent Reincarnation.” If you would like to omit the essay and publish the book with only the poems included, that would be fine with me.

Blurb for My Second Book, The Sound of Rain

My second book, The Sound of Rain is out of print. It isn't nearly as good as my first book, Late Alabama. Nevertheless, the book does contain some jewels, which I may eventually post here. I want to include the blurb for my second book here, because it provides insight into my poetry. Here it is:

The poems of Joel Fry explore a liminal zone between a private world of home and solitude and the public world of neighbors, family, friends, cities, streets, and politics. The private world is sometimes safe, relaxed, but more often a place of confinement—walls, restrictions, a cell—from which the poet yearns toward a stable and happy connection to the natural world of farms and woods and the human world of romance and friendship. In rich and complex images, finely tuned cadences, and a confident and steady voice, the poet renders his awareness of his inner life—the pain, the longing, the hope, the fear—and the dangerous but powerfully seductive

world outside his window. Language is both refuge and quest, and “the sound of rain” is equipoise.

Harry Moore, author of Bearing the Farm Away and Broken and Blended: Love’s Alchemy.

A Poem

Compassion

Your compassion brings rabid cats home.

You feed them vegan food and bathe them 

in our sink. When I tell you to get rid of them

you say I’m being callous. I want to love

you, but there’s fur in the way. Walls of disease

stand between us. I want you to take my hand

and force me through the fierce bewilderment

of being a man. When uncertainty surrounds me

I want you to sit in the midst of it talking me 

through the fog. I want you to clean the house

and make it as bright as a lemon drop. Something

about me will ache forever. For now there is no 

place to go but here. How many cats can you fit

into the den? No one needs to know about us. 

We live by recollection. All the things we recall

are shelved in our bedroom where I keep the things

that no longer interest me. We live in insistent 

sunlight. 

A Song: "Forever Young" by Alphaville

Here's a great song by Alphaville: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNjQXmoxiQ8&list=RDoNjQXmoxiQ8&start_radio=1

Poem

In the Woods

I tell you to be still in the summer sun—statue, oak, log that cannot 

be rolled. Be the thing I return to after all these years alone. Be brave 

and stolid. Be royal at last, silent, unruffled by wind, regal

as ostrich feathers, round as the globe. I want what I cannot have,

a woman of your proportions, given to light, soap-soft and adjusted

to whatever comes, silk or sandpaper. I sit in my recliner,

unnoticed by those who see the fire I start. The walls tell lies, discoveries

and doubts. My life is myth painted red in these woods. A forest 

can’t cover my back. Hounds track raccoons up my legs. 

I am eternal. I have lived at the end of my days, the end 

of the road, the conclusion of conversation, the final breath breathed

as the last word of my life. I have been a baby growing from a granite touch.

You were not the first to love me.

Joel Fry

*My first book of poetry is Late Alabama. It is available on Amazon. There is much wisdom there. Peace.

This is the Problem with the West

Gad Saad is the author of Suicidal Empathy. Here is an excerpt of that phenomenal book.  I am reading it now.  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/22ykmSe-Vm8?feature=share

Evidence for God

The laws and constants are the result of either chance, design, or physical necessity. They're not the result of physical necessity. They're almost certainly not the result of chance. Therefore they are almost certainly the result of design. This is a cogent argument for God's existence. The only way to debunk it is to prove that one of the premises is false. 

The only reason people disbelieve in God is that belief in God seems outlandish. But believing that consciousness is more real than matter seems outlandish as well, and yet Donald Hoffman proved consciousness is more real than matter. He proved that consciousness is fundamental.

So what am I sitting in? I'm sitting in a chair. What is a chair? Molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are made of subatomic particles. Subatomic particles are made of quantum fields. If you go down that chain--this is made of that, which is made of that, which is made of that, you get to one thing which is absolutely simple and is made of only itself. Is that consciousness?

My first book of poetry is called Late Alabama. If you want to buy a copy you can Google "Joel Fry Late Alabama". There's wisdom there.

Walden

Walden by Henry David Thoreau is my favorite nonfiction book. I think it was written in the 1840s. It is a record of Thoreau's stay in a cabin he had built at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. He begins by describing ascetics in India crawling across the Indian subcontinent and saying that farmers were performing greater austerities by working from dawn till dusk six days a week in the maintenance of their farms. He says that life should be simplified, that "a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone." What can we do without?

Thoreau gives a wondrous description of the pond and the woods in various seasons.

Thoreau says, "Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man but the appetite with which it is consumed." This is an altered version of what Christ says in the New Testament: "Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man but that which comes out." By this Christ was talking about things like blasphemy, fornication, and other actions we perform that are against the will of God. So which statement is more accurate?

Two Aphorisms

To prove is no more to convince than to convince is to prove.

Open your heart and your eyes will follow.

Poem

Calendar Days

I walk through the calendar days of my yard,

making the rain equal on both sides, seeking

sunlight in the middle where the breeze finds

my faults. I survive the storms of spring,

but not intact. With parts of me missing I navigate

ground that never dries, mud holes layered

with leaves. The world gives everyone permission

to run down a mountaintop where clouds cover the sun

and bird flight makes folly wise. The part of me 

that vanishes like wood smoke is bound to appear 

again when I feel myself falling asleep in a swamp

of misapprehension, in the trouble of netted

memory, where I play and tangle my feet together

in a rapid dance. Something calms me. A hand

beneath the breeze settles my skin where I am

all brambles and thorns. The surface of the sky

glistens above my face. I grow accustomed

to drowning, no longer insisting that my blood

warm me. What made me but discipline

and fast fingers beating my will?

The only meaning is the repetition of sound

in the only place I can hear it.

Today

I woke up this morning at about 10:00 a.m. and went to the kitchen to get my medicine. I am bipolar and take four kinds of medicine in the morning: lithium, colace, Trileptal, and Gabapentin. I used to take Metformin for diabetes in the morning, but I lost about fifty pounds, and now I only take it before bed. The lithium and Trileptal are for bipolar disorder. The lithium is a mood stabilizer, and the Trileptal is an atypical antipsychotic. The Gabapentin is for peripheral neuropathy, and the colace is a stool softener. I also take an injection of Phlufenizine, which is an atypical antipsychotic. That makes me constipated, which is why I take the colace. 

After I took my morning medicine I weighed myself. I am 6'5" and weigh 289 pounds. I think I am holding steady at that weight or about that weight. I also checked on a few poems I had written and submitted. Two of the poems were flawed, but a third poem was seemingly flawless. I also reviewed two other poems I had written. They turned out to be pretty bad. Oh well.

I went to check on some submissions, then I went to get some lunch.

A Short Story

 This is one of the best short stories I've ever read. I love to read about winter in the far north. https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/to-build-a-fire.pdf

A Poem

On the Road

No one needs to know where I’m going on the coldest day

of the year, my vision spread out across the highway, taking in all 

the land has to offer—the pastures, houses, creeks, junk piles. 

I listen to what the tire tread does on the ice, and I long to see 

what must come, what little and large must be, strangers who move 

ahead of the snow in the insular hours, hermits bound to secrecy, 

recluses bound to lives of closets and time. On the road my life makes 

sense. What I’ve been told becomes background. No guilt arises 

in my rearview mirror, no chattering or praying hands, no shame. 

I prepare in moments of mercy for hours of rage when distance 

develops an itch. At pit stops I shave and set my clock, observe 

the rising sun, the fleeing deer. What more is there to know than 

what I see? A man tells me that the world is growing violent around me, 

and I cannot stop it. I tell him the world is not my concern. 

The stained-glass morning comes, its face a broken yolk. I watch 

the headlights form shadows, the miles ahead a mystery.

Joel Fry

*This poem was previously published in the Michigan City Review of Books.

A Poem

On the Farm

I need evidence that I have not changed, something

sound within me, a voice that answers the wind when it 

blows here on the hill. The stars respond to the darkness

twinkle by twinkle, and I realize I am waking to a porch light 

in the distance. Cars pass beyond the house. The susurrus 

of their motion makes for peaceful thinking. When I walk 

to the edge of the pasture a bellowing bull intrudes on my sadness. 

Is this sadness? I forget what brings me here, what illumination 

at the end of August, hot and feverish, blasts me baked 

and muscular. Somewhere far away waves crash ashore, 

constantly changing, but the process by which they break 

remains the same. A girl is strolling by the sea, and by 

the chambers of the sea she sees the end of all things.  

By fire light her eyes narrow to a speck on the horizon,

a ship slipping away hauling fish to a spot barely

charted on the globe. She hears her name and is reminded 

of all the places she has never been, of the land she cannot 

cross. I am her tonight, in this farm that holds me captive,

word and deed, jot and tittle, a way out and a way

of knowing there is no escape.

Joel Fry

 

*Previously published in The Michigan City Review of Books.

My Email Address

 If anyone wants to discuss anything found on this blog he or she can email me: fryjoel46@gmail.com

A Song

 Here's a song by The Great Lakes Swimmers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ6W_cq-zQ0&list=RDeQ6W_cq-zQ0&start_radio=1

My Day

I have an easy life. I draw disability and mostly relax all day. Every other day or so I go to the grocery store. I also have to go to the doctor's office, the dentist, etc. What do I do with my time?

Sometimes I write poetry. That can take up to two hours per day on days when I am making a submission. But mostly I watch Youtube and spend time on Facebook. On Youtube there are Jordan Peterson videos and various other channels I keep up with. The Youtube and Facebook gods have me locked into conservative algorithms. I mainly just go along with the stream. 

Some of what I see enrages me--how white people are being treated in the UK, how there is a two-tier justice system there and they keep importing violent Muslims. Muslims have a conquest mentality, and their birth rate is at least twice the rate of the native British people. Many of the white people there are self-hating. They think we should make up for the sins of the past. White people are the only people like this. The Japanese aren't like this, and look at what they did to the Chinese and the Koreans during World War II. Most people are ignorant of this. Look at what the Mongolians did to the rest of Asia during Genghis Khan's day. Look at what the Arabs did to the Africans. No apologies from them are forthcoming.

All of us have ancestors who have done immoral things. No need to single out white people.

That's enough.

*Check out my first book of poems, Late Alabama, on Amazon.

Peace,

Joel