Backwards Spring
by Hanoch Guy
nothing happens
as planned.
Instead of spring forward
time leaps back,
cyclones rip it apart
Wheels crushed
Screws fly
sharp time shreds grabbed by kids who
live for ever
threatened by short lived adults.
Snatched by old age
Kids collect shiny
Days into seconds
time discs flatten
into thin shiny sheets
Hurled into descending darkness
and light.
Time ignores young and old
bursts out laughing*
Puts itself together
Why do you write poetry? What about the medium appeals to you?
It was not until I was a junior in high school that I discovered the charms of poetry when our lit teacher read us poems in Hebrew English and German. I did not grasp what poetry is but enjoyed just listening.
After writing short stories, I was attracted to poetry and started writing hundreds of poems. The process accelerated for a few years On the first day in Hebrew Uni, I bought five poetry books and read them every day.
By then I was totally committed. By attending lectures on Hebrew lit and world lit, I was exposed to two thousand years of poetry.
The short lines, the white spaces, and the melodic rhythm charmed me.
Poetry became my total occupation.
My love affair with poetry deepens every day and night; writing poems is still a deep discovery and and delightful.
According to Aristotle, poetry is the best words in the best order, and quality poetry has the best fitting rhythms and fascinating imagery.
I write poetry because it fits my personality and temperament.
I like to close my eyes when inspired, compose the poem in my head, and then type it
I can never imagine writing a novel.
What are your current influences? How do ideas for new writing come to you?
The symbolists VerlaIne, Rimbaud, and Beudelaire influence me in their theory and practice that we travel in a forest of symbols. I also believe that a poet should leave a mystery in each poem. I am also influenced by Wallace Stevens, Louise Gluck, by Japanese poets, and the Israeli poets Yehuda Amichai, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Avraham Halfi, and more.
The world is full of prompts ;it may bring me a flying hummingbird, an odd conversation. I find inspiration listening to music as well as in viewing paintings.
How does being bilingual influence your poetic style?
Writing in Hebrew or English is living in two separate universes. Being bilingual influences my poetry immensely. Both languages feed and enrich, both in technique and figurative devices. There is a rich and long tradition of Hebrew and English literature.
I believe languages are extremely important for an artist’s development in diction, imagery, and associations. I read French every day, Yiddish a few times a week, and a few phrases in Rilke's Duino Elegies in German.
Engaging foreign languages expands the brain’s verbal center’s plasticity.
You write a lot about nature (both outdoor nature and human nature). What is your relationship with these subjects?
I am imprinted with my childhood landscapes of ancient olive trees, watermelons, and wheat fields, fragrant tulips, anemones, and citrus orchards. The changing colors of the trees and bushes. All these are prominent in my poetry.
I am connected deeply to the creek in my backyard as well as the birds’ songs. Gorgeous and powerful scenes of Bryce and Zion emerge in my poetry as well as craters of the moon, and the fragrant flowers of Grand Teton National Parks.
Human beings are fascinating to me everyday. I like to meet everyone for the surprise awaiting me The rest of the profiles I invent.
Do you notice new directions in your poetry?
I see two contradictory changes in my recent writing. The first is that I tend to write longer poems that blur the borders between prose and poetry. The second change is writing very short poems similar to haiku.
You’ve got two new books coming out. Can you tell us a little about them?
We Pass Each Other on the Road, published by Kelsay Books, offers sixty profiles of women and men young and old that I knew or invented. The book offers readers a snapshot of their lives and struggles.
My latest book, which is currently in production, is In the company of Angels, Fools, and Donkeys. It challenges Jewish and Christian assumptions and dogma via Jewish legends, folktales, and saint stories. Sometimes these stories are entertaining; at other times, they are as irritating as donkeys' wisdom.
Where can readers find more of your work/buy your books?
Several books can be bought at Kelsay Books . Others are available at Author house.
NOKADDISH is available at Ben Yehuda Press.
All my books are available on Amazon.
Hanoch Guy, Ph.D., Ed.D., spent his childhood and youth in Israel surrounded by citrus orchards, watermelon fields, and invading sand dunes. He is a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English. Hanoch is emeritus professor of Jewish and Hebrew literature at Temple University specializing in Holocaust literature. He has mentored and taught poetry classes at the Musehouse CCenter in Philadelphia. Hanoch has published poetry extensively in the US, Israel and the UK, Greece, and Wales. His poems have been published in Genre, Poetry Newsletter, Tracks, the International Journal of Genocide Studies, Poetry Motel, Visions International, and Voices Israel, and many more, He has won awards from Poetica and the Mad Poets Society. Terra Treblinka was a finalist in the Northbook contest. He has won first prize in the Better than Starbucks Haiku Contest. His books are: The Road to Timbuktu, Travel Poems; Terra Treblinka, Poems of the Holocaust; We Pass Each Other on the Stairs, 120 Real and Imaginary Encounters; Sirocco and Scorpions, Poems of Israel and Palestine; A hawk in midflight, Haiku and Micropoems; A Green Cow, Parah Yerukah (Hebrew); Back to Terezin, Holocaust Poems; NOKADDISH, Poems in the Void; Twilight Passages, Death Poems; We Pass Each Other on the Road; In the company of Angels, Fools, and Donkeys (2022).
“Catfish” John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he works as a licensed social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured in the Philadelphia based Moonstone Poetry series, West-Chester based Livin’ on Luck, Mad Poets Society, and Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM. Find out more at: www.catfishjohnpoetry.com.