I joined the Navy when I was 19, to combat elements of myself I did not know how to live with. This is something I have had mixed feelings about over the years. I joined during the Forever Wars, which I was strongly opposed to, but my moral code isn't really the reason I washed out during Service School: to quote the Waybacks, "they caught me reading On the Road /and threw me on my ass /there were a bunch of other factors/ which I won't enumerate". Still, it became part of me. The decision to join the Navy led my life in new directions I never could have predicted, and was ultimately a good one. I have never been prouder of it than I was today, when I wore my US Navy uniform hat to join the millions of Americans at No Kings rallies across the country. I was only in for five months. That's five months longer than the man who just wasted 148 million dollars on a giant military parade while waging war on his own citizens in LA. I will continue to do all I can to ...
Posts
It's been a long time since I posted here. This is a rough moment for the country, and one I long saw coming. They threw my Senator to the floor and cuffed him the other day. Things will get worse before they get better. It is the duty of all people of good conscience to speak out against injustice in whatever way they can. The Verse News is providing an important service for the time, as a place for protest poetry aware of current events. Here is my latest. The video accompaniment was editors' choice, and a perfect one. To Democrats Waiting for Midterms to Save Us
Check out this review of PMotS from the lovely Attic Voices!
atticvoices.com/2019/poems-mostly-of-the-sea-review "... I think I’ve figured out the connection between it all. We live in a time of extreme climate crisis. Everyone knows it, though an unfortunate amount of people still insist on denying it. It is in a time such as the one we live in, that a book such as Kaivo’s becomes particularly relevant. Her poems denote a state of disaster that the world currently lives in, and yet, they urge us towards rebirth and renewal. Everything feels fresher by the sea because it’s such a pure, raw sense of nature, untouched by man. It’s just our duty to keep it that way."
Sonnet
It is true that I know not what I do: I have no money, and no publicist. I hope to have some ratings, good and true and likes on instagram if I persist. However, when it comes to social things and of all social things, media most I act as bound by certain unseen strings I act as though I am, in fact, a ghost. I go back to it, every now and then to build my online presence and my brand. Ignore it and ignore again, again. At least I cannot say that I have been banned. Cruel market's unseen hand, harken to me: Send me sense, without pressing scrutiny.
Goodreads Book Giveaway Poems Mostly of the Sea by Jenne Kaivo Giveaway ends October 06, 2019. See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter Giveaway I've started a Kindle giveaway for 100 free copies of PMotS! The hardcopy giveaway ended yesterday, with 10 winners, but I forgot to post it here. 1,209 people signed up anyway, so that went pretty well.
Anglerfish From its very beginning life has been tenacious even where the sun that sustains is away. Death creates life and life is voracious. We should all take a note from the patience of anglerfish, with their teeth and their twinkling lights. There are soggy rock places without any lights where long pillars grow because the tenacious water drips down as unstopping as anglerfish. You can erode but you can't take away. A cave may be hidden but never forgotten: it will be revealed, because life is voracious and the river that eats through the rock is voracious like the empty-gut cores of the heavenly lights. Two atoms merge, burst in pain, are forgotten but not without purpose, because their tenacious deathsongs light worlds that are deathsongs away. In the distance, they look just like anglerfish. When I am asleep I have jaws like an anglerfish lined with spike fangs, and I'm dull and voracious, like my slimy-fish past which will not go away. ...