We here at Local Gems Poetry Press have always felt that poetry is about more than just words—it is about community and bringing writers together for a purpose. As this is a core part of our belief, we are very proud to say we took part in an event last Saturday that brought poets together for the sake of Sandy relief efforts.

As many of you know already Local Gems Poetry Press frequently partners with and acts as the printer for the Bards Initiative—a Long Island based poetry organization very into poetic-activism. Their latest project, “Songs of Sandy” Poetry Concerning Hurricane Sandy and Other Natural Disasters had its launch event at the Walt Whitman Birthplace on January 19th, 2013 and saw amazing success. This article written by George Wallace at the Huntington Patch covers a good deal of the details.

http://huntington.patch.com/articles/songs-of-sandy-anthology-brings-crowd-to-whitman-house#photo-13027343


75 people came out for the reading and $650 dollars was raised for relief efforts for Sandy. Patrons commented on the event:

“This was an extremely successful event and I enjoyed every moment of the beautiful poetry.”
~ Jeremy Williams

“Such a great and worthy event.”
~Maria Manobianco

“A great night full of ebullience, unity and compassion.”
~Ed Stever

“Incredible seeing everyone come together for a common cause. I am so blessed and gifted to be a part of this awesome community.”
~ Steven T. Licardi

Anyone still interested in buying the book can do so here. 100% of the funds from the sale of this book now and always will be donated to Sandy Relief.


http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Of-Sandy-BardsInitiative/dp/1481075160/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358850288&sr=8-1&keywords=songs+of+sandy

We at Local Gems were thinking about either a newsletter, or a blog posting of a poem a week to send out to all the people who would want to sign up for it. This is mostly in response to people wishing for more sample poems from the books and for more poetry from the website. But we keep going back and forth on the best method of delivery so we figured, why not ask you all what you thought? What do you think of the idea of us at Local Gems sending out a poem a week?

Written for and presented on June 12, 2011 at the Nassau County
Poet Laureate Induction for Dr. Lynda Opyr. And published in Bards Annual 2011.

Poetry? 
Are you kidding?
Poetry?

What the heck is wrong with you?
This is a day and age of the hi-tech.
You thought television would change the way we think,
try the internet!

Try those 33 second Youtube poops,
the 12 second ads
the 300 word articles
the split second instant gratification that people have come
to expect
in an A.D.D. prescribed society
lowering our attention spans even further
combined with the 70-80 hour work week average
fast paced, stop and go
gotta be somewhere else right now ten minutes ago speed
that has planted its seed
in our minds growing into our reality
no one has the want, need, or time
to sit there and read. 

Large conglomerates spend billions of dollars
on one minute commercials that people don’t even notice.
Corporations are vying for our attention with every cent they have
and still don’t always get it.

People are so distracted they don’t even know what goes on 
in the white house anymore.
When taking all that into consideration,
what do you,
what can you,
honestly expect a poet to do?
A poet,
a poet,
one person with a pen and paper postulating,
noticing,
observing the humor, heartbreak, inconsistencies, hypocrisies,
joys, kindness and all the other scattered phenomena of our 
society and 
records it in admittedly elegant verse from their perspective.

How is that supposed to work in a world where 
You ask anyone under 20 “Who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue”
and they 
have no clue.
But you ask them “who lives in a pineapple under the sea” 
and they know 
instantaneously. 

When the government spends billions of dollars,
imprisoning the children for 8 hours a day 
trying with all their might to get through to them,
and still manage to get ignored,
what can a poet do?
I guess we could notice that no one cares…they don’t give a shit!
We could write about it—put our own spin on it
make it sound all fancified.
Maybe we could put into words a notion
that no one has yet made the motion
to preserve and pass on.
Maybe if we pen our postulations
And passed them to the person to the right of us
We would discover that on occasion
They’ve noticed exactly what we’ve noticed. 
After all
We forget that once upon a time before America was its own nation
Everyone noticed that taxation without representation was bullshit
That arrests without warrant or charge was not justice
But so many remained silent,
Until the first few
The founding fathers stepped forward to say what was what.
It took the penning of the declaration of independence
Which was poetic in itself to put forth the truth.
Maybe even now our observations, the little things we notice,
That traffic cameras don’t really make the roads safer,
That more restrictions on drinking only makes the kids want 
to drink more,
That women  despite  “equality”  spend  just  as much  time  doing
housework as they did in the fifties only now work a full time job to
go with it…

Maybe more people have realized these things than we realize.
Yet everyone keeps silent because they feel they are alone 
in their thoughts.
Maybe if we write about them, read them, go up in front of a 
group and perform them
Other people will sense a familiarity in our words…

And that muse that made us move our pens will go to them 
and do the exact same thing
and they’ll share what they’ve seen,
slowly but surely the observations will spread
the familiarity grabbing people out of their cubicles,
the internet infested
television troubled domiciles 
putting away the hi-tech fancy billion dollar attempts at their 
attention to give their focus
on the one thing that commercials, ads, government money and 
all the technology in the world can’t give them…

kindred spirits.
And maybe when they go back to their blog posts and facebook 
they will be inclined
To spread these observations
Maybe they will grow.

Maybe all it takes, in the words of Thomas Jefferson
the poet who gave us our nation with his pen:
“To place before mankind the common sense of the subject 
in terms so plain and firm as to command their ascent.”
THAT is the power of poetry!

And just because our duties are harder to perform 
does not excuse us from our responsibility to give it our all.

What can a poet do, you ask?
From one point of view once upon a time a poet gave us 
our nation—
That was then, this is now, when the spread of information has never
been easier.
What can a poet do?
What can a poet do? A poet can tell the truth…
And what can the truth do?
More than I could imagine…