Companion web logs

ars longa, vita brevis || site updates / commentaries / creative writing demonstrations / on-line notebook

night reading || a commonplace book (locus communis)

Personal commentaries should read like notebooks— almost honest and out of breath, a partial view of the whole, in a sense capturing the writer’s voice for a brief moment in time. In other words, a stream of consciousness. Or a self portrait composed of a variety of phrases. My journals are like this, little unrealities changing radically from month to month, shifting with conflicting views and personal histories, run-on sentences and fragmented perspectives.

The intentions of my work serves mainly as a definition of myself—as an open portfolio describing who I am, or dissecting the personality in thin layers until the ultimate core is reached —but you see, already these statements are not explaining anything, they only talk at the reader with the expectation that the words would be harvested like fruit into baskets.

My writing styles meander through many artistic influences. Such contemporary writers as: Cyrus Cassells, Mark Doty, Kenny Fries, Susan Mitchell, and Lynda Hull always remain important inspirations. Voices from the modern and historic literary canon are important as well: Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Walt Whitman, Thom Gunn, Virginia Woolf, et. al.

Obviously, my poems exist as a collection of voices and moods. Or another way of putting it, my work is a collage of impressions and blurred memories. The work explores mystical concepts, like medieval texts or tarot cards. Casual scenes heighten with dream-realities and brash colors, taking a step away from the realities of waking life. In the end, a greater involvement between viewer and image is created, allowing for the creation of private myths and personal interpetations for explanations and clarifications.

In 2010, various writings of David-Glen Smith will be forthcoming
in Ganymede, Houston Literary Review, and a new issue of Slant.

While earning his MFA in Writing at Norwich Unveristy at Vermont College in Montepelier, VT he worked with accomplished poets Susan Mitchell, Linda Hull and Mark Doty.

His past work has appeared in various magazines such as:
Louisville Review, Mid-American Review, Modern Words, and Taos Review.                              

The Moon Dreams of Cecilia Dreaming of the Moon

The moon watches Cecilia support
a bowl of apples with her knees.

He watches her, how she shuffles a knife
between the small red stars and her fingers,
how she twists her wrists slowly,
slicing the cores.

...                              {1992}

To Admire Blue Horses

“This is the day when members of the nobility who live outside the Palace arrive in the magnificently decorated carriages to admire the blue horses.”
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon translated by Ivan Morris

“I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on?”
Song of Solomon 5:3

When I sleep in blind August,
I dream of you holding an unripe apricot
in one hand, the other steadying a child
clinging to your legs, his eyes
as wide as Europe.

...                              {1995}

The Myth of Fear

What I really wanted to write about
was not fear— it was something more complex, more detailed,
like the beliefs of a country near India,
where they say the sub-conscious is a dragon coiled
along the spine; it generates your inspirations,
your desires. The countrymen tattoo
serpentine bodies over the skin, their backs:
they wear their desires openly.

...                              {1994}