Daniel J. Brick

This latest collection of poems (the fifth Anthology published) is bilingual, English-Italian, as the previous one -"We Are The Words - Siamo Parole"- and sums up the succession of books bringing us, poets of the world, onto common ground. ---The title of this collection presents us with two highly connotative words. Let us first consider the possibilities inherent in the word "WHISPER". What is experienced is of an internal nature, and the essential occasion is more likely intimate than public. Why else would the speaker reduce his voice to a whisper? It is the excessive volume we take for granted, and sometimes encourage that is being suppressed to allow this other occasion to breathe deeply of silence and calm. It offers to the willing participant something almost dream-like compared to ordinary experience... ---This "WORLD" is the arena of duties and fidelities, work and play, passions and pursuits, experience and memory, love and desire, and a host of other parallels which populate the poems we read and write. A poet can simply disappear into this World with its lures, traps, seductions, gambling, used car dealerships and department stores. Or he can frequent schools, museums, nature preserves, theaters, golf courses, bridge tournaments, church services. Or he can vanish into Nature with her cornucopia, her flora and fauna, her sounds and furies alternating with silences and calms. The poet in the World of Common Experience is just like every other human being: he can slip into a role, or he can elude all attempts to trap him. O WORLD, THY SLIPPERY TURNS, cries Shakespeare's Coriolanus... ***** Questa nuova raccolta di poesie (quinta antologia pubblicata), bilingue (Inglese-Italiano) come la precedente, e riassume la successione di libri che ci ha portati -noi poeti del mondo- su un terreno comune. ---Il titolo di questa raccolta ci presenta due parole altamente suggestive. Consideriamo prima ci che insito nel termine "Sussurro". Ci che esso manifesta ha una natura pi riservata e l'occasione essenziale pi probabilmente intima, non pubblica. Perch altrimenti si dovrebbe ridurre la voce ad un sussurro? Ma di fatto viviamo in un eccesso di volume sonoro ambientale e, talvolta, vorremmo che venisse soppresso per permettere a quest'altra occasione di respirare profondamente il silenzio e la calma, quasi per gustare una sensazione simil onirica.. ---Questo "MONDO" l'arena dei doveri e delle fedelt , del lavoro e del gioco, delle passioni e delle ricerche, dell'esperienza e della memoria, dell'amore e del desiderio, pi una miriade di altri paralleli che popolano le poesie che leggiamo e scriviamo. Un poeta pu semplicemente scomparire dentro questo Mondo, con le sue esche, trappole, seduzioni, giochi d'azzardo, concessionarie di auto usate e grandi magazzini. Oppure pu frequentare scuole, musei, riserve naturali, teatri, campi da golf, tornei di bridge, funzioni religiose. O magari pu svanire nella natura con la sua cornucopia, la sua flora e fauna, i suoi suoni e furori che si alternano ai silenzi e alla tranquillit . Il poeta nel Mondo della Comune Esperienza proprio come ogni altro essere umano: si pu calare in un ruolo, oppure pu sfuggire tutti i tentativi di intrappolarlo. "Oh Mondo, ti fai sdrucciolevole", si lamenta il Coriolano di Shakespeare...

Nature is wild and eagles and wolves will never be lovers. But certainly Poetry can overcome every obstacle and translates our dreams, desires, passions, .. in images that evoke even a new, different Universe It fulfills the very nature of poetry that we 7 poets publish our poems in a common anthology and witness how these diverse poems reflect each other, relate to each other, amplify each other This Anthology of Poetry collects 72 poems from 7 Authors living in 7 different Countries of the World. As Fabrizio Frosini puts it: When I first proposed this idea for a book to my Minnesotan friend Daniel Brick, we decided together to open it to other "voices of poetry" from different parts of our troubled world. Maybe we put it a bit too emphatically, like "voices of poetry conveying the joy of creativity," to point out the real issues of human passions mediated through poetry. Yet, Poetry is a sum of hope and despair. It is a sum of wishes, hopes, dreams, inspirations, wanderings on the wings of Imagination. It is a long flight our hearts and minds took, revisiting reality, memories, expectations. Life itself is revisited through the multicolored glasses of poetry. As Dylan Thomas wrote: "These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man" and, I add, they are written out of the joy of creativity, even when created in the darkest moments of despairing depression. Everyone who reads our poetry enters our own Universe -even if for a while. Through Poetry, we all -Authors and Readers- are in touch.

By way of introduction to this collection of the planet's poetry, I have highlighted four GEMS OF POETRY to share with our readers. Each of these gems shines its own light on the publication from DJB's introduction].. Come & join us and you'll discover what these gems are..This is the second Anthology of Poetry, after "At The Crossing Of Seven Winds", published with the participation of poets from different parts of the world. In his Introduction to this book, my Minnesotan friend Daniel Brick highlights what he calls "four gems of poetry".The first gem is: The poetry is relevant and accessible at every stage of our lives.The second gem is really a question: How do I know I am a poet? This is a vexed question, and can cause prospective poets considerable confusion. Do you patiently wait for the State's Poet Laureate to call you some morning, "Jeremy, the Governor is going to confer Poethood on you at a press conference at 10 am. Be there "; or do a group of public officials draw up a list and announce them on the radio.. Would such an official affair convince you that you are indeed a poet? Perhaps you need a diploma. You could pay a Writing School on a University campus $3000 and receive an official diploma. Would that give you the necessary knowledge, confidence and experience to exercise your Poethood? Believe me when I tell you it is much simpler than all of the above. The word POET means MAKER in ancient Greek, and just as poets make poems, poets make themselves into poets, and then announce they have assumed the role. - And a poet's role could be an important one: think about.. as..] - Every culture appears to have at least one very crucial poet whom everyone recognizes as representative. In medieval Europe, people would open Virgil's Aeneid at random, someone else would throw out a number, and the one holding the volume would go to that numbered line and that word on the page, read it out loud and the group would draw conclusions from what the nearly divine Virgil had revealed to them. Is it any surprise then that Dante made Virgil his guide through Hell, Limbo and Purgatory? Well.. "NINE TALES OF CREATION" contains poems by nine contemporary poets, all of whom are engaged with poetry as a way of making sense of the world and its people and places. You can wrap your mind around our volume and take in the particular points of view offered on a variety of subjects. You can't go wrong in the company of nine sincere and committed poets. As you read our poems, your mind will expand, grow more subtle, be inspired To know about the 3rd and 4th gem, just read the book...;)

The title, "WE ARE THE WORDS", is to point out that a poet is the Words he/she uses to create Poetry. * ... the wonder of language that tremendous invention of humanity that creates our cultures, sustains our lives, and both separates and unifies us. We poets who speak the languages of the world are committed to the unifying aspects of language, poetry and the internet. Our title, WE ARE THE WORDS, affirms both our pride and our humility. We poets know we can select words and put them into exact patterns of beauty and meaning. That is the nature of our pride. We also realize that language itself is much bigger than we are, much older than our momentary existence, and will thrive long after we are gone. That is the source of our humility. * "SIAMO PAROLE", vuole sottolineare che un poeta le Parole che usa per creare Poesia..* ... meraviglia del linguaggio questa tremenda invenzione dell'umanit che crea le nostre culture, sostiene la nostra vita, ed allo stesso tempo ci separa e ci unifica. E noi, poeti che parlano le lingue del mondo, dedichiamo noi stessi agli aspetti unificanti di Linguaggio, Poesia e Internet. Il titolo del libro, "SIAMO PAROLE", afferma sia il nostro orgoglio che la nostra umilt . Noi poeti sappiamo selezionare le parole ed inserirle in esatti modelli dotati di bellezza estetica e di significanza. Questa la natura del nostro orgoglio. Al contempo, ci rendiamo conto che il linguaggio stesso molto pi grande di noi e molto pi antico delle nostre transitorie esistenze: il linguaggio prosperer per molto, molto tempo anche dopo di noi. Questa la fonte della nostra umilt . D.J. Brick]

The artist Marcel Duchamp drew, in 1927, a curious door -actually it became a door to Duchamp's studio at 11 rue Larrey in Paris-: a double door sharing one hinge, that would admit a person to one of two thresholds, but only one per admittance, so when it swings on its hinge and opens into one space, it closes the entrance to the other.Note the simplicity of his image but the complexity of his concept. The concept involved is the "Threshold Experience", and the image is the 'double doorway' through which we enter and exit the spaces of our daily life. We can choose to enter a certain space or the other, and live our real experience, yet, at the same time we can see the other path -the one we've not chosen..There is a DOUBLE DOOR, which is an open threshold. Cross it and be welcomed to the other side.There is a double door, which admits only one traveler at a time. Your companions up to now must remain behind. The next step you take ALONE.There is a double door, it swings twice: once to immersion in the Psyche, once to release onto the World. Make your choice.There is a double door, on which it is written: 'ABANDON HOPE ALL YOU WHO ENTER HERE'. Will you boldly go forth, or will you boldly turn back?There is a double door: You two, standing apart, each in his/her own solitude.Make a friendship happen, then lift the door off its hinges. You can do it together.Throw it aside, it was just another prison door to crash through.There is a DOUBLE DOOR. Make of it what you will...

Many years ago, in a poetry class for beginners, I read one of my early efforts which contained the following three lines: "A young poet drops his pen, astonished / by the twenty lines he has just written, / certain it is the Poem of Total Realization." The teacher smiled and said, "I remember thinking I had written that poem when I was sixteen." What we learn from writing poems over a long expanse of time is that each one takes further along the path of our daily life, leading eventually to whatever fulfills our existence. Each poem illuminates for its moment the darkness surrounding us, and in that light we can see the World in its glory or, sadly, in its degradation. Finally, we will carry within, not only the poem as a piece of literature but also the emotional growth it promotes. DJ Brick] ***Nature is wild and eagles and wolves will never be lovers. But certainly Poetry can overcome every obstacle and translates our dreams, desires, passions.. in images that evoke even a new, different Universe. Furthermore, Poetry is such a powerful tool: violence can kill, of course, but Words are stronger. Thus, Ideals/Values will be the final winner, because they can speak directly to hearts and minds - and touching them deeply, they can profoundly change a human being - Even the whole Humankind F. Frosini] ***In the arts repetition is the path of mastery. John Gielgud is said to have performed the role of Hamlet more than any actor in history. Only his innate modesty and respect for Shakespeare's genius kept him from claiming he had mastered the role. Those who witnessed his stage performances several times readily called him the master. A pianist of the caliber of Glenn Gould achieves greatness by rehearsing 'The Goldberg Variations' over and over, performing them again and again, continually discovering new details for each new performance. And the venerable Robert Frost was still reciting from memory poems he had written just before World War I in the 1960s and still charming audiences who knew them almost as well as he did. DJ Brick] ***Stating that our human nature is evil, would not be acceptable at all. Yet, it is beyond doubt that we humans are capable of behaving much and much worse than the most ferocious beasts, when our mental inhibitory-control fails to curb the worst and most pressing impulses. Nowadays, the rise of mass media has changed the way societies think and, unfortunately, exploiting mass psychology has become a lucrative affair for many. Politicians and CEOs of large corporations, in particular, know very well how to manipulate the masses, and in doing so, they can profoundly change our societies -our lives. Above all, through an increase in social inequality. And failing to deal with inequalities only leads to a rise of political extremes. F. Frosini]

This Anthology of Poetry sees the participation of 13 poets from 12 different countries of 4 continents. As Daniel Brick writes: Our third collection of poems can be considered a grace note attached to the full melody to the first two. The title, "Scattering Dreams and Tales", was chosen to reflect the first two collections. According to Fabrizio Frosini, "Dreams & Tales" recalls 'Nine Tales of Creation'. "Scattering" evokes 'At the Crossing of Seven Winds". In this Anthology, you will find poems by 13 poets. According to the Random House Dictionary, a POET is a person who has the gift of poetic thought, imagination and creation. Let us see how we can amplify this definition with statements made by poets and prose writers. One of the earliest definitions still current is by the ancient Roman poet, HORACE, one of the masters of Lyric Poetry in Western literature. He wrote "Poets were the first teachers of mankind". The poet-teacher would inculcate the highest human values along with whatever information would be deemed necessary. Who are the hyphenated teachers in today's world? Perhaps technocrat-teachers, dogmatist-teachers, militarist-teachers, businessman-teachers. Would there be room for Horace's confidence in Lyric Poetry? The early 20th century poet James Flecker made a very precise distinction in what we can expect poets to accomplish through language, mere words raised to heightened, even electric power: "The poet's business is not to save the soul of man but to make it worth saving." Perhaps several poems in our anthology will perform this redemptive role, if the poets have fulfilled their mission and readers read with lively attention.