Spring Ghazals, One More Time!

A happy Friday to you all!  No Homegrown Radio this week—Caroline Pond is in the midst of various music projects & I’m most grateful that she was able to make the time to participate in the series—she provided a couple of dynamite songs.  If you haven’t checked out her music yet, you can hear both the songs Ms Pond submitted here on last week’s post.  You’ll also find links to her CDs there.  Homegrown Radio will return next month—& the featured artist will be Eberle Umbach!  There will be some interesting music for sure—all solo pieces composed & performed by Eberle herself.

In other news, a surprise: The Spring Ghazals blog is back, tho with a bit different format than in the past.  Now, I know regular readers have heard about the “return” of The Spring Ghazals so often that they may picture it as like the monster in one of those 80s horror films who just won’t stay dead.  But really, this incarnation is quite different.

From here on out, I’ll be posting the actual poems from the book, two per week (I’m thinking Wednesday & Saturday as an ongoing schedule, tho this week’s poem is up today, Friday).  That means there should be posts thru July, at which point I’ll assess what the blog’s ongoing function might be.  But until then, it’ll be all poetry, all the time.  The poems will be posted in “book order,” with the first poem, “Ghazal 4/24” appearing today, & then one poem each on subsequent Wednesdays & Friday until the manuscript is complete.  You can read “Ghazal 4/24” here.

& as it will be all poems, there won’t be any explication, explanation or background material.  The reason for this is simple—I’ve decided it’s time for me to let go of “my” Spring Ghazals & let them be yours, dear readers.  Of course, I’ll be happy to field questions & comments on the poems, & I’d encourage readers to do this if the spirit so moves them.   

But although this new format is intended to let the book go out, unmitigated as it were, to the readers, it also presents you as readers with a choice.  You can read all the poems on the blog over the course of these next several months, gratis, or you can shell out actual money to have a book.  An interesting thought I’ve been entertaining recently is that books may not go obsolete as some have predicted, but instead become “premium” items.  Just as many recording artists now allow you to “pay what you want” (sometimes even without setting a minimum price) for downloadable music, but charge for CDs or, even more especially, vinyl, the future of publishing” may follow suit in some way, especially as the net allows poets & fiction writers to become independent artists, operating outside the traditional publishing models.  Time, as usual, will tell—even if it doesn’t tell us.

So, please swing on by The Spring Ghazals from time to time to read the poems! 

& now for a words from our sponsors!


The Spring Ghazals can be purchased at any of the following online outlets:

Lulu
Amazon
Barnes & Noble (new—& a bargain at $11.40 US!)
Amazon UK (£7.94)

Both Amazon & Lulu have the book for $12 US.