WHAT IS THE NEW BOHEMIA?

Prior to the dawning of the internet age writers usually found other writers in those culturally rich urban locales known then as the Bohemian underground. This subterranean literary landscape also included small theatres for new plays, cafes that hosted readings, and independent bookstores such as Gotham’s in New York, City Lights in San Francisco, and Shakespeare & Company in Paris.  Every major metropolis the world over had a bohemian underground. Many smaller cities followed their lead. Urban Bohemia was a hotbed of creative fertility. Poets, playwrights, painters, musicians, philosophers, and hipsters would rub elbows as well as opinions. All the friction of conflicting ideas and ideologies stirred up the fires of creativity. The shift to electronic culture over the last 10 years has nearly wiped out the old Urban Bohemia. But the human spirit hungers for contact and community, and artists more so than others, perhaps, and so we now have the emergence of a New Bohemia via the internet.

BIRDS SING MY POEMS

My poems fly out to you like birds

freed from captivity.

They take flight on the wind of love

that carries them on its breath.

Sometimes they go amiss

and fall into a river of despair

where they float along on the current

for a time before sinking.

Other times a mockingbird swoops down

and rescues them,

but then, liking the taste,

brings them to the nest to feed her young.

O I hope my poems nourish the fledglings

and that one day they will repay me

by singing them to you.

You will hear the words I’ve written at last

when they perch upon a branch in the forest

and sing as you are passing,

or at twilight as you walk in a garden

and think of me.