Community leaders, including Georgia State Sen. Lester Jackson (center), gather to celebrate 100th anniversary of the Carnegie Branch Library in Savannah with a new historic marker . (photograph by Aberjhani) Measuring the success of a given year by the percentage of profits gained or lost is a sensible enough practice for many individuals and an essential one for various organizations. However, I decided going into 2014 that I wanted to commit time throughout the year to finding ways that creatively honored the concept of mutually-empowering and life-enhancing partnerships. The goal was to combine as much as possible measures of social responsibility with different types of creative endeavors. Why such an intensely-focused approach? Because the still-straggling uncertainty of the economy, the domestic gun violence that broke America’s collectively-beating heart nearly every other week, and rising waves of conflict on the global front made it far too easy to succumb to su

                    A Pair of Shoes painting by Vincent Van Gogh (from Southern Review) “But why exactly were these shoes so important to Vincent? Why had he carried them with him for so long, beaten and worn as they were?”– Ken Wilber, from the essay A Pair of Worn Shoes The story and intent behind my poem, Ode to the Good Black Boots that Served My Soul So Well , is not extremely different from the story and likely intent behind Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, A Pair of Shoes (see image above). In philosopher Ken Wilber’s book, The Eye of the Spirit - An Integral Vision of a World Gone Slightly Mad, the author retells a story first shared by the painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) about a pair of “enormous worn out misshapen shoes” painted by his friend Vincent. The now-iconic Van Gogh (1853–1890) created the image after serving as a caregiver for 40 days and nights to a miner who had been so badly burned that doctors gave him up for dead. Vincent Van Gogh could not accep

Does the enigmatic figure of the Black Skylark  referenced in this blog title have anything to do with Edgar Allen Poe’s “The  Raven” (1845), with Walt Whitman’s “The Mystic Trumpeter” (1872), or Abram  Joseph Ryan’s “Song of the Deathless Voice” (1880)?  It shares with Poe’s classic poem the image of a dark mystical bird. On the other hand, the presence of an eerie beguiling melody establishes a strong link to Whitman’s and Ryan’s poems. The poem is set in the city of Savannah, Georgia, but its themes are universal.  Readers are hereby invited to decide for themselves how well it fits into the tradition of the American Halloween poem pioneered by Poe, Whitman, and Ryan: Song of the Black Skylark (poem) by Aberjhani on AuthorsDen by Aberjhani

( Detailed section of "Bettin' On Herself" artwork by Luther E. Vann from the book ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love )  Success for the creatively-inclined individual can be defined in many ways. Certainly there are those who necessarily measure their triumphs in terms of monetary gains. There are others for whom success means the refinement of a process, participation in a unique endeavor, the achievement of a level of personal mastery, or the realization of a rare kind of vision. For some, it is all of the above. Upon agreeing to work with the artist Luther E. Vann on a book showcasing contemporary art, ekphrastic poems, and short essays in 1991, there was little reason to believe it would ever see publication much less gain recognition as a “success.” It was not the kind of work on which publishers preferred to take chances. Neither the artist nor this author at the time commanded such compelling presences in the marketplace as to make a vic