WELCOME TO THIS POET’S CORNER!
Welcome to the Poetry site of E.D. Ridgell I've always had multifarious interests which have led me through a lifetime on that quest for answers to all those questions inherent to the mind and soul. My father meant me to be an engineer, but lenient as always to my interests and pursuits, he acquiesced, in the face of my four years of technical education, and he did not balk at my complete change of direction when I quickly threw together an art portfolio and applied to MICA, The Maryland Institute College of Art. That institution "listened" as well as looked at what was presented and opened its doors to me to follow that bliss that became the defining philosophy of my life, the pursuit of whatever it is that can be defined as art. After earning a BFA, with a good deal of trepidation, I began an art teaching career, earned my MFA degree and a Minor in Art History, as it seemed to me, I endeavored to teach for the next thirty years what was both intensely rewarding, in situations unbelievably challenging- that is I discovered that I had that strange mixture of assets and perhaps defects that made me the accomplished teacher- and so I taught secondary art for the Baltimore City Public Schools, the front lines, so to speak, lines that are still there and still in need of fortification against ignorance and the neglect of that bulwark of freedom, education. Upon the illness and fast ensuing death of my soul mate, I retired from teaching in 1999 after thirty years as teacher, department head, and grant writer. I began the process of re-inventing myself. In our artistic careers paralleling teaching for me, and diplay artist for Tom, we became active antique dealers, and for some decades we followed our bliss yet again, and in the companionship and company of oneanther, we built a business together, and then just at that juncture when I could retire from teaching I lost Tom to pancreatic cancer. It was then, in grief, I wrote my first poem and, as I say, began reinvented myself, and tenaciously revamped that business that had been our dream so that today I am the sole owner of that legacy, Line State Antiques, LLC, a business founded in 1980. We and finally just me participated in antique shows up and down the East Coast and now I find myself an ebay power seller, and as you see a passable poet and writer, I hope. I took on yet another addiction, writing. I'll let you judge whether or not it signifies. I have deep roots to Maryland, especially to the lower Chesapeake Bay; its history, culture, and environmental preservation. I am from those nine original families that settled Smith and Tangier Islands, now slowly sinking, each into the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Much of my childhood was spent in what is now St. Mary's State Park where the Chesapeake and the Potomac collide, and I like to think I lived a childhood similar to that of Truman Capote's- magical, and indescribable, though I confess I never shot a mockingbird, and, more importantly, I have made it through this long life so far without shooting the dove. Other interests include world history, art history, genealogy, and art therapy. I'm an old hippie and can not stop trying to save this world or at least contribute to the changing of it. I now live in Northern Maryland with a second, significant other to compliment the miracle of the first, and I am the proud grandfather of three grandchildren having been married for five, fast, fleeting years at and in the beginning of all that is related above. What is not told is as unbelievable, exciting, and life fulfilling as the poems that follow, I hope, attest to. Welcome: E.D. Ridgell- Ed aka “Heph”, short for Hephaestian out there in cyberspace amongst the many poet stars. _______________________________________________________ Credits: I wrote my first poem in 1999, in that year of the death of my significant other of twenty three years, in 1999. I immediately knew I had embarked on that search for the soul or the solid self that is so broken at the loss of someone you truly love. Since those beginnings, I have read poetry in readings hosted by The Samaritan Counseling Center of Lancaster Pa. For awhile. I was a movie and event's critic for Walt's World an online GLBT 'zine' on the social network site Journalspace. Some of these 'crits' can be read on pages 18 through 20 along with some short stories. For some two years, I acted as a moderator at Wordflair, another online zine that is part of the Yuku network more British than American. I led a forum on Wordflair called "Taking Risks" where I encouraged my peers to "try one new thing that frightened them every next poem. Six poems appear in 'A Bouquet of Poetry' an anthology compiled by S.M.Zang and Jean Lewis, c.2007. The word "bouguet" is derived from the Greek meaning "a collection of". Details on ordering can be found at the bottom of page 5...a great gift and age appropriate for the older child or teenager who may be tomorrow's budding poet laureate although I am anything but a advocate of censorship in general regardless of age or circumstance. You can find me meandering through cyberspace under the pseudonym of Hephaestion [AKA Heph] or sometimes under my own name. Thanks, a welcome...enjoy...ed :) ___________________________________________________________ All poems, original art work, prose, etc. are copyrighted under the name, E.D. Ridgell or a pseudonym, often Hephaestion or variations thereof. Should you wish to use any of the material you find here, contact E.D. Ridgell, and he will usually concur. This should not be assumed. The pictures and some of the multi-media used are not the poet's and may be subject to the copyright of others, and should anyone object to their use, please contact Ed, and he will promptly delete them. No plagiarism is intended. Where possible or applicable, the poet tries to list the source. He also backs-up electronically all files and keeps the backups in dated folders. Anything submitted to other sites, contests, etc. is published here, first, so as to insure that Ed is the originating artist. © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell ___________________________________________________________ Should any other poets, writers, zines, etc. wish to share links, please email the artist, and if both share similar feelings and considerations as to the Art of Poetry and art in general, it will be attempted to link any one to the other.
Contact me at: er21120@msn.com	To order A Bouquet of Poetry in which some of my poems are published: For a therapist in the Philadelphia area that also has a background in Art Therapy: For a psychoanalyst in the Lancaster area who is an artist and when approrriate uses art in the treatment program: Maryland Institute College of Art : BFA, '69', MFA '78' Amazing Arizona Landscape Artist
AT THE MOMA 2005 ___________________________________________________________ Courbet and Those Roe Deer Guy dubbed you fat, dirty, and greasy, awestruck at your drunken wave. Green grottos, deep, centered to black holes, Sapho’s sisters’ wish-fulfillments, captured me; held me there, light headed. Perceiving you were complete by your own design, bail bonded my return; dead mentored to canvas again crude hanging rows. I stared at those mineral oily, roe deer, perpetual, yet primordial. You slashed, and left undisguised, rabbit skinned ground. At times, you bristled at any hair; your knife was left not wiped. Forbearing and unglazed, hind limply down, strung as on the spit, you persevered. I understood, there was so little time. ©2007 by E.D. Ridgell The above poem is very significant for me. I had occasion to see an exhibit of Courbet's and noticed how crudely some deer were rendered in some of his paintings. Upon research I found that Courbet came late to the vocation of painting and consequently had no formal training. I have come to the art of writing late, not until the age of fifty. I was formally trained as a visual artist and for some thirty years the vocabulary I brought to any work of art was that of the elements and principles of design as used to describe painting or sculpture- the fine arts. That does not matter, however, as these are universal to all forms of art. The words are often different, however. The term meter and movement, for example would mean the same thing. Alliteration is simply a kind of pattern. I'll never have time to learn the extensive vocabulary that is unique to poetry and writing alone, but like Courbet I will use the time remaining to me to try and do so, while concentrating principally on the making of good written works without any real formal training in literature or writing. To some degree, I think this may very well work in my favor as I have less restrictions and presumed expectations to live up to. Art is universal and can be reduced to simple and easily understood principles and elements of design, but change in art often comes from thinking outside the box and by sheer accident resulting, in my opinion from the artist embracing the untried- the habit of taking risks. EDR.	The Demise of the Mandarin   See my little wing quiver so As I lie here atop the snow! Water is surely free I think. I only wanted a tiny drink.   Something is broke within I know. I can not lift and rise to go. So happy was I on the brink Eager at a dawn’s early pink;   Very frightened, left alone, Lamenting others who have flown- Fled they so high into a sky Never more into will I fly.   What rudely broke my perfect wing So swift and sudden came the sting, Dropping me from an upward lift Leaving regal feathers rudely rift?   Something struck me swift and cruel, Sharp tipped from side a northern pool, Amidst the warnings of little swallows Urging me to flap and follow.   And where’s gone fidelity In the face of so little pity, Here now in a shadow of Showa, Falling fast with a final, “Q                                             U                                                A”?                           © 2009 E.D.Ridgell Stings for the Kinsmen The whimbly, wambly kinsfolk little knew the letters faint yet folded with caring and tossed into trash bin, an act to rue, yet were treasured writs of love so daring. Sometimes a tolling bell is the siren, sounding need for rash and hasty action, as locks go changing and time does upend leaving doubtful future expectation. The reasons cliquey-tricky they soon see, speed a griever’s misgivings aplenty; and into the lock of grief goes a key as anger turns unlocking no bounty. Like to poisoned kisses sent on the wings swiftly quills do leave kinsmen many stings. © 2007 by E.D. Ridgell
THE LATEST POEMS: __________________________________________________________________________________ Lord, Lay Me Down, Gently Now   I drank and drank and drank for months I think Trying to just find that place, that place for me; That resting place where I could be invisible- Where I could just lay flat and still, out of their way.   I lay me down in a corn field and let out a queer guffaw; I cut dead any shame with another laugh and came to rest. I reckoned back, when last a pretty boy, I lay on the lawn of Clifton Park And looked and looked and looked for that four leaf clover, that myth.   Lord, lay me down, gently now, on that field of catalpa pods and ash. Oh, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy but I’m worn down. I’m all used up, ya’ hear? Let Virginia showers mingle me with my true love, Let all the elements do what they will do for a final metaphor of it.   And what of our souls, Lord? Are they myths, too? Is there a special place for your chosen ones, your mistakes? Has this been some kind of carnival show? Were we their freaks? Lord, I would have it so again, for the freak stares out with no expectations. © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell     Untitled "...is there no help for the widow's son?"- If not, I must but carry on. Your lodge, dear departed father,  Hectored me, unmercifully-   Some secret scripts. I swear- Writs I knew not, then or now, Their whereabouts, your hideaway-  somewhere no one could suspect they be!                                                          © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell         Centered     Confusion! Center! Go home; Visit your dead. There are no living, now, Down the Point, To sidetrack your musings. A gate’s been built I’ve heard; A wailing wall Collecting off our seized land- Some Yankee piggy bank. Maybe it’s penned in the sty for winter. I will go around it, Trespass onto my memories- Any guards or rangers I now kill, Metaphorically. I’ll deal with guilty Innocents as I encounter them. Don’t think ahead. It’s pointless- Point Lookout! I bet the ghost will tell me he’s exhausted, Tired of earning his keep- No longer free to walk unfretted in the night. I bet we buried some thirty dogs there, Turning over civil war bullets With our heartbroken spades. I fear bones are violated, bulldozed to build A pretend prison- Another Yankee retribution.    Over the causeway, up the road, Opposite the Confederate monument to the dead- I want to see who bought that house, Floating on cinder blocks. Has it vanished, Or does it sit stoically, some bank’s write off. Little did I suspect it would end a rosebush in my mind, a beautiful but prickly recollection. Then onto the graves, appropriately dysfunctional in two separate graveyards, for some serious conversation; Fill them in with what’s going on, Get some needed advice- Then drive back up the road, Not quite over but guarding the border IntoYankee territory; Centered. © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell       Unsettled Again,   I find myself talking to you as though you are here Even now, ten long, drag-assed years later. I keep going. It’s thirty two years now Since we drove South like Sherman to Savannah. We bought cased glass with no idea what we were doing And made plans. I don’t think we ever knew how Wonderful it all would be, partners in everything. You once said, things last longer than people. Did you have to prove it? I know now how things are Imbedded with stories, imprints left by finger touches long gone; Spirit and mystery, the lost and forgotten-the haunting souls of things. Your dungarees with the hole in the knee In the bottom drawer of the desk there Mean more to me than any of the things left dwelling in this house. I still march things down their long, long, roads of existence; Things that will last longer than me- Things that lasted longer than you. © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell   Untitled   There are noises that fetter moments plucked out the white background, The sweet sounds settling into the recesses of the mind, Like nuts being lain down for winter; Sounds that bookmark memory, Echoes to sooth the tempest tossed, Sounds that mark your journey, past and present- The slamming of the wooden, screen door on Grammy’s porch, The cicada in the grasslands at Dad’s at sunset. The honking geese flying over the fall festival that year, You took time to be grateful of your life’s course.   Tonight, I listened to footfalls of grandchildren’s little feet, Scampering over floorboards above my head in my house. Tonight I am sixty two years old and I cross myself For the, final, comingling, last chords caught out in the din of old age.  © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell A Moonwalk Through My Mornin’s Mind Some woman with the self-serving voice of an overseer’s wife, waives her birth certificate- there it is in black and white- back and forth in the air, and a room full of miscreants, misfits, with mind sets from a bygone era, stand to pledge allegiance to a stationary flag, like the one waving on the moon, and everyone mourns and or celebrates moonwalks, respectively! It is another American saga- the swing and sway on the dance floor of history. Fox News and CNBC take turns bending minds to their wills or trying to. My mind is as set as any overseer’s wife. I got family values, and I’ll not dance to the cadence of tomfoolery or greed- my railroad’s come above ground, and, this here, ostrich runs free; see my words speed across the screen as I type away my mornin’ frustrations, laying before the lying screen. Good news- California is letting some of its ostriches go free! Take that Nancy Reagan as you speak to the other side. I’ve lived to see hemp waiving in the breeze like, years ago, in West Virginia. It’s for medicinal purposes and the taxes will help pay for the latest war. "Past me that there roach, Bro, or for pity’s sake, hurry up and bump me! Good mornin’ America. I love you." © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell ___________________________________________________________	I Am The Eagle, the stark predator back dropped by the dazzling sun. I measure and reckon upon details; the direction and velocity of winds. My talons clutch in a last grip and the beak, razor edged, rips and tears. The aerie lies near the lake in the shadow of the high mountain, unlike the hawk roosting in the valley nearby, deep within the screeching woodland. Many take no heed of me bewaring nothing soaring so faraway, meandering in a distance too foreign for them to see, or fear. But, coming into that geography, the boundary and parameter of my sharp sight, I only need to pounce in a lightning catch and swoop them up into some convenient perch. Unlike them, trapped in a scheme not of their making, no carrion do I seek. No trap awaits me. They are sited movement caught by my eye, a tribute to be taken; ripped and torn, pieced just so, for ripe and particular appetites. The first course is mine and measured to my need. The second, gleanings of the harvested carcass, the smaller, savory pieces, I deliver to frenzied, nestled eaglets hungry for my return. I am forever soaring above, seeking an unguarded opportunity, when they chance a safety that does not exist. This is my eminent rank. This is their lower link. They feed me and mine according to that covenant, governing all things, including me the eagle. © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell "Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.” - Alexander the Great "I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers." – Walt Whitman