Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Bob Boldt

There has been so much to say of late, but I have neglected to say anything due to personal issues inhibiting my creative life. That, and I just got out of the habit of contributing.
    In spite of this dearth, I link to Moristotle & Co. continually. I hope the site will stay up because it is a great link to some of the best of my work, beautifully displayed.
    I cannot express how much your mentorship has meant to me and, as I hear, to my two Mikes as well. Introducing them to you has been one of the great blessings of my life. You have been as great a stimulus to their creative lives as you have been to mine.
    Is there any chance you might be available in an advisory capacity to an aspiring poet from time to time?

Copyright © 2023 by Bob Boldt

Highways and Byways: The Finale& Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Maik Strosahl

I wanted to go out with a bang, but was struggling for a big idea until an old family friend posted a photo of Twelve Apostles or Walking Iris flowers blooming. What a joyful explosion of color!

Photo by Mary Wingard Crain

    I hope you enjoy this final burst and I will see you around this big, bright, beautiful world!

Parting Words from Moristotle

Portrait of Moristotle
by Susan C. Price

By Moristotle

Why am I retiring from blogging? For a long time, I have known my sun was slowly setting, but it seems now to be sinking fast, as memory and memories fade. Some mornings even my fingers can’t remember what was the best way I’ve yet found to hold the coffee grinder to brush out the shards of bean.
    But the existing content will still be here, and more posts are already scheduled for August – a few more statements of farewell (suggested by Maik Strosahl, to whom I’m indebted for the idea), a “Father’s Art” column by André Duvall, and poems by Maik, Michael H. Brownstein, and Eric Meub, whose sonnet “Afterlife” will appear last because its title rather caps my going off.

Boldt Words & Images: Sawdust (a poem and its back story)

By Bob Boldt

Not much talk in my father’s shop.
I stood for hours watching him work
helping where I could. 
I remember how it felt when my sweat
caught the ticklish maple dust,
in Tinley Park, Illinois, 1947. 
 

With apologies to Joe Hill (a poem)

By Bob Boldt

This is my latest poem, my latest attempt to express my outrage at our treatment of the greatest journalist, certainly the bravest journalist who ever drew breath. Of course, the horrific torture of Julian Assange represents not just a crime against one man but an attempt to silence all journalists and publishers and put an end to the troublesome First Amendment as well.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: The Path of St. Vincent

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Maik Strosahl



Let’s just cut to the chase on this one. I blame Bob Boldt.
    I had a really hard day at work and woke up around 11:45, tossed and turned for about half an hour, got up and looked at my social media. Dang it if Bob didn’t change his background and now I am wide awake!
    It’s a piece of artwork titled “The Path of St Vincent,” which Bob produced with black and colored inks flowing out of that creative mind of his.

Hobnobbing with the Philosophers: Cursive

Detail from “The School of Athens”
a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520)
[Click image to call up
all published instalments]

By Maik Strosahl

Bob Boldt recently shared a painting of his that took me back to the 5th grade at McKinley Elementary in Moline, Illinois.

“Crazy Rhythm,”
by Bob Boldt, 2003

Goines On: Notes on random cards

Click image for more vignettes

Thinking about Bob Boldt’s recent memoir, Goines shuddered at the unavoidable comparison: Boldt was drawing his life on a cinema screen; Goines was scribbling notes on cards cut from vendors’ boxes and dropping them along the road or about the house. Whatever drawing of Goines might emerge or be assembled was but a shimmering mirage. Goines understood as little of who he was as he understood of his muse, of whom he had asked:
    Who are you?

Copyright © 2022 by Moristotle

Things Can Always Get Worse: A Memoir

Part 3 of 3

By Bob Boldt

Just as we reached the end of the hall, a door slid open. “Welcome to my study.” Frederic nodded to each of us respectfully, formally. Frederic de Arechaga was born in the Basque region riding the land between Spain and the sea. Fiercely independent, theirs is a history of struggles up to and including the present. Like Kim, whose history turned out a bit dodgy, some of Frederic’s history may be better left to speculation as well.

Things Can Always Get Worse: A Memoir

Part 2 of 3

By Bob Boldt

Kim On Wong said he was born in China and was from a monastery where they practiced dance. He claimed no memory of his parents. He jumped ship, so to speak, when his troupe was on tour in Manhattan. Thanks to the sophisticated outlook of the Buddhist priests, he was taught rudimentary English and even Science, along with his dance instruction.

Things Can Always Get Worse: A Memoir

Part 1 of 3

By Bob Boldt

No matter how good or bad things got, Mother could never shake her unspoken belief that things could always get worse. I had my own version, which was, things could suddenly go bad in a nano-second, or be rescued in the next.

Highways and Byways: Clarity from the Swirling of Clouds

By Maik Strosahl

I owe much credit to the individuals who have inspired me through the years. Take these last four years in Missouri, for instance.
    After a few months alone in the truck, I was starving for fellowship with creative minds. I found a writing group in Columbia, but their focus seemed more on prose than the poetry I longed to write. My wife and I saw a notice of a local author book sale in Jefferson City and decided to see if we could find like-minds there.

Happy Birthday

To all good people
born on December 21

By Moristotle

[Originally published on December 21, 2019.]

Because today is the birthday of my son, Contributing Editor Geoffrey Dean, I would like to dedicate today’s [re]publication of poet Bob Boldt’s “Caruso in Honduras” to him and to all other good people born on this date, in whatever year.
    Honored individuals (and everyone else, good or bad): don’t deprive yourselves of the joy of reading Bob’s poem and watching and, especially, listening to his video performance and the video performances of Luciano Pavarotti & Lucio Dalla and Andrea Giuffredi.

Boldt Words & Images: Caruso in Honduras

By Bob Boldt

[Originally published on December 21, 2019.]










A couple stands by the wind-blown bus sign.
His chin, still fuzzy, merely a boy,
an unstrung guitar string hanging there.
With three strings he begins his song.

Boldt Words & Images: Are we living in a simulation?

By Bob Boldt

[Editor’s Note: This fine essay was submitted over two years ago, but we never got it off the ground. We are prompted to publish it now because of something revealed by a recent book review: “The Novel That Riveted France During Lockdown Arrives in the U.S.” (Roger Cohen, New York Times, November 23):

Yet in the end the double anomaly at the heart of the novel – the upending of time in a world that discovers it is simulated – captured a moment when the pandemic stopped the world and existence veered toward the virtual.]

Are we living in a simulation? And what if we are? A 23-minute documentary film, What If the Earth Does Not Exist?¹, explains what “living in a simulation” means and why the idea is taken seriously as a possibility. The film is imaginatively and descriptively visual. I had seen many of its demonstrations before, but they have been effectively re-imagined here. The film makers spend so much time on the video game series Grand Theft Auto, however, that I suspect coin may have changed hands – maybe I’m just joking with this observation.

Boldt Words & Images: History’s Rhymes 9/11/73

Convergences

By Bob Boldt

[Appeared here originally four years ago today, on November 30, 2017.]

The poem below comes from a portfolio of poems that I submitted during fall semester for the “Poetry Workshop” at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. I hope in the coming months to publish a few more of these poems on Moristotle & Co.
    As a frame for today’s poem, I have adapted from the essay that accompanied the portfolio some hopefully relevant reflections on poetry and a poet.

Interview: The Jeff City Five

Poets in Collaboration

Bob Boldt

Michael H.
Brownstein

Dick Dalton

Kurt Groner

Maik Strosahl

Interviewed by Moristotle

Of the five poets pictured above, you’ll likely recognize Bob Boldt, Michael H. Brownstein, and Maik Strosahl as staff members of Moristotle & Co. Dick Dalton & Kurt Groner are new to us by virtue of having participated in the collaboration “When We Were Savages,” which appeared here over the last five days. In this interview, I hope to investigate that collaboration.
    Welcome, Jeff City Poets, and thanks for agreeing to be interviewed!
    My questions are set in italics, and each of you is invited to speak up and be heard.

When We Were Savages – III (A collaborative poem by five Jeff City Poets)

III. Minik Wallace
(c. 1890 – Oct. 29, 1918)

By Bob Boldt

I lie here, one in a sea
of cots and coughing bodies,
heaving our last.

I lie, Minik, the first and last,

Inuit son of a mighty hunter.

Highways and Byways: Days in the Sun

By Maik Strosahl

A couple of months ago, I read an article about an 8-year-exposure photograph that was published by the University of Hertfordshire Press Office.
    In 2012, a simple camera made from an aluminum beer can, duct tape, and light-sensitive photographic paper was attached, facing skyward, to the side of the University of Hertfordshire’s Bayfordbury Observatory. Fine arts student Regina Valkenborgh placed it there and then forgot about it. Eight years and one month later it was found, revealing an image tracing eight years’ worth of solar paths across the sky.

Boldt Words & Images: Screen Savior

By Bob Boldt

Watching star beams float over and around

mushrooms in a pastel forest of soft, silk soil,

I was, for a second, maybe less, in my parent’s

living room listening to “Captain Midnight”