RE Slater - Proposal for Educational Reform, Part 1

A new national educational reform must take place allowing our local schools to compete on a global stage beginning with the replacement of our traditional system of mass learning with schools orientated towards occupational curriculas, local internships, self-paced programs, and earlier graduation programs beginning in the 2nd to the 4th year of high school study. It must give the desperate assistance required to the poorest and least empowered of our nation while at the same time recover our languishing middle classes slipping into the waysides of our society and becoming a mere labor force rather than an entrepreneurial workforce that is aggressive and business-minded.

It must be flexible enough to allow for the greatest expansion and the greatest opportunity for that youthful segment of our society that is most desirous of innovation and success, most impacted by our decisions, and most willing to hope great hopes of aspiration. Anything less than this is to watch our schools slide into oblivion, and our societies with it, as our educational system drains its peoples and its students of national effectiveness and God-given rights to become a trained, literate, impassioned, responsive work force and a highly functioning, interconnected, inter-dependent society of the 21st Century.

I believe we need a new type of national school system. One that will reduce the current high school and college educational programs from 4 to 3 to 2 years, and that is orientated around an occupational curricula that allows for core expansion and crossover studies. One that would allow for shortened learning cycles so that those students requiring immediate employment may find those opportunities within a school's job/career training center which may meet their more immediate personal and family needs. That schools would make available to young people a variety of occupational apprenticeships so that they may become sufficiently qualified to compete for jobs with the confidence that comes from effective training and study. It is critical that the public school system orientate itself towards an occupational curricula and remove the general academic curricula now in place. To intentionally present an earlier level of skill sets that a young person both desires and needs. To abandon its current standards of No Child Left Behind and MEAP Testing with the more practical standards of training and apprenticeship that could sit alongside that of the more academic traditional form of study.

And with the successful placement of a young person into the work force a community will soon discover improving returns both fiscally and relationally. Not only is the job market satisfied but so too will be a district's need for finances and resources. A larger tax base is being nurtured and with that comes monies to operate our schools. As it is now, the costs of educational training well into the college years and beyond is placing the nation's student population further and further from effective employment. Public education has become too expensive and the vast majority of students within our public schools and colleges are overwhelming our resources with higher tuition fees, newer taxes, and dwindling employment returns.

Statedly, America’s costs of education have become too high and its process of education has become too lengthy for the value that our nation needs at this critical time to compete against the larger, more skilled work forces being produced in countries like India and China. By restructuring academic degree programs (as well as related costs) America can produce a more efficiently trained workforce for lesser jobs not requiring the traditional path of high school and college training currently underway. Too, it will free up educational resources to concentrate upon more intensive training required by other skill sets that an individual may wish to pursue requiring longer graduation times. Not everyone requires competent knowledge in algebra 3 or organic chemistry, but this is not to say that this education should not be offered. Yet in the world of pragmatic metrics and Internet resources the job market is requiring more and more specific skill sets and less and less broad-based general educational knowledge that our traditional schools have been in the business of providing.

It is not too honest to say that the public education system, primarily the middle school and high school systems, have become outmoded and impractical. And while our community colleges have offered the highest response to occupational training I would fault major universities with creating unnecessary and time-consuming core curriculums for their 4-year degree programs. Especially in the area of post-high school remedial education in the freshman and sophomore years as they re-teach basic reading, writing, maths and sciences earlier received in a student's teen years. For some perhaps this is necessary but for many it delays graduation and ages our nation's dwindling workforce.

Not only does this system withhold America’s youth from acquiring an earlier apprenticeship but it presents a degree-competency turn-around that is imprudent. Beyond the industrial revolution’s requirements for “reading, writing and arithmetic” has now come the outcry for a more specific knowledge and skill subsets that is not readily available for job outsourcing. Today’s current four year high school programs and “college prep” curriculas are not producing the needs that our global societies are requesting. Jobs are being lost to global manufacturing and whole cities are displacing their brain trust and work forces in employment relocation efforts across America. As a nation we have lost our entrepreneurial edge in industry and it is being reflected all too well within our non-entrepreneurial educational systems.

allow occupational apprenticeships within its curricula it retards the former question at the expense of the latter's need to broadly train competent, motivated, talented individuals. It is bankrupting our educational system on many levels from support to personnel to facility/asset resources. But by acquiescing, and providing trained apprenticeships more directly into the workforce it will create a more effective community of workers who can support their school system through infrastructural supports like expanded resources (both fiscal and human), experientially and pragmatically. This would then prevent a community's network-of-neighborhoods from urban blight and regional job displacement as high schools meet the demand for specific job training and placement that capital consumerism necessarily demands.

Thus, it is important to streamline our educational system to better reflect its regional needs while balancing its global needs to compete and succeed in less understood and under-commercialized projects. To train for the frontiers of knowledge import while not neglecting to support the current markets being effectively applied. Not everyone can or should be involved in the frontiers of market creation, but it is important to keep a community fiscally solvent enough so that it can determine its own destiny through work placement and market support.

To this I would begin an educational list that would summarize these initiatives:

1  Create high school (and college) degree programs of 2, 3, and 4 years, as pertaining to the subject area of expertise required while removing any graduation requirement barriers thusly.

1b Allow for a mixture of curricular degree programs of choice (cross-over majors) as well as a mixture of curricular and academic programs should future college training be sought.

2  Remove all state core requirements and infuse "elective majors" beginning in 7th, 8th, and 9th grades with concentrations in:

• Engineering and Technology
• Medical Sciences and Services
• Business and Finance
• Specific Trades School (Design, Construction, Aircraft Maintenance, etc)
• The Arts and Humanities (Music, Theatre, Dance)

3  Provide earlier apprenticeship programs in middle school and high school and remove unnecessary core competency requirements.

3b Expect to place youth into the workforce more rapidly while recognizing that not all students have the same interests, talents or abilities. And that some may require more training than others regarding their elective choices and talents.

4  Elevate middle school requirements to incorporate the basic academic curricula of the early high school years (place 9th/10th grade basics into the 6th through 8th grades).

5  Reduce college term lengths from 4 to 3 to 2 years by removing unnecessary/repetitive class and remedial educational requirements that major universities currently undertake in the freshman and sophomore years.

6  Provide for more pervasive online instruction but not so as to displace the traditional teacher role with simply “teacher-mentors”. Personal instruction is still invaluable to the overall success of any student's mentoring process.

7  Do not neglect to give early instruction and appreciation for differing cultures and faiths that successful global communications will require in business and networking.

8  Privatize public schools for better community management and development (as versus the slower, less effective, less nimble, state and federal educational systems now in place).

9  Virtualize school boundaries with a pay-in system for non-district students through Internet resourcing.

Concluding Observations

The public education of the 1930's that offered assembly-line models of mass learning is effectively broken and must re-engage its consumer base. A nationalized education system retards effective entrepreneurial market development, is slower to respond, and more costly to retain than a regionally-driven educational model.

America must be able to compete in the 21st Century and cannot with its outmoded, ineffective and obsolete public school educational system. Teens need viable job choices by 16 and 17 years of age and it is in the best economic interests of the US to graduate their kids within occupational program studies.

By not capitalizing on differentiating a study program's majors until a kid's sophomore or junior college term we are creating enormous costs on our school systems and on our society at-large. Nor can we compete against India and China’s educational mills with their larger population resources. We must train earlier and more efficiently than ever before and cannot be satisfied in placing our students into the workforce at 22-25 years of age. We have to lower that age group beginning with 16-17 years of age and more effectively train those who decide to remain within it.

In the most sublime sense, it is time and money that we compete most against. Not against other nations or their economies. For it is time that equates to opportunity and money that equates to the seizure of those opportunities. To demand that the national student population be equally competent with one another is to drive down all our students to the most basic, minimal level of education. And to restrict early graduation is to prevent the help and assistance that a younger apprenticeship work force could lend to their supporting community.

One could go on and on with this type of reasoning but it is enough to say that our public schools must radically reform and essentially disappear as ineffective and outmoded operations. The time is now for clear, decisive, chaotic reform to begin.

R.E. Slater, February 2011

R.E. Slater - Retelling the Story of Young Men and Fire (a short story and poems)

Retelling the Story

of Young Men and Fire

by R.E. Slater

Now we enter into a different kind of world, a world of slow time that accompanies grief and personal sorrow upon an inaccessible mountain marked by concrete stations of the cross. It is all that remains from the many erosions of wintry rains, snowy melts, and the slippery slides that have washed away the lonely ashes of Mann Gulch’s fiery deaths on a late summer's afternoon 0n August 5, 1949. What dramatic, devastating forces coincided to make the best of our young men as solitary, ashy bodies, burnt beyond recognition to be left unexplained in the mysteries of grief and pain? What memories ran through these young men as they raced for their lives against a fast-moving wall of heat leaving only loved ones behind to explain their catastrophe - how it came to be, the fatal choices they would make, and how it led them to their untimely deaths? How do we, as outside witnesses, transform this catastrophe into the measured grains of consolation so that we are no longer left with sorrow's tragedy? For too many times have we been held silent in our witness to death's unhallowed canvas that would prevent us from voicing our anger. Our disappointments. Or not permitted to voice out loud by a friend's mere presence or society's standards. Leaving us only with the feelings of emptiness, bereavement, deep loss, and sorrowing pain.

Dare we write this tragic story knowing that it is possible there may be no ending that can offer us consolation or absolution? That those connected with this ending may wish it lost forever in the strands of time? Lost from public inspection. Lost from scrutiny. Lost even to failing memory? But perhaps there may be an ending that can be told based upon a storyteller’s faith in seeking its truth, and in the seeking uncover its dramatic ending, so that it could be filled with a story that honors the dead. That might atone for their sufferings while adding to our own understanding at the plight these poor unfortunates found themselves cast upon on a fateful day as they raced for a hilltop that never would come. A day that when it comes would teach us immeasurable lessons through personal lost and horror.

For it was on the Missouri River, in the harshest wildlands of western Montana, that we enter into a survey of the universe’s most basic elements at work. To there discover the heavy winds of a stormy sky flowing unimpeded across the length of a mighty river’s wend till met by undaunted rocky ridges uplifted against shearing mountain cliffs. Cliffs that would cleave those winds into a dozen different down drafts flung off from the white-capped river waters far below to race headlong into unfamiliar gullies and mingling canyons, wild and alone. And there, churn into the deadly gases of hot furnace winds and towering walls of fire that would meet innocent boys intent on controlling its building rage. And though the element of water could not be used high up on those lost ridges, nor would the roiling skies above allow but one drop from its depleted rainstorms, it was here we find the willowy ranks of young men cast between the ages of 17 and 24 who would begin the hard work of flanking their relentless opponent. Who willingly shouldered their heavy iron shovels, the two-man whiplash of buck-toothed timber saws, and the fireman's resourceful Pulaski, that would soon be used to scour the earth to create the hard-won fire lines and many numerous fire breaks necessary to control a fire's rage hungry for the fuel of scrub and fallen limbs.

Bringing us to see yet another element in play here - that of the human spirit - adventurous, iron-willed, courageous, hopeful, as ever can be found in the youthful ranks of young men come of age as smokejumpers, themselves fearless and alone. Whose very lives would very soon be measured in mere minutes and seconds. Not in the days and weeks that they had once come to expect as a spreading wildfire danced through timber-dry conditions upon heavy, cleaving winds towards young men caught unawares of the seething, boiling firestorm brewing on the far slopes down below. A blowup that would shortly race through the hot, simmering canyonland, eating through its scrub and hillock as if its very walls had been set to act as a flinty chimney flue formed eons before to release its rage. Here then will we find the conflagration of five of the most basic elements of the universe - earth, wind, fire, water, and spirit - all combined in one intent and to one end.... That of the death and destruction, and imperiled will and survival, of fifteen brave young men caught unawares in a race only noble hearts may run and lose.

And so it is the task of the storyteller to search for a story that may at times not take on the form of a written work of art when remembering those spare remnant moments of life left to some tragic few. And yet it is left to him or her to uncover what a life may mean when measured out in the short arcs of pathos and struggle as it marches steady onwards towards certain death against a springtime of limericks and lyrics that would make up most of who we are, and what we have, and would have been. Is it too much to ask then of a past depleted life when inspecting his or her earlier moments lived, that it give back to us some sense of life’s final shape and design? Perhaps as proof that we inhabit a world of sublime truth fraught within a chaotic order seemingly found everywhere around and burgeoning with its insanities, sufferings and pains? That within this dark disorder we may come to find lives other-than-our-own that once sought for singular artistic expression that would draw on a mightier canvas when coloured in by life's deeper brush strokes of meanings and shades of intent? That could perhaps give significance to our meager lives when asking - or answering - the questions of “Who we are." "What we are." And the all-important, "Why we are?"

And if there is such a story it will take something of a storyteller to find it, to imagine it, to hear what impulses drove these young men to fight a raging fire that would very shortly turn into their own personal stories of travesty blown up with unimagined ferocity and astonishing quickness. And there perhaps find, within this tragedy, its further end-story that has lied within the bones of their ashes silently uncomposed and decomposing. He should probably be an old storyteller... at least one who is old enough to know that the problem of identity is always a problem and not just a problem of youth. And even old enough to know that the nearest anyone can ever come to finding himself at any given age is to find a story that somehow tells him about himself. What drives him. What keeps him in place. What moves his inmost being towards truth and unseen hidden beauty. For it is in the world of slow-time, beset by death and grief, that truth and art may be found as one element in the most ancient expressions of mankind's corporeal humanity. Of the what, and the why, and the who, that we are. And to which we owe our breath and existence to as we each one move in our own slow-time and steady beat towards life's finality and completion. This then is the art and the craft of the storyteller forever bound with his few salient readers in somber journey's discovery of life's ancient rhymes and prismatic mysteries considered all-the-more divine when wrapped in humanities greatest of struggles... that of fearlessness, desperation and survival.

- Adapted by R.E. Slater

December 23, 2010
rev. April 6, 2012

from Norman Maclean’s (c. 1902-1990) story,

"Young Men & Fire," Chicago Press, 1992 (pp 142-146)

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

One of thirteen Stations of the Cross

A rescue ridge too far

Two unlikely survivors who were the youngest and most inexperienced, who had raced from behind

their fellow firefighters in a maddening dash for life itself. One of the two leads the rescue team out

from Mann Gulch while the other gazes back upon the fire's horrific ravages from 12 hours before

when caught in a massive conflagration uniting all fires into one deadly cauldron.

Smokejumpers parachuting down upon a forest fire

Mann Gulch boiling in the summer airs

After reading Norman Maclean's studied tragedy of a fated crew of Smokejumpers stationed in Missoula, Montana, I knew that I must write a poem about the very thing of fire itself - but not simply of fire, but of the God of fire that speaks through holy flames to so fragile a creation formed from the bowels of mother earth in the sublimest of terms. And when I had completed this task I knew immediately that I must then write a second, much longer poem about the Mann Gulch tragedy itself so that my earlier poem could be better understood when framed in the blood, sweat, and tears of a hallowed firefighter crew's misfortune. My reasoning went along the lines of how does one write of the God of creation and expect readers to understand this God of whom you write unless it be through the flared nostrils and terrified breaths of those who have come close to the hand of God and suffered terrible tragedy? Then, and then only, did I feel that my initial poem could better reflect the inspiration that had so fully overwhelmed me when first connecting the two subject matters together as one. And in the process I had hoped to provide a final ending to those unfortunates lives that might live on with us today in some sense of poetic reflection. That reminds us of the many men and women who dedicate themselves each fire season protecting lives and properties, woods and streams, parklands and wildlife. Who have committed themselves to so deadly an occupation against the whims of so fickled a foe.

And so, when in the process of completing this secondary poem I found that I had to stop and lay down my pen for a time overcome by this horrific topic's brutish subject. I wanted to approach these young lives with a deftness of sympathy and heroism that it required as an ode to their human spirit of perseverance.  Moreover, a holistic ending needed to be found that was unlike its parts, but born from its parts, that might provide an adequate capstone of homage and requiem. Since then I have stayed away for nearly a year having not thought too much about this subject matter, allowing it to rest unresolved in my mind and heart like the furrowed gravesites that lie deeply silent in the tawny bunchgrass on a faraway hillside in Western Montana as I searched for answers that may not come. Amongst markers gathered in their solitary clusters keeping nightly watch beneath the starry heavens looking down from their evening wonders to behold the untold ruins of brave men resting as undaunted testaments to mankind's brave will forged within the hot kilns of creation's holy flames and pungent altars. Altars that no more rest than do our searching hearts, seeking acceptable sacrifices that only time eternal may someday provide as we cannot, bowed before our heavy offerings, made by human hands, broken and tearfully clasped. For no other offerings are so dear as those who are taken from us, whom we are helpless to aide in their suffering, except to give homage in lasting memorial to future generations of firefighters better equipped and trained through remembrance of the hard lessons of those who have gone on before. Courageous lives. Full lives. Lives ended too soon. That lead the way for those who survive that follow after behind their fire lines, and smoky trails, hearing upon our ear last calls echoing to one another against a tangled wilderness distantly crying "All's well."

- R.E. Slater

February 1, 2012
rev. April 6, 2012

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

The winged statue of victory stands in front of smoke from fires in the village of ancient Olympia,

near the birthplace of the Olympic games, in south-west Greece. A huge effort by firefighters,

water-dropping aircraft, and fire trucks, succeeded in keeping a raging blaze away from the

2,800-year-old site - the holiest sanctuary in ancient Greece.

An Unfinished Poem

Excerpt: Opening Lines

by R.E. Slater

Pray thee dark fire angels burning bright

Didst thou enter into redemption’s night
When glimpsing too soon creation’s fires
Then fell from earth in fervent rejoice?

At seeing the black heavens hotly ablaze
Roaring in ancient flames of heat and haze
Seething fiery whirls of immortal breath
Alit the turbulent winds of righteousness?

And didst the hot flames lure thy fearing tred
Overwhelming thy heart by jealous desire
Whilst racing to see stunning glories dred
Shaking the foundations in furious might?

And was it thy glad heart that joyfully leapt
Blazing hot from within thy bursting soul
Beholding Almighty’s hidden glories wept
Bowing rocks and hills in terrible flames?

Whose burning presence measures breath
Bringing all mortal works to ashes and ruin
Swirling His fires of destruction upon mortal sin
Destroying the days and nights of all living flesh?

.
.
.

- R.E. Slater

January 2011

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

RE Slater - The Concept of Justice

November saw me writing again but not like I had been the year before when I was hungry to write and felt more highly creative.  And yet, during the past months, I have added several new poems, though my main task had been to re-read and edit my finished poems after having printed them into a singular collection back in June. Currently I have read or edited the first third of my poems but have so many more to read and consider that I believe it will take another year or two while writing and developing newer poems during this same time period. Moreover, time and distance has allowed me a more dispassionate review of my work, as I consider (i) whether the material is "readable" and "understandable"; (ii) whether the themes have gotten lost in the words; and, (iii) whether the style or "synchronistic beat" of the verse is how it was intended to be.  Ideally, I do not wish to re-write any of these older poems, but some seem so awkward as to require another editorial visit before leaving them in a final, more publishable form.

Most recently I have been working on a single ode these past several months that has driven me to distraction. I cannot seem to find its voice. What is written has become too preachy, too strident. Many times I have thought about deleting the entire verse and walking away from it. It has become one of my least favorites poems after having promised so much when I first set about composing it. It's entitled "Behold The Ruins of Athens" which was an altogether original title for me until I looked it up after completing it to find George Hill's magnificent piece. Ah well, at least it was original in thought and production, making me glad that I had composed it first before seeing Mr. Hill's most excellent work.

In summary, "Athens" consists of two pages, and though short, it's subject matter felt quite dense and complex; refused to simplify itself; and demanded that the reader read slow down enough to think through the word pictures and ideas presented within its narrative in constructive, thoughtful, fashion.  In hindsight I had thought about pulling this poem apart and re-composing one or two of its major ideas, but instead plowed on to put all my emotions and thoughts into tightly constructed phrases while hoping for the best.

And because "Athens" is so blunt and massive in its structure I finally decided on reconstructing it through the course of several drafts, wishing to slow the reader down to hear what I was trying to say.  Thus, the poem's original form was in 2x6 line meter which I indented every second line.  But the lines were overlong like my "Stars and Moon" piece and so, after three months of re-writing it ad-nauseam I decided on an entirely new poetic verse structure.  At first I tried a simple 4-verse meter to replace every two lines of the ode.  But this didn't work and served to "mudge up" its flow and rhythm.  Next I tried doubling the 6-line meter into an extended 12-verse format. This I liked a lot but then I modified it again by adding a tabbed indentation to every second line and that seemed to do the trick. It slowed the reader down just enough to consider the words while not overwhelming the voice and rhythm of the poetic ode. In fact, it seemed to "stretch out" the complex of ideas that it holds while "simplifying" the poetic ode overall.

These changes further necessitated a re-composition of several other related odes  each as similar in thematic tone and structure. And eventually, because of their similar voices and contents I placed them all together, side-by-side,  under a new chapter-heading entitled "Of Justice, War and Anthems". Thus I have four separate pieces that address the concept of justice and our personal response-and-accountability for justice's conveyance within society each day of our lives. Where these emotions came from I'm not sure - maybe from acts of injustice I saw as a youth, or perhaps from my reading of the Christian bible, especially in the historical sections of the Old Testament. But whatever the reasonings, I have attempted to recall those early formative and raw emotions into these poetic sections as imperative catalysts for acts of justice to be committed in the world today.

As a child, the unfolding drama of the American/Vietnam War played itself out in daily black-and-white pictures through the eyes and ears of television's evening news, as it showed the horrors of war brought to both friend and foe alike. Further, the harm and devastation witnessed from civil riots and political rallies around the country created for some very intense emotions when watching or reading about young people dying in clashes with police, seeing the hippie movement's disgust with society at-large, and beholding intense racial clashes over segregation. This came home all the more when saying goodbye to dad as he went out into these civil disturbances as a policeman dressed in full riot gear as a former Korean War veteran.

Generally (and perhaps idealistically) as free societies, we must  actively advocate living peaceably with one another regardless of our differences; seeking and praying for peace and goodwill among men daily, especially during times of hatred, misunderstanding, and unrest; siding with victims of injustice harassed or harmed by societal fears and ignorance; and in everything determine to show love and support to everyone we meet through open and honest communications, fair trade, tolerance, mercy, and forbearance with one another.  Free societies demand no less a commitment and no higher a calling. We are called to bring peace to all, seek justice for all, and to serve the exquisite riches of liberty, democracy, and honor as equal recipients of humanity's burden and privilege.

The concept of justice is so plain a concept to understand - and so quick a feeling of empathy to arise within us - when couched in cultural or national tones of prejudice and hate. And though we may think we might understand its meaning, it isn't until we are personally confronted by injustices that what we believe is only then truly enacted into acts of real justice. Where individuals are disparaged, harmed, murdered, persecuted or oppressed, than our hearts - our very emotions - must become intolerant towards the purveyors of those atrocities. Whether committed by bullies, or gangs, or overlords; whether despots or tyrants; if "peace and goodwill" are terms brutally ignored then "acts of justice" will never be a societal, nor a personal commitment, to restoring its abuses and neglects.

Because of this, I've created my poetic odes to be more warlike, more strident, as "drumbeats" to a nation's heart desiring peace and goodwill among men.  They speak to justice when love seems to have failed, and they show very little toleration for those evil men and women who cruelly harm others. Likewise, the Christian bible is very clear how important the compact of justice is between individuals and societies. That there is very little room for denying its observation of human rights when those rights are either casually or violently ignored in both moral and ethical tones by individuals and human institutions, from local to international levels.  For the very concept of justice and love intermingle each with the other. More simply said, "Justice is love outwardly shown, while love is Justice inwardly found. They are one and the same."

And so, in some small way I hope that my poetic creations continue to preach the values of justice and love as I've written them without apology for the strong language and imperatives used. I wished for them to be independent voices to all men everywhere who strive towards a supremely human humanity. To be moral and ethical with one another. To seek the virtues of Love and Justice. To decry acts of inhumanity. To seek the humanness of man in  his every act of vice and virtue. It is sometimes said that man is but brute beast, yet at his most human when just and loving. Conversely, when man is not just and loving, than truly he is but merely a brute beast worthy of extinction, ruin and judgment.


R.E. Slater
November 2010

Dilemmas and Choices, Tiredness and Task

Early February 2010 has found me pressed by some kind of personal spiritual warfare which has become deeply besetting to my task at hand of writing finely and conscientiously. With it came time and money concerns that are ever my old nemesis and bearers of bad news. But on the upside, I received an unlooked-for invitation to a college luncheon to meet the university president and while there hope to speak to a professor I've long been considering to discuss a book project I have in mind. And whether he would be personally interested in collaborating on it with me. It'll take a year or so to write but I already have the notes completed and am guessing its length at about 250 pages, maybe 300 with footnotes, appendices and diagrams.  I could probably write this in a couple of weeks but am thinking that a schedule of one month per chapter theme may be a more reasonable goal. But before attending to this task however I would like to finish my remaining poetry sets that I've roughed out for completion. I expect that to be yet another year in the making. And so, time, time, time. So fickled, so pressing, so withdrawing and never friend.

Currently I'm finishing up a large body of poetic pieces which will take me through most of this year I believe.  And I've yet to find a publicist who could help me market my material successfully when I get these completed. It probably would help if I would look but it seems a large and disappointing task ahead of me at the moment.  I started writing for myself the last two years and believe that what I've written will inspire many who would read my material on a number of different levels and in a number of different areas of their life. Generally, I've written what I deem to be popular poetry and not cryptic poetry for every age - having written some pieces for kids and other pieces for adults; some for holidays, others for events; some for life stages and others for momentous times.  If anything, I wish I had more years to expand each select area I've written about, embellishing each area with more similar themes; especially fun/practical/whimsical pieces for kids and adults who are still exhilarating in their childhood at whatever age they may be.

Currently, I'm stuck in the middle of a prose piece which is atypically long (about 15pp) and grasping for clarity and direction. I call it "The Tapestry".  It's completely written through its first four sections but I intend to re-write parts of each as well as to add additional sections to it while re-orientating it away from the first half's western mindset couched in dualistic/dichotomous terms towards an eastern dualism focusing on the balance and harmony of the first half's themes.  It may then consist of two parts dealing with the same/similar subject matter but written paradoxically showing two sides of the same coin, as it were.  All of it couched in a storyline of mystery and "aha" moments.  Upon completion, it'll be the third piece complimenting two other pieces ("Stars and Moon," "Celtic Nights") which I've written, each as different in subject material and style as from the other, but forming a neat trilogy that I had never expected and only saw belatedly during their development.

This current prose piece is a dark read about fate and destiny, sovereignty and free will, determinism and choice couched in mythic Egyptian symbolism using Genesis as an overlay. The other two pieces deal with several other biblical themes of eschatology, harmatology and soteriology while utilizing either old English folklore or Celtic tones, and each set in allegorical or biblical parable format.  They are fun reads (esp. alone in the dark) and may mimic Edgar Allen Poe a little bit - but never as cleverly as he had done!! Beyond that, they require a bit more thinking amongst them and do not simply serve as idle tales in-and-of themselves for mere thrill.

However, between daily obstacles, demands, and necessities, I've found these past weeks a difficult run and it would be nice to find some funding and an office or cottage somewhere from which I may daily write that could produce inspiration to my weary soul, and that without interruption and with considered focus. It's hard to be creative when pressed by so much, and its hard to write everyday when I'm stretched by so many personal demands. Still, even when I don't feel like writing I've found that once I sit down to attend to the task at hand, that words and ideas will flow out from me, along with lots and lots of new material that someday I hope to develop. Which is all well and good, I suppose, but my frustration lies in the fact that I have so much to write about and constantly fight for the time to do this ungrateful, unending, undying task so well while so finely misunderstood and slighted by my fellow companions ignorant of its possible consequences and blessings. Its as perplexing some days as my would-be allegories.

As always,

Peace

RE Slater

February 9, 2010


Addendum

I did meet with the professor above and had a delightful time discovering an old friend made ever more close because of a common mentor and teacher each of us had studied under but at separate times. The bond was encouraging and his help both welcomed and professional as much as it was warm and personal. I couldn't have been more happy at this discovery. Now for ability and strength to begin this belated task of some 25+ years in the making.

First Christmas Update

I unfortunately got sidetracked by a commercial project the past 30 days and lost time writing.  Given the choice I'd rather have been writing but probably could've used the break... so I'm going with it.  A week ago or so I spent rearranging my titles list into a possible content structure and finished Flagpole Days, Autumn Harvest, Solitude, my Swahili poem, added a Carmina, tried to rewrite Hiawatha failing to find the rhythm or tone I wanted, and rewrote Painted Rooms again.

Looking forward, I have at least a dozen or so roughed-out poems I'd like to finish including four or five that are interconnected to a common theme, along with two legendary tales (one's quite lengthy).  I had hoped to get all of them done before Christmas and to book-bind them for my folks and family but can see now it'll be somewhere between March and July by the time I finish these.

It also seems that my creativity period has dried up as I search for better ways to express myself.  I'm going to take some time off to read a novel or two, and finish some other projects I have to do; maybe pick at things as I go along just to keep my hand in the task of writing and not get too far away from it lest I come to a stop altogether.  It's been a long 12 months.

My goal was a hundred pieces and I'm at 58 with 10-12 to go, making it 68-70.  I also have six completed short stories and another six I need to rewrite.  And then I have one very lengthy sports story I wrote a year ago which needs to be re-written in a different voice, as well as a theology book I've started.  But each time I do I get some personal disaster which pulls me away from it (which seems highly coincidental to me, as it's been a several year pattern ongoing).

My theology book consists of two major sections of 10-12 chapters each.  The first section is a teaching section and the second section reviews each previous chapter integrating them with one another.  I'm tracing major thematic elements between the testaments and tying them together to help simplify reading the Christian bible from its vast theological complexity.  It's mainly for my son and daughter as a biblical theological premier (not systematics theology but biblical theology).  Once it's written I have a theological professor in mind whom I wish to contact who teaches and thinks in the style as my beloved friend, and now deceased professor, Carl B. Hoch.  With his input I hope to remove inaccuracies and update it generally from someone much closer to the material than I currently am.

Overall, I like writing short stories, but I prefer the poetry format better because of all the many varieties that it allows for personal expression, creating new words and ideas, tone, coloring, shading, everything!  Sooo, I think I made a good start even though I'm short by 30 pieces, but its still enough to judge where I'm at and see if its any good (my general impression is that they each need a rewrite to sharpen up their tone and focus and readability) and whether they might stand up to reader interest or not.  I haven't tried a Shakespearan sonnet and would like to try that someday just to see if I can.  But with Flagpole Days I did try a running sentence broken into 12 verse sections and am quite pleased with its lilt and composition.  The thought occurred as I was listening to Mozart's Requiem which gave me the idea of seeing how many rounds/voices could be put into a musical piece and still get one overarching theme... I think he got up to 14 competing rounds/voices making for one massive sound which is exquisite to the ear held in rapture.

At this point I should probably find some outside opinions and a publisher to see what's next, though generally I find this a distasteful task and would rather not.  My knowledge of critics tells me to beware overvaluing their opinions... John Keats is a good example of perserverance by following heart/pen while allowing the task itself to resolve any future readership.  Too, I've only ever have written for me and my kids, but from the several people who have read them I think I should share them as they are generally liked, though I care not about this but whether they might add thought and contemplation as I speak my soul.  I do worry about how personal they are, but I'm sure every poet does. They are myself unsheathed as I can allow that task, and a reader will either like them or not. I cannot be anything less than myself and can only speak of what I hear and wish to write against the streams of humanity that sings its own songs alongside mine own.

RE Slater

December 10, 2009

Finding My Voice

Since last October of 2008 I have written as much as I have had time to - mostly poetry but a few short stories as well.  Through this process I have written what has been most important to me from years past but have known that these pieces would be a "developmental record" of my progress as a new writer formally seeking his own words and styles and thoughts.  I have consciously known that it will take some time for me to develop my writing style and have recently come upon a phrase most apt in describing my progress - that of "finding my own voice" as a poet and as a writer.  Too much of my style feels like it is narrative (though it isn't) and I should like to step back from that as much as I can, and perhaps read some poets to catch their style and help me in mine own more quickly.  But on this point I still refuse to read other poets so as to keep my words and thoughts fresh and essentially mine own and not theirs.  But lacking formal writing classes these past poets and writers may be of help to me and so, I shall intend to briefly explore some styles which appeal to me and my style, without straying too long in anyone matter for I still wish for my material to be fresh and original.

It is now mid-October of 2009 and I continue to push out at least one to three documents a week along with my other duties and commitments as husband, father, dutiful son, son-in-law, consultant, community services and so on.  Thus, I have many half-written pieces which I wish to go back and complete as newer pieces continue to cross my mind and heart - all of which takes time away from my effort in finishing my original drafts.  And since I do not wish to lose these creative moments, I try to capture them while attempting to finish my rough drafts as well.  This is proving to be a hard process which can easily overwhelm me amid the vicissitudes of life.

I also have a theology paper I wish to write up as a book and have started this task as well (again).  But each time that I have made a major attack to get it properly going I seem to experience some little personally upheaval in my life.  The thought has crossed my mine that it is not unlike being prevented by the devil because of the severity of these roadblocks.  But, I do not think my words are so important that they haven't been said before and require any devil for prevention.  However, it has been a very odd and coincidental experience.

The book itself is to be written in 2-parts - the subject matter itself and then the integration of those subjects with one another.  This project will encompass the dozen-or-so major themes of the bible (sic, pertaining to "biblical theology" not "systematic theology"... this is a BIG difference) as they cross between the testaments and are integrated with one another.  This subject was a major part of my training in college and later seminary, and I should've pursued a PhD in biblical studies on this but did not.  I had neither the money nor the will to study any further, being somewhat exhausted after years of study and needing to work.  But my boy has shown an interest in biblical knowledge and perhaps my primer could be useful both to him, his friends and any young would-be Christian theologs wishing guidance in thematic matters.  At least that is my hope.

And so, I have been tragically stopped again and am writing of more practical experiences and observations from my personal life into my poems and trying to mix my training with my writings.  Perhaps these "lesser" poetic pieces will be of more aide in the long run to the general reading public than a large stuffy book filled with important "theological" subject matter.  At least that is my hope and one of my purposes in writing... to get God into the details of life, including my own, failings and all, in as many ways as I can be creative and "non-Christian" about it.

RE Slater
October 28, 2009

Sylvia Plath - The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky --
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.

by Sylvia Plath




 

Sylvia Plath - Years

 

 

 

 

They enter as animals from the outer

Space of holly where spikes
Are not thoughts I turn on, like a Yogi,
But greenness, darkness so pure
They freeze and are.

O God, I am not like you
In your vacuous black,
Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti.
Eternity bores me,
I never wanted it.

What I love is
The piston in motion . . .
My soul dies before it.
And the hooves of the horses,
There merciless churn.

And you, great Stasis . . .
What is so great in that!
Is it a tiger this year, this roar at the door?
It is a Christus,
The awful God-bit in him.

Dying to fly and be done with it?
The blood berries are themselves,
They are very still.
The hooves will not have it,
In blue distance the pistons hiss.

by Sylvia Plath

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sylvia Plath - The Colossus

 

 

 

"I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind.

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing."

by Sylvia Plath

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Anniversary! Journeys of a Would-Be Poet

Dolan's pub (Limerick, Ireland) - Irish Traditional Music Session

July 7, 2015

The Monahan Twig; John In The Mist

Apr 25, 2021

Aspirations of a Would-Be Poet

by R.E. Slater

October 6, 2009

Thanks to a local group of Celtic musicians I stumbled upon last evening I have been able to re-imagine and complete a new set of verses today to add to a growing portfolio; this time writing of a Brigadoon-like experience through the greater length of today. Now for some rest after a long day of writing. My mind and hands are tired. I will take the rest of the week to firm up the edges of this new poem and refine it to make it more clear and more readable.

Last week I finished a personal narrative I had started working on in April as an all-too-common experience in my childhood. It starts out as a simple story but gathers additional layers of meaning as I add more thoughts and details to what at first seems a plain homily. I intend to add it to a selection of other personal narratives which will flesh each other out and perhaps provide historical relevance for the times I am writing about.

Otherwise, I spent one day simply re-organizing my stories in relation to one another and setting them into slip-case books which I can manage should I need to re-arrange them again. I retitled each book and can better find each written verse in compendium to one another. While doing this I found several poems which needed a word here or there, an adverb, a verb, a pronoun in re-reading them in a fresh light gained by distance away from these pieces. Without these additions they felt awkward to me and/or incomplete to the theme(s) I had intended. Even though I keep telling myself to refrain from overmuch editing at this point - that they are what they are and should now be left alone.

I should also add that I started on a short story and added a poem to it which is now completed even though the story isn't. I've also added some pictures to this story to help give it a more readable symmetry in describing what I was seeing. I think many readers will be better able to visualize what I'm writing about through the usage of these photos. Because of this, I may wish to add personal photo stock selectively to several previously written stories to help enliven their pages as well. Further, there is a collection of poems I'm writing as one complete set which will be related to this newest story either directly or indirectly. To date it consists of 4-6 pages contained in 4 sections and may grow by a couple more pages into another narrative homily that I wish to relate since my childhood stood so vastly different from many my age.

Apart from personal narratives I have tried to write descriptively in various styles and, have another 30 or so poems roughed out in various stages of completion. Either as legends or tales, allegories or interpretive parables, sonnets or songs, etc. When these are completed I should like to try my hand at more irregular lyrical poetry and break away from the symmetry I've produced in the first year of my experience. Which, by the way, had begun in the month of October of last year... so this then is my first anniversary of writing. I've come a long way but have so much more to write about and hope to have the chance to complete what I've started and intend to finish.

Anyway, unlike my first set of 100 poems, I think I'll need to read some poets in order to be able to copy their styles since their styles are so foreign from my mindset. I may be a year away from actually beginning this task since I am not finished with my current set of tasks.

But afterwards when I am done I should then like to try something remarkably different and foreign to my mind and ear. I think Dylan Thomas may be a good example to me however I do not like his rambling verse which seems to lose its meaning over the distance of time. So, should I chose to go this route, I'll try not to ramble and try as best I can to keep it relevant despite the movement of culture, era and language away from my era. This will be hard to do I think but good poets can keep their relevancy for the most part. Since I do not expect readers to be historical anthropologists and culturally literate I will try to write about our common condition and not so specifically as to lose its translation. At least that is my hope.

I can tell that I have been rambling because I am so tired but I thought to put these several lists together to remind myself of my journey and possible future goals.  Forgive me and apologies and good night.

RE Slater

October 6, 2009

End Note (June 25, 2021). I have no idea what I was talking about when mentioning Dylan Thomas years ago! I love his poetry. Love it! - re slater 

My Writing Progress Thus Far

I would like to say at the onset that I reserve the right to ramble in these blogs and not have to think about how I'm going to say something. More simply, my blogs are not how I write but a form of personal communication about what I am doing. Thanks for allowing me this unstructured pleasure.

As earlier mentioned last month, I have been working through both recent and older poems I've written and am glad I have. Many were in serious need of editing after reviewing them. Maybe because I'm becoming less rusty at writing or because I can better critique my past writings. Whatever it is, I find that this has become a necessary task once a poem has been produced and has laid in the closet for awhile simmering and aging.

For example, the Celtic poem I had written changed again when I added 4 end-verses to it. It took a cool allegory and gave it wings so that it tied all previous verses back to itself and to each other. Thus giving to the poem more flexibility and freedom.

As another example, the poem "Looking Glass" was six months old and in great need of repair and updating. After which it seemed to be able to fairly "sing" on its own. If I had not looked at it then its flaws would not have been seen.

Thus, by allowing several months or more to go by I can better re-visualize what I was trying to say originally and can more immediately see the errors within that piece. That, and the fact that my writing skills are slowly improving so that I have more ideas that I can add with a larger vocabulary and greater personal familiarity with stylistic differences.

Overall my word-pictures seem to be getting better and I am becoming more comfortable mixing my metaphors and themes in new integrated ways that provide quicker apprehension and sensual binding of the reader to the main themes.

I'm also discovering that language is very fluid because of its symbolic nature and cultural context and that to say something simply may be impossible yet the most practical and important task to work on. Succinctness and conveyance have been my greatest struggles and best rewards.

And then there is the element of meter; I had one poem I had written several months ago set in the standard 4-line meter form. But however much I tried to make it work (upon re-edit) I found it simply wasn't working. And so I changed it around to 9-line meter which is irregular and offbeat in rhythm. That changed made the entire poem so much better I couldn't believe it! Who would've thought?! By allowing it to speak to me on its own terms instead of on my own terms, and by learning to listening to it rather than forcing it into something it was not for, made all the difference. Thus, I'm learning that each poem is unique and requires me to better listen to what it is trying to say.

RE Slater
September 16, 2009

Still writing

Today I wrote a poem of 8 lines in 10 stanzas and kept it as sparse as I could. Played around with the elements, tones and colors on this one.

A couple days ago I finished a Gaelic poem started 4 weeks ago. This was my first attempt at an allegory. I wanted it to feel like a Charlotte Bronte read on the moors. Coincidentally, it ended up thematically paralleling 2 interpretive parables written a couple months ago which are still being finalized. So I think I will group them together in their own section.

On my short list to do, I would like to work through and finalize 10 recent poems and 1 short story I've roughed out. Each unit is more-or-less completed but I like to go back and edit them after letting some time go by. They read differently to me when I do this as opposed to when I am actually writing them. For me, it helps to give an "outsider's perspective" to gauge whether they're interesting, readable, clumsy, awkward, and so on.

Several of these poems are lengthy and will be more demanding in their review. I have one that is especially long - about 12 pages; but it's a good narrative broken into 4 sections and will be fun to ramble through while thinking over the content I'm presenting.

Lastly, the past two months I've reworked several of my "finished" poems. Each of these were at least 6 months old and in need of updating. Why? It seems that the more I write, the more words and styles I have in my head which then helps me to better edit my past completed works. And since I'm so new to writing, it seems that for now I'll have to allow this habit. But over time I hope to limit myself from this type of "introspective" labor and simple let the poem pass or fail on its own merit once they are submitted to the "done" side of the ledger.

RE Slater

August 27, 2009