Tag: Doug Stanfield

North of Tombstone, 3 A M – Poetry Reading by Doug Stanfield

Watch the poetry reading performed by Val Cole.

NORTH OF TOMBSTONE, 3AM  by Doug Stanfield:

Get to know the poet:

1) What is the theme of your poem?

How a harsh land shapes the people who survive its challenges. In this case, it is the desert along the Mexican border in Arizona.

2) How would you like people to respond when they read or watch your poetry reading?

I would hope the reader will get a feeling for how life at the margins might be for ordinary people, and for the law of unintended consequences. I hope this piece will allow for some empathy for those who know how to survive.

3) How long have you been writing poetry?

For a little over two years. I had a career as a writer for about 35 years, mostly in journalism (newspapers)

4) Do you have a favorite poet?

I have two or three favorites, actually. My first is Carl Sandburg but lately I’ve been reading the excellent work of Jim Harrison and the North Carolina writer named Sheri Smith. I think my favorites tend to be for those who write more in the narrative style, almost prose, but not quite. And I like those who have a basic affection for our common humanity, rather than those who moan about things too much.

5) What influenced you to submit to WILDsound and have your poetry performed by a professional actor?

You mean besides the ego trip? ?

6) Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?

I’m working on a novel, mystery, with lots of sex.

7) What is your passion in life?

At my, age waking up every day is all the passion I need. I figure if I wake up then everything else is irrelevant, and I try to have the best time I can.

 

 

Director/Producer: Matthew Toffolo
Casting: Sean Ballantyne
Editor: John Johnson

North of Tombstone, 3 A.M, Poetry by Doug Stanfield

Shadows and silhouettes made by the waning moon
Slide past and disappear in the direction of California’a promise.
Off to the south somewhere over the sand and arroyos and cacti
Is Old Mexico. A few miles, no more.
A small town slips into view through the train window:
Safeway. Ace Hardware. A Benson Fuel station glares at a Shell station on the other corner.

Genre: Philosophy

North of Tombstone, 3 A.M by Doug Stanfield

http://hemmingplay.com

Shadows and silhouettes made by the waning moon
Slide past and disappear in the direction of California’a promise.
Off to the south somewhere over the sand and arroyos and cacti
Is Old Mexico. A few miles, no more.
A small town slips into view through the train window:
Safeway. Ace Hardware. A Benson Fuel station glares at a Shell station on the other corner.
Ten-thousand tons glide to a stop so softly it would not wake a baby with colic.

An old woman with a bonnet lifts a bag over the curb,
Joining our travels. Her husband watches that she
Gets on board, hands shoved in jeans pockets, then turns back to the pickup for the long
Drive home in the dark, another desert sunrise a few miles down the dusty road.

Rolling again, now. Eastward toward a corner of New Mexico, then El Paso and Texas.

The car rocks softly, the miles drift by, the engine far ahead
The horn blast at crossings barely heard and I feel myself drifting off to sleep again.

I wonder about the kind of man who would come here
In the early times, on horseback, or on foot
Across this dry emptiness that only wanted to suck the water from them?

Was it silver? Land? Water?
Or simply that those men had managed to run
All other choice away somehow,
And this dry place, full of ghosts and questions,
Was the last that would take them…
All human bonds snapped, rejected,
Starting over where no one could know your shame.

Indifferent it was to anything
But the water in them.

 

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Deadline: FREE POETRY Festival – Get your poem made into a MOVIE and seen by 1000s. Three options to submit:
http://www.wildsound.ca/poetrycontest.html

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