As Jurassic World sets new box office records, Dinosaurs dominate the downtown area of Stamford

In its second weekend since opening, Time Magazine reports that  Jurassic World has garnered over $981 million in global box office gross according to Box Office Mojo.

The film is slated to reach the one billion dollar mark this Thursday, less than two weeks after its release.

What an amazing run! (Watch out Furious 7, which reached the billion dollar mark in 17 days)

Just as amazing is Stamford Downtown's presentation of the Dinosaur's Rule outdoor art show.

40 originally designed and painted fiberglass dinosaurs are on display for free viewing throughout the summer months.

Here are examples from the Downtown art exhibit:

                                               

Columbia Teachers Alan Purves and William York Tindall illuminate the Poetry of William Butler Yeats

My introduction to William Butler Yeats (June 13, 1865 - January 28, 1839) was as a Freshman at Columbia College. Alan C. Purves, my English instructor, assigned our class Yeats's  Second Coming to explicate.

The first stanza was very disturbing to say the least. It begins with a disruptive image of a falcon not being responsive to its trainer, the falconer and

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

                The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

The poem was written in 1919 at the end of  the "blood dimmed tide" of World War I and "anarchy is let loosed" as the the Russian Revolution has gripped the attention and toppled the stability of the world.

My appreciation of Yeats was greatly enhanced by studying some of his great poems under the aegis of Professor William York Tindall of Columbia University's Graduate Faculties English Department.  He brought the rhythms of Yeats's poems alive by reading significant passages out loud.  His favorite was September 1913 and his favorite lines:  

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,

It's with O'Leary in the grave. 

The poem was occasioned by the lockout in September 1913 of employees by the employers and merchants of Dublin. The poem also pays tribute to those early Irish revolutionaries and  patriots who tirelessly devoted their lives to the futile cause of creating a free Irish Republic;

Here is a video animation of Yeats reading The Second Coming 

Other Yeats poems that I suggest one read include: Adam's Curse, The Lake Isle of Innisfree and The Wild Swans at Coole.

Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. 

Happy Birthday Mr. Yeats. 

A Gem of Masterful Prose: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

This novel is a tour de force! 

This novel has it all- and I mean it has it all-- delivering short doses of suspense in tight, terse, taut, one and half page chapters- replete with 'star'tling  metaphors. (emphasis mine!)  

It demonstrates the epitome of brevity in a 500 page plus book! 

The result- a magnetic style that leaves the reader breathless--is admirable. 

Set for the most part during a five- year span of  World War II, Doerr's novel takes us back and forth between Paris and St. Malo, a coastal community located in France's Brittany Provence.

The central character is Marie Laure, a six year old blind Parisian girl in 1940 whose father is an eminent locksmith at a Natural History Museum.  As Hitler's armies draw close to Paris, she is evacuated with her dad to an uncle's home in St. Malo.

In St. Malo, she becomes enlightened to the realities of war at such a tender age. (Her father has a gemstone that confers miraculous powers upon the holder and he must leave her as the Nazis are in hot pursuit of this precious object.)

Her father builds a miniature replica of the city (as he did for her in her Parisian neighborhood) which includes all its hundred plus houses and streets.

Marie Laure learns to navigate the city moving her cane back and forth counting drain holes; in a loaf of bread she purchases daily from the local boulangerie is a slip of paper with coded messages.

World War II Model Suitcase radio for 

sending and receiving shortwave messages

courtesy of the Museum of World War II

Her uncle has set up a surreptitious radio transmitter in his attic and Marie gives the coded numbered messages to her uncle who daily broadcasts local news events and classical music with these numbers interspersed.

Werner Pfennig is a fifteen-year old precocious German living in an orphanage in a Ruhr Valley coal mining town. He has an avid interest in building and fixing radios. While here, he hears beautiful strains of music and captivating science facts along with messages encrypted in sequences of numbers--all delivered by Marie Laure's uncle.

Hitler Youth

from Pinterest.com 

He is tapped by the Nazis to join an elite Hitler Youth training camp where he builds and fixes radios; his job is to travel throughout Poland and the Ukraine to get 'fixes' on illegal transmissions by resistance forces, partisans and enemies of the Third Reich. 


It is thus inevitable that in the final scenes of the book, the now 18 year- old Werner Pfennig will cross paths with now 10 year- old blind girl. This occurs just as the Nazis close in to destroy St Malo and the Allies advance into Brittany after D-Day in June 1944.. 

At the same time, the Nazis are hot in pursuit of the Uncle's transmission 'tower' and the miraculous gemstone that Marie Laure may possess, secreted in a miniature replica of her St. Malo home.

What happens is pure drama and verbal alchemy which I leave to the reader to experience and enjoy--as I did! 

Anthony Doerr has just won the Pulitzter Prize for 

his recent novel, All the Light We Cannot See

photo courtesy of Shauna Doerr

Here is a sample of Doerr's writing. The reader, may, pick up traces of Bob Dylan's Rolling Stones as I did. 

"All the next day the pleasure of his success lingers in Werner's blood, the memory of how it seemed almost holy to walk beside big Volkheimer back to the castle down through the frozen trees, past the rooms of sleeping boys ranked like goldbars in strongrooms --Werner felt an almost fatherly protectiveness for the others as he undressed beside his bunk, as lumbering Volkheimer continued on toward the dormitories of the upperclassman, an ogre among angels, a keeper crossing a field of gravestones at night."

Kudos to Frontier Communications of Stamford: Exemplifying the Art of Giving Great service

Welcome Frontier Communications: At Last a  breath of fresh air and great service in the Cable Industry!  

Yes, we have the bundle and are very satisfied with outstanding service we are receiving and most affordable pricing

Movies galore, I  have my tennis channel at request and C-Span 24/7.

 And they have agreed to extend my existing contract for another 3 years--with NO PRICE INCREASE.

Wow that's  knock the socks off your customer service 

No more hassle,  no more arguing over pricing with disgruntled phone reps from Cablevision for over an hour!

And their phone reps are a pleasure to deal with. They told me they sense the upbeat mood, the sea change, in their company.

Thanks for the hand off ATT U-Verse.

GO FOR IT FRONTIER and KEEP HITTING THE BALL OUT OF THE BALLPARK. 

Celebrating National Poetry Month: When Springtime breaks in Oregon's Willamette Valley--Poet Samuel L. Simpson

In celebrating National Poetry Month, I must confess that the advent of Spring in Eugene, Oregon is  a spectacular, remarkable and memorable event.

Springtime arrives in Eugene, Oregon:set against

the backdrop of the Pacific Cascades

photo by Mike Wagner

Nestled in the Willamette Valley of Southern Oregon, Eugene is bombarded almost daily with persistent bleary Northwest winter showers from late November onward.

The rains  cease in April and the sudden arrival of spring  transforms the area into a shimmering emerald paradise.

It is for this reason that I chose Samuel L. Simpson's poem, The Beautiful Willamette to celebrate the dramatic arrival of spring

Here are the opening lines of the poem:  

From the Cascades' frozen gorges,
Leaping like a child at play,
Winding, widening through the valley,
Bright Willamette glides away,
Onward ever, 
Lovely river, 
Softly calling to the sea;

Spring's green witchery is weaving
Braid and border for thy side;
Grace forever haunts thy journey,
Beauty dimples on thy tide;
Through the purple gates of morning.... (italics and enlarged type- mine)

The Willamette River runs through Eugene, Oregon, Photo 

Courtesy of Paint Your Landscape, Biking Bliss-Eugene, OR 

The emerald green campus of the University of Oregon, Photo

Courtesy of Paint Your Landscape, Biking Bliss- Eugene, OR

EARTH DAY REVISITED WITH HAIKU POEMS AND ANSEL ADAMS WHO DIED ON APRIL 22, 1984

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH AND EARTH DAY

TRYING MY HAND AT HAIKU

Signs of awakened Spring
In trees tinged with pink purple hues
Wraith boughs-winter begone.

I have been celebrating National Poetry Month with poems reminding us of our brutal, horrific and long-lasting winter and the long-awaited advent of a dramatic spring. You can find poems and lines by T.S.Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Camus William Wordsworth, Rachel France (Haiku) and by yours truly (Signs of Awakened Spring, Haiku).

Click here to see my Twitter Poetry Selection.

Click here to read my blog introducing National Poetry Month.

So what is a Haiku poem and why did I choose this form?

Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry consisting of three lines of verse. The first line usually has 5 syllables, the second has 7 and the third has 3. The message is strongly visual and concise.

The reason I favor this form of poetic expression is because it is conducive to twitter's maximum of 140 characters including a four color photo . And most important, "brevity is the soul of wit." (Shakespeare's Hamlet )

Why convey a message in over 40,000 lines of verse (the approximate length of Dante's Inferno) when you can convey a strong message in three lines?

Won't your reader be more amenable to reading and understanding your poem, especially with a graphic?

The reason I wrote my above Haiku is simple.

As I was driving in my neighborhood on a recent, rainy and dreary day, an amazing scene caught my attention. I was surrounded by stark skeletal wraith-like arms of trees soaring into the darkened skies.

Lo and behold, right before me were purple pink budding leaves of a magnolia tree 'firing' into life. It was a REBIRTH OF SPRING.

I pulled out my i- phone and quickly captured the scene. The event inspired me to translate this heightened experience into a Haiku. A simple, dramatic, sensual visual event-- instantaneously perceived--became the basis of the Haiku.

So, perhaps my reader will share my sense of wonder and amazement of spring's late--but dramatic- arrival expressed in the Haiku.

Enjoy, the ceaseless cycle of the seasons, especially today Earth Day.

Late Spring:wraith-like boughs 

contrasted with burgeoning pink buds 

Click here for my homage today-- EARTH DAY-- to the poignant photography of the environmentalist and photographer Ansel Adams. He died this day, April 22, in  1984.

Celebrating National Poetry Month and the Anticipation of Spring

National Poetry Month was established in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets.

It was designed to "increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States."

My mom instilled my love of poetry often quoting-- by memory-- from the sonnets of William Shakespeare and John Milton.

After majoring in English at Columbia University where I wrote my Masters Thesis on John Milton's extended poem, Samson Agonistes, I taught poetry and prose at Wisconsin State University, Essex County Community College and  Montclair State University.

Epic poems and dramatic verse included in my survey of Western Literature included The Iliad, The Oresteia, The Aeneid, The Song of Roland, Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost. Biblical verse included The Psalms as well.

Why am I posting poems this month on my twitter page?

First, April is designated as National Poetry Month. So why not create a buzz for poetry?

A seven foot  wall of a snow/ice mixture lines my 

driveway just a few weeks ago in March, 2015

Next, this winter has been long, cruel and has been delaying the onset of spring. (Witness the photo above.)  Spring is officially upon us almost three weeks as of this writing, but you would never know it.

We are enduring cloudy, rainy wintry days with temps barely rising into the 40's.

 T.S. Eliot's opening lines from The Wasteland ring true:

     April is the cruellest month, breeding
     Lilacs out the dead land,  mixing
     Memory and desire, stirring
     Dull roots with spring rain.
     Winter kept us warm, covering
     Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
     A little life with dried tubers. 

So I thought it appropriate to select poems that herald the start of Spring starting with lines from William Wordsworth's Daffodils.

Here is a link to my twitter page to inhale the aroma of Spring from some outstanding poets and noteworthy authors like Albert Camus.

https://twitter.com/rj_schwartz

Enjoy, as I will likewise do -  my posting poems several times weekly.