My Dear Friends:
Launched on the first day of 2013, NeverEnding Story crossed the 2.128 million view mark this morning (FYI: NeverEnding Story reached 1. 826 Million pageviews on January 1, 2024)
I am grateful to everyone who has been a part of this poetry journey. And NeverEnding Story now seeks the haiku and tanka that can bite and bite hard.
The accepted haiku and tanka will be translated into Chinese and posted on NeverEnding Story and X. And you are welcome to follow me on X at @ericcoliu (5 following, 4,754 followers).
And I'm here to to announce I will not be moving to Bluesky or another friendly social media/platform.
It's because
On #ElonMusk's X, one of the things a #Twitter #Poet is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions, especially the ones regarding #ConvictedFelon #DonaldTrump
-- paraphrasing Salman Rushdie #quote #writing #FightBack
In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.
-- Toni Morrison, "No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear"
And
A poem after a poem after a poem is POWER!
-- paraphrasing Margaret Atwood
To conclude today's new year post, I would to like share with you the latest entry of Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLIII: "Jimmy Carter"
in memory of Jimmy Carter, a bluntly honest man of Faith who follow[ed] the Prince of Peace in the New Testament (The New Yorker, Dec.29, 2024)
these worn pages
of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
in snowlight
Carter's word-bombs bunker-bust
IDF's tunnel-deep lie-mines
Happy New Year, 2025! Peace on Earth
Chen-ou
Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLIV: "new year of the same fate"
A New Year of the Same Fate
alone, lost
in the calm between fireballs
this Gazan boy's gaze
a two-thousand-yard stare
at the Great Beyond ...
with lifeless eyes
cast to Gaza's ashy skies
this girl's face
summons a grief
as old as Time
FYI: The New Yorker, Dec.29, 2024: Remembering a Visit to Jimmy Carter in Plains, Georgia
Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin spent thirteen days secluded near Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain and produced a peace treaty that has endured for forty years. It was Jimmy Carter’s signature accomplishment and one that has never been matched in the region, despite decades of strenuous attempts.
...on his first day in the Oval Office, in January, 1977, he stunned his Vice-President, Walter Mondale, by saying that his first priority was to bring peace to the Middle East. Carter later told me that he believed God had put him into the Presidency for that very reason.
...So why do you think God wants peace in the Holy Land?” I asked. “Because we follow the Prince of Peace in the New Testament,” he responded.
In retrospect, Carter’s priorities in the White House—the environment, energy conservation, peace, health care—were remarkably prescient, and certainly his personal qualities offer a dismaying contrast to so much of the present state of American politics. Perhaps his piety soured the American public on him. Other qualities—his doggedness, earnestness, sincerity, blunt honesty—were in sharp contrast to those of Reagan, who proved irresistible to the public.
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