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WELCOME TO THIS POET’S CORNER! 
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Welcome to the Poetry site of E.D. Ridgell
I've
always had multifarious interests which have led me through a lifetime of 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 and retired from teaching in 1999 after thirty years as teacher, department head,
and grant writer.
In a career paralleling teaching, I and my partner became active antique dealers, and for some decades
I followed my bliss yet again, and in the companionship and company of that friend, we built a business together, and then
just at that juncture when I could retire from teaching I lost Tom to pancreatic cancer in 1999. It was then, in grief, I
wrote my first poem and 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. I've participated in antique shows
up and down the East Coast and my principle establishment is currently in Golden Lane Antique and Art Gallery in New Oxford,
Pennsylvania.
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 not slowly sinking 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.
Other
interests include world history, art history, genealogy, and art therapy.
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
Hephaestion out there in cyberspace amongst the many poet stars.
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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 :)
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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
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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.
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AT THE MOMA 2005
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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.
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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
in the dawn’s sky of 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 my regal
feathers rudely rift?
Something stung me swiftly cruel,
sharp tipped from side a northern pool,
skipping swift
to miss the little swallow
urging me to hurry and follow.
And where’s gone fidelity
in face of so little pity,
here
now in the time of Showa,
falling silently in a final, “q
u
a”?
© 2007 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
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THE
LATEST POEMS:
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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
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Tweeter, Tweeter, Dumb! I woke this morning more depressed than usual, pressed the media to stoke that fire that burns within; stuffed sugared feelings into that furnace that fuels my stroke, stoked, heart, and decided to write, no type, before
downing my daily meds, all seven, pretty pills all in a line like some cocaine kick to the clogging drains flowing out an old pump. I thought to forward the fading strangers and failed closures in my contacts this protest against the growing tide, but indolence
won out the day, and
I decided instead to cop another day in my well worn bed and muse on happier days when I had any interest in the thirsty garden. I
peeked out at the feeders. The finches are almost all gone, flown to safety in numbers that dwindle each year, like hippies dying, one by one, irritants to Reagan written history. Someone intimated lately, laboring
over a crossword puzzle, that even Samuel Clemens might still be present somewhere, hiding on some dusty shelf in a foreclosed bookstore- asked me if I thought that soul might
today be considered liberal. CNBC suggested we may need to test the bottom again. I’ve tested so many bottoms
it’s become passé. Bottoms are society’s taboos, and an outcast’s opium den, one floor above any chamber in Dante’s hell. It seems to me more and more are drifting
down lately to that dangerous
bottom where “freedom’s nothing left to loose”. Like Jefferson there is that ambivalence in me that on a dark mornin’ like
this sorta’ makes
me hope so. That liberal in me, well, it just won’t die. © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell
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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
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