Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Odyssey: Wanderings In The Global Village
    Odyssey: Wanderings In The Global Village
    Odyssey: Wanderings In The Global Village
    Ebook221 pages1 hour

    Odyssey: Wanderings In The Global Village

    By Larry Smeets

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This book is the fruit of a tangled garden nurtured sporadically over 3 1/2 decades. Inspiration for many of the poems in it derives from a look at the circumstances and experiences of people, both great and small, who live both presently and in the distant past. The voices in other poems belong to people - including the poet - who have come into contact with the modern world in one way or another. Most of the poems were not written with a view to ever seeing publication. They were intended only for the eyes of those in the poe's inner circle who might be interested in reading them. They are an intellectual legacy of sorts, a bequeathal to loved ones and friends.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTellwell Talent
    Release dateNov 29, 2018
    ISBN9781773026459
    Odyssey: Wanderings In The Global Village

    Related to Odyssey

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age

      Jun 11, 2019

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age
      5 min read

    • Article

      Post-Apocalypse Now: The Hard Work of Cli-Fi

      Feb 8, 2019

      What will our future look like? How fast and for how long will things change? Are we mentally and physically prepared to deal with the impacts of these changes on our communities and socioeconomic structures? The post Post-Apocalypse Now: The Hard Wo

      10 min read

    • Article

      Southern Stand

      Mar 16, 2020

      Southern Stand
      5 min read

    • Article

      'The World-Ending Fire' collects 31 essential Wendell Berry essays

      May 23, 2018

      Who better than Berry to explain to us 'who we are, where we are, and what we must do to live'?

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Freedom in Confinement

      Jun 1, 2020

      ONE OF OUR PRIME REASONS for reading prose fiction is to get outside, to travel, and to learn about how people think and feel who are different from us. The familiar defense of the novel as an education in empathy and otherness follows from this, as

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Bird That Sang I Am

      Sep 1, 2021

      The Bird That Sang I Am
      19 min read

    • Article

      The Allure of Messy Reddit Stories

      Mar 19, 2023

      Jerusalem Demsas’s culture and entertainment picks include Children of Time, Vampire Weekend, and chasing down stories people tell—or make up—on Reddit.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Tree Time and Mortality in the Eyes of Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Powers, and Ursula K. Le Guin

      Oct 16, 2018

      1. Trees tell time when they cease to live. Concentric bands show up clean and countable, the index of so many wet and dry seasons past, but only when the end has been determined, when no more rings will be added. The tree is always recording, but it

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Whale Who Will Come Soon

      Sep 8, 2021

      The beachfront narrows to an ocherous ribbon, belted by blue, above and below. After a while, a handful of shearwaters appear in the air above the Cat Balou. The birds flash around us; like knife-thrower tricks at a circus. Diving through the water,

      8 min read

    • Article

      Mary Shelley And Mourning As An Essential Act Of Apocalypse

      Feb 28, 2018

      1. Little cloud-white lambs wobble over the leas and paddocks, nibbling clover under a wooly sky. Ladies and lords and mustachioed manservants converse through the halls of castles. The subjects and soldiers in the hay fields out past the battlements

      5 min read

    • Article

      Misery & Company

      Apr 21, 2022

      Hugging the northern border of Baja California, a highway called La Rumorosa cuts through the Sierra de Juárez. It’s long been regarded as one of the world’s most dangerous highways. Viewed aerially, the road looks a bit like tinsel tossed carelessly

      10 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Sep 19, 2022

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Our Most Effective Weapon Is Imagination

      Apr 28, 2021

      In his Theaetetus, Plato remarks to Socrates: “This pathos is proper to the philosopher: It is the thaumazein. And philosophy has no other point of departure than this.” The word, which contains the root thauma, the same that appears in thaumaturgy,

      9 min read

    • Article

      In The Middle Of Even This: Poetry

      Jan 1, 2020

      To be brought from the bright schoolyard into the house:to stand by her bed like an animal stunned in the pen:against the grid of the quilt, her hand seemsstitched to the cuff of its sleeve—although he wantsmost urgently the hand to stroke his head,a

      7 min read

    • Article

      Who Is Unthinkable? On Imbolo Mbue’s ‘How Beautiful We Were’

      Mar 26, 2021

      1. Fake news has never angered me on a visceral level. I don’t earnestly engage with conspiracists who fret about Satan worshippers or baby-eaters, for instance, and I have always found those who do amusing curiosities. For me, real anger has to impl

      9 min read

    • Article

      Ghosts in Manhattan

      Mar 1, 2024

      Ghosts in Manhattan
      3 min read

    • Article

      Veil of Shadows: On Jewish Trauma, Place, and American Anti-Semitism

      Nov 27, 2018

      A little less than 50 miles from Krakow, at the confluence of the Vistula and Sola rivers, there is a town of slightly under 50,000 inhabitants named Oświęcim. The official tourist site for Oświęcim describes the city as being “attractive and friendl

      12 min read

    • Article

      The End of the World As We Know It

      Oct 1, 2019

      If the world is torn to pieces,” writes Terry Tempest Williams in her explosive and unflinching new collection, Erosion: Essays of Undoing, “I want to see what story I can find in fragmentation.” Written over seven years and exploring the erosion of

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Odyssey

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Odyssey - Larry Smeets

      ODYSSEY:

      WANDERINGS IN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

      LARRY SMEETS

      Odyssey: Wanderings in the Global Village

      Copyright © 2018 by Larry Smeets

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      Tellwell Talent

      www.tellwell.ca

      ISBN

      978-1-77302-644-2 (Hardcover)

      978-1-77302-643-5 (Paperback)

      978-1-77302-645-9 (eBook)

      DEDICATION

      For Juliette and for our children

      Sebastian, Julian, Anh, and Phuoc

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Dedication

      Introduction

      BOOK 1 ~ CRAFTS OVERTURNED

      In The Thompson Valley Mall

      Ancient History

      Storm-Stayed In Iraklion, Crete

      Craft Overturned In An Aegean Storm

      The Dolphin’s Song

      Commencement Near A Precipice

      Cold Comforts

      On First Hearing An Ayre Composed By Anon

      Hourglass And Sand

      The Law Student

      Fallen Angel

      Roman Storm

      The Good Shepherd’s Rule

      Cleopatra At Storm’s End

      Killing Chickens To Scare Monkeys

      The Boogeyman’s Lament

      Journey’s End At Birkenau

      One Child Policy

      The Xochicalcan Boy

      Calgary, 1985

      Battle’s Lull Near Passchendaele

      Chantelle

      Samson’s Lament

      Unforeseen Deliverance

      The Anonymous Streetwalker

      Helmsman In Search Of A Harbour

      Ken And Barbie Romance

      Second Thoughts

      Parting Regrets

      Somebody Else’s Mother

      The Abandoned Nest

      The Oration

      White Dwarf

      The Fields Of Choeung Ek

      America

      BOOK 2 ~ STORM’S LULL

      Under St. Hubert’s Sky

      David’s Harvest

      Cabbage-Sized Stones

      Break Up

      Letter To Aurora

      Unanswered Questions

      Breaking Free

      Transfusion

      The Sand Hills Veto

      Dream Spirit

      The Return Of The Prodigal Son

      Letter To Trevor, I

      Letter To Trevor, II

      Letter To Trevor, III

      Helping Hand

      The Sentencing Hearing

      Chor Leoni Harmonies

      The Circus Elephant

      Leaving Home

      Turning Point

      BOOK 3 ~ HARBOR

      The River’s Song

      Vestiges

      Havana

      Words Spoken Upon Gifting A Bottle

      Of Passion Fruit Body Butter

      Longing

      Shadows

      Camping Out

      A Smile In Autumn

      The Candle

      Paternal Ambition

      First Steps

      Father’s Love

      Progress In The Magic Kingdom

      Sailing By Moonglow

      Small Friend

      Reminiscences Of Lena Skinner

      The Closing Circle

      Miriam’s Last Wish

      The Closed Circle

      Learning To Live With A Phantom

      Old Soul

      The Fallen Ash

      Peace

      A Walk Together

      Acknowledgements

      About The Author

      Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys…. Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of, many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea, struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions….

      The Odyssey of Homer,

      Book I, Translated by

      Richard Lattimore (1967)

      INTRODUCTION

      We now inhabit a world in which it is possible to communicate with almost anyone else anywhere within mere seconds – not only with neighbors across the proverbial picket fence, but with family, friends, and business associates on the other side of the planet. No longer does the common man or woman inhabit a world in which the vast storehouse of human knowledge is, like the great Ptolemaic Library of Alexandria, accessible only to an elite few. Now the doors to the storehouse are wide open, accessible to all at the mere stroke of a computer key. Each of us, given the means and the inclination, is able to reach out to others in a way that would have been impossible even at the time of the Apollo Moon landing. If the human family continues to be divided today, that is less because of natural barriers created by oceans and mountains and more because of man-made walls and internet firewalls raised by religious and political autocrats who fear the future.

      So rapid has been the pace of technological and social change, so exponential the recent expansion of human knowledge and understanding, that there often seems to be a disconnect between the accepted truths of past generations and those of our own. Many even suggest we are present at the dawn of a new age in human affairs. People today are confronted with novel problems and choices unknown to past generations. The manner in which the vast majority of us now identify humanity’s most pressing threats is but one example. While the ever-present threat of terrorist attack and war continues to trouble the sleep of many, for the first time in our history people worry about the threat of environmental collapse in the near future and the extinction of the human species in the long term. Few people disagree that humanity is confronted with the very real prospect of desertification and of flooding on a vast scale caused by global warming.

      Yet amidst all the recent transformation and upheaval, I believe, there is great continuity in human affairs. The past is all around us, invoking inspiration, instilling fear at the possibilities ahead. Our history, both our common history as members of the same human family and our personal lived history, hold the solution to our understanding. The past offers instruction to those of us ready to study its lessons.

      Inspiration for many of the poems in Odyssey: Wanderings In The Global Village, some of which have been published before, derives from a look at the circumstances and experiences of people, both great and small, who live both presently and in the distant past. People like the blind strongman of ancient Judea depicted in Samson’s Lament, embittered by the betrayal of his beloved Delilah. And the youthful fifth-century Mexican hoop-ball player in The Xochicalcan Boy, who plays his sport knowing that the cost of victory will be his own sacrifice on an altar to the cruel gods who rule over his country. All of us are part of the same human family — a family defined not by nationality, not by race, not by political views nor religious beliefs, not by the times, but by our common African origin. As the biologist Stephen Gould once said, we are all products of a common ‘African twig’ in the tree of evolution.

      The voices in other poems belong to people who have come into contact with

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1