Poster featuring iron cast of Walt Whitman's hand courtesy of Academy of American Poets . “Stars ink your fingers with a lexicon of flame blazing rare knowledge.” --from The River of Winged Dreams (Aberjhani) Every year the Academy of American Poets produces a fascinating poster in celebration of National Poetry Month  in April. The Academy, along with such partners as The Poetry Foundation, American Booksellers Association, and American Libraries, very generously makes the poster available for free as a digital download and as a hard copy poster via the U.S. postal service. The posters are always unique in their visual style and feature quotes, from works by famous authors, which are often both compelling and inspiring. Last year’s poster featured a collage of envelopes, stationery, and writing utensil with the following words from the Prague-born poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s   classic book Letters to a Young Poet : “Write about your sorrows, you

Varieties of angels, like varieties of love, are many. It is therefore not too surprising that the angelic imagery utilized to help celebrate Valentine’s Day tends to range from innocent blushing cherubs to winged beauties swagged out in erotic creations worthy of placement in a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Valentine’s Day itself, like most holidays in the modern era, has been heavily influenced by commercialism that focuses on the appeal of romantic fantasies. The effective marketing of Valentine fantasy movies such as Winter’sTale (with Colin Farrell, Jennifer Connelly, and Jessica Brown Findlay);and the film Endless Love (with Gabriella Wilde and Alex Pettyfer) support that observation. Movies can provide tear-inducing or comically-entertaining representations of love but many agree that its deeper conflicting complexities often seem unfathomable. That is largely because different human hearts often interpret their experiences of love in different ways. Class

        Working cover from the scheduled 2014 book release Journey through the Power of the rainbow . “…We are living in an era in which billions of people are grappling to promote communication, tolerance, and understanding over the more destructive forces of war, terrorism, and political chaos that have characterized the beginning of the 21st Century.” –– Aberjhani, from Journey through the Power of the Rainbow A frequently asked question among readers who took note in 2013 that I was working on a collection of quotations is: have I abandoned the idea? That would have been easy to do considering the reluctance of traditional publishers to invest in books containing any substantial amount of material that has been previously posted on the Internet. The challenge for me, and for the tech angels who get a kick out of throwing whatever pro bono support they can in my direction, was to take a deep breath and dive into the years of published books, unpublished manuscripts, poems

( Feathers of Gold, Feathers of Silver art graphic courtesy of Bright Skylark Literary Productions ) In July 2006, I sat down to write a short simple thank you note to fellow @poets and +writers who had graciously wished me well on my birthday. To my surprise, the intended short simple note came out of my pen in the form of the following poem: ANGEL OF GRATITUDE Each, shaped from a heart divine—such is the nature of your humble wings. Love, Mercy, and Grace, sisters all, attend your wounds of silence and hope. You are the good twin and the bad. Not arrogant, but jubilant…sweet… With grief or without, your flight commands awareness of joy beyond pain.     Holy starbright of infinite heavens, for these tears––I do thank you.     Just the fact that it was a poem was the first big surprise. The second was the style in which it was written, a variation on the haiku that I had never used before. Had my muse taken on the form of an