Ruth Stone In Memorium (1915-2011)

NY Times Obituary

Chard deNiord's Obituary in The Guardian

The American Academy of Poets page on Ruth Stone

Chogyam Trungpa & Allen Ginsberg on Poetry

Chogyam Trungpa died in 1987 on April 4. Almost to the day ten years later Allen Ginsberg died on April 5, 1997.

Year of the Iron Rabbit

Image from: ewamchoden.org

Year of the Iron Rabbit

Losar Poem

Be fruitful

when you wander the warren

of your mind

Burrowing deep into the ground of stability.

To broaden your field of vision,

Scan the sky for predators of distraction.

Then, stop in your tracks,

O Fearsome Bunny--

Proverbial Trickster whose cunning

Outwits pundits of sophistry.

For your path

is a zig-zag

To liberation.

Time to change course in a flash

Defy convention

Give into laughter like Bugs BUNNY

Show your mettle and step up to the plate.

For this is your lucky year!

Jacqueline Gens

Tsegyalgar East

2011

Poem by Verandah Porche for my 61st Birthday

Jacqueline (1982)

Rock walls hold the forest like a cash crop:
...some massive stand of late maturing corn.
A cellar hole, a hearthstone topped with
beaten brick, a spring box like a covered dish:
some raw ingredients of myth. Time is still
the laughing chef. Her favored trick: tectonics.

Six burner blaze on our modern stove.
You whip or simmer with no recipe;
know what to coddle,
when to bruise. Try glacier.
Use avalanche.

Verandah tweaked this older poem circa 1982 for my 61st birthday on January 20, 2011, which she posted on Facebook. We lived together for a time at Total Loss Farm AKA Packer Corners Farm in Guilford, Vermont (1976-1982) which she founded in the late 1960 along with friends Raymond Mungo, Marty Jezer, Richard Wizansky among others. Verandah has continued to live on the farm for decades raising her two daughters and scribing her poems.

Listen to a great VPR interview with Tom Fells originally of Montague Farm and Verandah Porche of Total Loss Farm

PHOTO: V. Paige

Packer Corners Farm