The Marriage of Thought and Feeling

We think in words. But I also believe we think in images as a young child may before owning a grasp of language. Perhaps this is why our dreams are so vivid, and perhaps why they are more fantastical and charged with emotion than our waking moments – where experience is not framed by reason.

Thus art must reach beyond the mere empirical, pointing to what may not yet be seen but only imagined or felt, establishing a fuller, more accurate account of our reality.

Poetic writing, whether in verse or prose, is a bridge that in the process of marrying what we can reason in our minds and feel in our hearts, gives “name” or consciousness to our experience.

Press On

I imagine people in each century brooding over circumstances of their own times, feeling closed in as if the world were laying blocks before them where it seems everything they understand of spirit and meaning and value is being countered. Today, people want immediate answers; they want to get on with making life work for them.

But society doesn’t take the time to learn what we are made of, nor value it, intrinsically. We must press on nonetheless. For pursuing what you were made or built to do well, brings a joy and fulfillment that cannot surface while going against the grain because it is not manufactured from our will or desire, but was formed within our fiber at the very beginnings of time. It is no wonder pursuit of those talents brings contentment and peace.

You would think, the world would respond positively, or step aside and respect what the universe had naturally bestowed. But the world is too busy manufacturing its own version of meaning and purpose, and once you get so far beyond what nature has ordained, life becomes artificial and leaves no room for art, except one that reflects back its own artificiality.

I Want to Be One of Them

A number of years ago a friend suggested I listen to "Gabriel's Oboe" on one of Amy Grant's Christmas albums. Then a few years after that I found this version and discovered it was part of Ennio Morricone's score for the motion picture, The Mission. There is no other rendition, as far as I'm concerned. I believe that is Morricone himself conducting, and what I would give to actually find an entire performance recording from this group of musicians, the way they play as a single body, their interpretation and grace.

I believe this version includes a frame or setting that is from the original score in addition to the melody of "Gabriel's Oboe."
Hope you enjoy.





Ennio Morricone "Gabriel's Oboe" The Mission

What Have We Been Up To?

Getting a website designed and published for Vengiletti.

It has been more than just a summer project, but we’ve really worked it hard these last few months. So now that the website is launched, the sparse postings will hopefully be a thing of the past.

You are invited to visit vengiletti.com

While there, you can explore and order a copy of Walk Into A Moment, the chapbook and inaugural publication of Vengiletti Press. Spend time reading and listening to poems, view more Vengiletti photographs and relax with music in the background. You’ll even discover a link to this blog so all is at your fingertips.

We look forward to sharing more frequent reflections here on poetic image and thought and hope to find you at our new website, vengiletti.com

"They Should Have Sent A Poet"

Several weeks ago we watched a movie I hadn’t seen in quite some time, Contact, the 1997 movie with Jodie Foster. She finds herself at a loss for words as she struggles to describe the sights and feelings while traveling through a part of space no human had ever seen, at a speed no human had ever traveled. A scientist, equipped with knowledge and the ability to analyze, define and record , could not describe the beauty of the experience. She confesses, “they should have sent a poet.”

There are times I want a poet with me.

But I don’t need one to ravel off angry words or to flash before me snapshot scenes of squalor, or tease me with clever metaphors.

I want a poet who can depict what I cannot yet see, to give words to what I can only feel. A meaning to my experience.

Where does that kind of knowing come from?