Miami-Dade Tower 26 - 2015 Sutphen MFD SPH100 100' MM TL 1500/300 so HS5517

On the Shortest Days

by Joyce Sutphen

At almost four in the afternoon, the wind picks up and sifts through the golden woods.

The tree trunks bronze and redden, branches on fire in the heavy sky that flickers

with the disappearing sun. I wonder what I owe the fading day, why I keep

my place at this dark desk by the window measuring the force of the wind, gauging

how long a certain cloud will hold that pink edge that even now has slipped into gray?

Quickly the lights are appearing, a lamp in every window and nests of stars

on the rooftops. Ladders lean against the hills and people climb, rung by rung, into the night.

April 14, 2024: The Wordsworth Effect, Joyce Sutphen

The Wordsworth Effect Joyce Sutphen

Is when you return to a place and it's not nearly as amazing as you once thought it was,

or when you remember how you felt about something (or someone) but you know you'll never feel that way again.

It's when you notice someone has turned down the volume, and you realize it was you; when you have the

suspicion that you've met the enemy and you are it, or when you get your best ideas from your sister's journal.

Is also-to be fair-the thing that enables you to walk for miles and miles chanting to yourself in iambic pentameter

and to travel through Europe with only a clean shirt, a change of underwear, a notebook and a pen.

And yes: is when you stretch out on your couch and summon up ten thousand daffodils, all dancing in the breeze.

--

Also: Dorothy Wordsworth, Jennifer Chang

Another by Joyce Sutphen: Living in the Body

Today in:

2023: Spring Poem, Colleen O’Connor 2022: Red, Mary Ruefle 2021: Bathing, Allison Seay 2020: A Small Moment, Cornelius Eady 2019: You Meet Someone and Later You Meet Their Dancing and You Have to Start Again, David Welch 2018: Henry Clay’s Mouth, Thomas Lux 2017: When Your Small Form Tumbled into Me, Tracy K. Smith 2016: Eve Recollecting the Garden, Grace Bauer 2015: from I Love A Broad Margin To My Life, Maxine Hong Kingston 2014: Gift, Czeslaw Milosz 2013: This Be The Verse, Philip Larkin 2012: We Did Not Make Ourselves, Michael Dickman 2011: Happiness (3), Jean Valentine 2010: When I Think, Jeanne Marie Beaumont 2009: The Poem, Franz Wright 2008: Morning Poem, Robin Becker 2007: Supple Cord, Naomi Shihab Nye 2006: Wish For a Young Wife, Theodore Roethke 2005: The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy, Jeffrey McDaniel

Dick Sutphen - Tape Instruction & Idea Manual - Valley of the Sun - 1981 (back cover)

Dr. Zhivago was playing at the Paramount Theater in St. Cloud. That afternoon, we went into Russia, and when we came out, the snow was falling—the same snow that fell in Moscow. The sky had turned black velvet. We’d been through the Revolution and the frozen winters. In the Chevy, we waited for the heater to melt ice on the windshield, clapping our hands to keep warm. On the highway, these two things: a song from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and that semi-truck careening by. Now I travel through the dark without you and sometimes I turn up the radio, hopeful the way you were, no matter what.

Joyce Sutphen, November, 1967 (in ‘First Words’, Red Dragonfly Press 2010)

Dr. Zhivago was playing at the Paramount Theater in St. Cloud. That afternoon, we went into Russia, and when we came out, the snow was falling—the same snow that fell in Moscow. The sky had turned black velvet. We’d been through the Revolution and the frozen winters. In the Chevy, we waited for the heater to melt ice on the windshield, clapping our hands to keep warm. On the highway, these two things: a song from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and that semi-truck careening by. Now I travel through the dark without you and sometimes I turn up the radio, hopeful the way you were, no matter what. “November, 1967” by Joyce Sutphen from First Words. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2010 Thanks to The Writer’s Almanac and “Reckonings”

the exorcism joyce sutphen

What affection I have for the earth, for the meadow already gone to golden,

for the burnt-orange reeds of the cattails, and the maple leaves etched in yellow

against a pale blue sky, and the black trunk, and the black branches, and the small black twigs.

In the morning, I remember how much I love the colors of the sky before

the sun rises, not any one day the same, changed by the haze in the valley,

the ridges of clouds riding high and white. In the evening I return—as the light

is caught on the horizon—a glow of opulence through the soldiering corn.

In Autumn by Joyce Sutphen

When I stepped ashore in this body

I was recognized at once and given a name.

My bones were smaller, but the shape of the cheek and the chin are the same.

This is the only body I know: this color my eyes, this color my skin.

Every scar is mine.

I have become as tall, as slim, as old as I am. My voice has carried the weight of what I had to say.

Words were scattered along the way: words on gravel roads, in hallways and staircases.

Words on a wire.

Somewhere in a field, my hair. Somewhere in a lake, my skin, some rooftop where my gaze rested, some star, a wish.

This is my address on earth: temporary, fragile, a name in the phonebook, at the moment, alive.

Christmas eve 1993

VA - Valley Of The Sun: Field Guide To Inner Harmony - Numero Group presents a compilation of tracks from the New Age label, 1977-1990

Both a marketing firm and metaphysical mission, Valley of the Sun synthesized style and spirituality to produce an extensive catalog that at once defines and defies new age music. Founder Dick Sutphen worked with tireless devotion to spread a message he believed could change the world for the better. This 18-track overview of VOTS’ fertile 1977-1990 period includes music from Upper Astral, Robert Slap & Steve Powell, David Naegele, David Storrs, Steven Cooper, and Gloria Thomas, a 24-page booklet with extensive liner notes, J-card scans, and a hint of Sedona sand. Subliminal hypnosis likely.

Selected poems from Dick Sutphen's 1971 collection dedicated to his true love Judith, "Sometimes the Words of Love Have No Words."

Read the full collection here, free.

Dick Sutphen – Astral Projection - Audio Set - Valley Of the Sun - 1980