Words by Joe

This WordPress is primarily a vehicle for my poetry. Poems will be posted as they are written, and older ones as well, if I decide to revisit them. Also included is the occasional musing and any information about upcoming readings. I’m self-publishing a book of poems I wrote 2005-2007 that I hope to begin selling before my move to Cambodia in August.

With my poetry, I enjoy most trying to draw the reader out into the wilderness, either literally, conceptually, or emotionally, into a place in which they feel uncomfortable. I try to create problems. I believe that a big part of life is constantly reflecting on pre-existing notions about religion, nature, what it is to be human, ideas about love, concerns about civilization, prejudices, biases, beliefs, skepticisms, etc. In some cases we can be correct in our views. But it will only help strengthen the view’s argument if we audit it within our hearts. As a lover of history, a lot of my work contains classical themes in an acknowledgment to those whose resonating words I can only hope to echo.

My influences include the writings of Pablo Neruda, the Zen Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenko, T.S. Eliot, Baudelaire, W.H. Auden, Dante, the mystic Rumi, e.e. cummings, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bukowski, and the Taoist philosopher Chuang-Tse. Beyond them, other influences include the films of Godard and Kurosawa; the novels of Nabokov, Vonnegut, and Pynchon; the art of Klimt, O’Keefe, Hieronymous Bosch, Gustave Dore, and Dali; the philosophers Heidegger, Sartre, and Plato; and of course nature, the weather, celestial bodies, etc., etc.

Thanks for reading and supporting my efforts to make a little sense of this world filled with so much absurdity.

Joe Clinkenbeard

Coming Up:

Nothing, presently.