Coming Soon Year of the Earth Dog

Some of you may have read what I call my annual Losar New Year poems over the past decade. To date I have completed about 15 of these based on real time you can link to below. I am currently working on completing all 60 animal/element combinations and revising what I've already done in collaboration with visionary artist, Ingmar Pema Dechen.  

So far I have completed the following combinations: 

2007 of the Fire Pig
2008 of the Earth Oxen
2009 Year of the Earth Rat
2010 Year of the Metal Tiger
2011 Year of the Metal Rabbit
2012 Year of the Water Dragon
2013 Year of the Water Snake
2014 Year of the Wood Horse
2015 Year of the Wood Sheep

2018 Year of the Earth Dog

Oh you Earth Dog come

Now happiness wagging

Your familial greeting

That cheers us up as I bend to you my lovely

In display of your canine Sagacity

Ever Loyal--

Ever Reliable

Follow your keen scent

For sniffing out what’s apparent

Bury the bone of your content

Within our breast

For Safe Keeping

Humanitarian sustenance of justice

With your nose to the grindstone

Bark at shadows wrecking havoc at our door

Growl baring teeth to terrify

Cowards who roust our peace

Lift a leg to leave your mark

While yet you enliven our joy lest we forget

The great companion you are

Forever by our side

Text by Jacqueline Gens

Illustration by Ingmar Pema Dechen

Here is Year of the Fire Bird for 2017

Original art by Ingmar Pema Dechen, 2017

Year of the Fire Rooster/Bird

Ever awake among the slumbering
Lively harbinger of whatever awaits
Each day no task too daunting
For just as the sun rises
You’re always ready for any occasion
Reliable, precise, and to the point
No poison too toxic nor lethal
For that bright display which cheers us on
O great Fire Bird who arises from ashes
To transport us beyond our limits
In shining iridescence to meet our purpose
We welcome your daily summons
Into the fray at day’s break

Jacqueline Gens
Tsegyalgar East
Dakini Day, 2.21.17

Please credit Jacqueline and Ingmar if you you forward their image and poem. They are currently collaborating on rendering all sixty animal/element combinations into illustrated/poems. To read more about this project called "The Mansion of Elements" visit here.  There you will also find poems from 2007 to the present. 

Here is The Year of the Fire Monkey for 2016
  

                                               [Original art by Ingmar Pema Dechen, 2016]

Ho you Fire Monkey
Adorable Familiar of blessed places
Resourceful, enchanting
Cunning when need be
Your chatter flattens the dolts of ignorance
When you take

Charge in a carpe diem kind of way
Your ballast of confidence
Lifts our spirits

Seer of the future
Interlocutor to lost opportunities
Let’s take to heart
the ease of your swing from here to there
Always awake in the fire

Needless to say these are not “great" poems but they are interesting. Over the years many people have expressed appreciation. My process is not any official astrological training or reference. Nor do I intend any disrespect to the Tibetan tradition of astrology closely aligned with training in Tibetan Medicine. 

Mainly, I meditate on the animal, then the element which I combine with a kind of intuitive sense of the year at hand. These particular poems seem to write themselves.  The results are strangely in harmony with the “official” forecasts.  They also reflect my own personal mind training at the time. I’d like to compile the complete version of all 60 animal/element combinations as an offering to future communities of practitioners in the Vajrayana and Dzogchen lineages.

They are meant to inspire and encourage people on the long and enduring path towards realization.

My main inspiration comes from my teachers and poetry mentors including Chogyam Trungpa, Choegyal Namkhai Norbu, Lama Tsultrim Allione, Anne Waldman and the late Allen Ginsberg. Many Thanks to  dharma and poet buddies sharing the path. Thanks everyone for all your support over the years.

I am currently focusing on birth poems for friends and personalized poems for hire (by donation.

Here is my most recent addition: Year of the Wood Rooster for 1945, birth year for many poet friends. This one in honor of my friends Anne Waldman, Vernadah Porche and Richard Wizansky.

[original art by Ingmar Pema Dechen]

Such iridescent display

Cockadoodiling us awake

Each day without fail

As reliable as the sun

you rise to summon forth

Bright scrys of portend

Acuity for the larger meanings in the scheme

Of so-called phenomena

Beneficent scribe to the downcast

Outsiders, end stop

You set the bar high

A million hands in the fire

No task too daunting

Harbinger of new, always fresh

Our number one

Jacqueline Gens
Shelburne Falls, MA
Last updated February 5, 2016



The newest composition is a private commission for Year of the Water Tiger with original art by Ingmar Pema Dechen

Behold the Water Tiger
Worldly navigator
Among all things adventurous
At home in the unknown
Buoyed by the ease of water
Even the heaviest notions
Lightly flow by twists and turns
Where no one else dares to go
You are the harbinger of mystery
A playful glint of luminosity
Amid roiling turbulence
Flash of certainty in the deep swell
Of aquifer forever brave
Our Sleek innovator
All accomplishing to the end

Jacqueline Gens
5/8/2016

Original art by Ingmar Pema Dechen 

Review of Enlightened Vagabond: The Life and Teachings of Patrul Rinpoche by Jacqueline Gens in Levekunst

To read the full review visit Levekunst

http://levekunst.com/enlightened-vagabond/

Enlightened Vagabond

The Life and Teachings of Patrul Rinpoche
Collected and Translated by Matthieu Ricard
Edited by Constance Wilkinson
Foreword by H.H. Dalai Lama
Shambhala Publications
Boulder, 2017, 282 pages

*****

His (Patrul's) self-deprecating humor and keen intellect combined with a vast heart pierce the human yearning for authenticity amid the sorrows of sentient life. His words go beyond poetic conceits and cultural baggage. In any case, I have remained wildly enthusiastic about the works of Patrul Rinpoche for decades now. The current publication is a much awaited event to carry his mindstream further into the 21st century. If you are unfamiliar with his work, you’re in for a special experience when coming into contact with him. Please read him. If he is an old heart friend, Enlightened Vagabond will not disappoint! -Jacqueline Gens


To purchase this book here is the Amazon link.

An interview with editor Constance Wilkinson is in the works....coming  soon!

An Interview with Jacqueline Gens by Jillian Mukavetz in Womens' Quarterly Conversation - Profiles in Poetics

Some years ago while I was still working as Co-director with Jim Harms in the New England College MFA Program in Poetry circa 2010/2011, Jillian Mukavetz - a graduate student in the  program interviewed me. At that time we had a dynamic faculty including Ilya Kaminisky, Eleni Siklianos, Carol Frost, Malena Morley, Brian Henry, and Anne Waldman every winter who cultivated among students an experimental thesis presentation.

Jillian was one such example with her series of interviews. I recently came across it online and wow did she do a great job. To read it, visit the Womens' Quarterly Conversation/ Profiles n Poetics at :

https://womensquarterlyconversation.com/2011/05/12/profiles-in-poetics-jacqueline-gens/

Jillian Mukavetz (left) meeting with her mentor,  Eleni Siklianos

MFA Program in Poetry at

New England College, circa 2011 

"Jacqueline Gens comes from a strong lineage of Russian women storytellers who originally migrated to the United States, more specifically Southern California, shortly before she was born. Here, Gens describes her world existing on the “cusp”. In this space of the between, the gritty earth, clouds overhead, language, music, culture; the sacred became, as it still is today, a space of vibrancy and wholeness. Quite similar to Anne Waldman’s forward in Gens’ recently published chapbook Primo Pensiero, Waldman expresses, “this debut bouquet of poems is an elegant display of ordinary mind spiked with the magic and heart of ‘Big Mind’ sensibility.”

When asked about the influence of Buddhism in Gens’ life, she describes her practice as one wrapped around, amidst, below, and between, every moment. She says, “waking up to me is synonymous with touching earth, not escaping for something higher or more abstract.” As co-director and founder of the New England College, Jacqueline tells me “I have served the muse well in this lifetime by nurturing the work of other writers and especially hundreds of new writers finding their voice.” In this way, she nurtures the internal of the feminine in a way that is a gift to the self and importantly to the larger community as well.

1.) Where are you from? What were the first inspirations that made you desire to become a writer? Who, what, where, influenced you as a writer? In other words how did you arrive here as a writer?...............

- to read more...go here.

Photo by Jacqueline Gens

Thin Line--An October Poem

For David Hernandez
A grandfather whose kindness I can never repay

The fires are lit to stave
Off first hoarfrost
The harvest in
With its scent of rot mingled
Amid sweetness
Overhead winged
Cry out in joyful unison
On their way home
Below crickets trill
Las Abuelas begin the story
Stitching us to the tapestry
Weaving our fate
Into the fragile web
Gossamer threads between
Being and non-being
Betwixt between
The thin line of here
And over there
Outside time
The fires are lit
For love and
Heart’s desire
Before extinquished
In final glory
And all is well

Day of the Dead installation, KPC October 31, 2016

Photo by Jacqueline Gens

October 19, 2016

Tsegyalgar East

Another Found Poem--Gould's Sugar House

Gould’s Sugar House

I wait for Kate my therapist
Now long-time friend
To join me for brunch
At Gould’s Sugar House
On Route 2's historic Mohawk Trail
Early spring day when hardly any sap
Will flow -- for you see it takes freezing nights
And warm days to make the sap 
This peculiar cusp of no-winter
There in the rustic barn above the sugar 
House for a contemplative moment
I see all the people before me
Their music the din of restaurant
Noises, sips of coffee in anticipation of  pancakes
                           waffles, corn fritters

Each in their own vision of reality
Not touching yet together seeking
That taste of sweetness

Jacqueline Gens
Revised October 5, 2017
Highland Village
Shelburne Falls, MA