tina altman

What Inspires Me: Quote by Walt Whitman

~ tinaaltman ~ Leave a comment

This quote prefaced in Whitman’s  ‘Leaves of Grass” sings to me….

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

2017 Reading Challenge

~ tinaaltman ~ Leave a comment

Taken from the Modern Mrs Darcy website I took up the following challenge for 2017 and here is my completed list:

A book you chose for the cover:
A Vocation and a Voice: Stories by Kate Chopin

A book with a reputation for being un-put-down-able:
Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

A book set somewhere you’ve never been but would like to visit:
History of Ancient Egypt by Erik Hornung 

A book you’ve already read:
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

A juicy memoir:
Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea by Marie Munkara

A book about books or reading:
The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1918 by Arthur Quiller-Couch

A book in a genre you usually avoid:
Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descaties 

A book you don’t want to admit your dying to read:
The Feminist Manifesto by Mina Loy

A book in the backlist of a new favorite author:
Transformations by Anne Sexton

A book recommended by someone with great taste:
The Yellow Wallpaper; The Wallpaper Replies by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A book you were exited to buy or borrow but haven’t read yet:
Collected Poems: 1969-1999 by John Forbes

A book about a topic or subject you already love:
See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

Poem: Not Supposed to Be Here

~ tinaaltman ~ Leave a comment

I’m not even supposed to be here today…
Color blinded
Shoe polish stench
Confused and convoluted
Confined in Dante’s 9’s
“I assure you” intoned
“We are open” explained
Nothing quick about it
Purgatory peddler
Conversing rapidly
Fired with intellectual accuracy
Landing with culturally apt referencing
Death star corpse dance
Badly lit yet exposed
Stoner wisdom 37 in all
Free will is yours
I’m not supposed to be here today…
© T. Altman 2017

 

Poem: War explained to child

~ tinaaltman ~ 3 Comments

 

Speaking to my nephew about my father who fought in the Balkans (Albanian Forgotten War):

  

I once asked him:

“What was it like to shoot people in war?”

Sighing, shoulders slumped
Faraway eyes, swallows hard
Staring down at weathered hands
Sighing then inhaling sharply
“We didn’t know what we were shooting at –
Deep in those forests.
It was dark, damp and dank.
We all suffered.
I don’t know…”
He looks away…
We never spoke about it again.
© T. Altman 2017