The Secret Thread: Literature & Spiritual Life: NEWSFLASH: DUKE ALTUM BREAKS INTO PRINT WITH CLEVER MUSE ON LIFE'S "PHRASES"

Friday, March 31, 2006

NEWSFLASH: DUKE ALTUM BREAKS INTO PRINT WITH CLEVER MUSE ON LIFE'S "PHRASES"

Congratulations are in order to The Secret Thread's own DUKE ALTUM, who has recently learned he will become a PUBLISHED POET for the first time. We here at the Thread consider this to be a celebratory event, and the editors send our fervent and well-deserved (we feel) congratulations.

Published under a different name, Duke's "Phrases I'm Going Through" is going to appear in the Spring/Lent 2006 issue of an online Catholic journal called "Dappled Things", which itself is named from the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

"Phrases" is an exceptionally clever collection of small poems that each begin with a common cliche - phrases we're all used to hearing so many times that many of them have lost their meaning. In Duke's poems, each phrase is taken as starting point to a new meaning, an often enlightening and revelatory one. This is truly one of Duke's most original and interesting works as an aspiring poet and they must be read to be appreciated.

The poems will be published online. "Dappled Things" can be seen at http://www.dappledthings.org. It's an attractive site and a great place to air out Duke's first published poem in a public setting.

Perhaps this post will lead TST's many readers to begin a groundswell of demand for Duke to share some of his "phrases", and the insights he's found in them, with Secret Thread readers in his celebrated, near-legendary POTW series. If enough of you write in......

CONGRATULATIONS, DUKE - WHO JOINS THE ANCIENT TRADITION AND UNIVERSAL ARMY OF POETS FOR ALL TIME........TST readers, it's only the beginning.......

Signed,
Mutt Ploughman
Secret Thread contributor and co-editor

1 comment:

Duke Altum said...: Shucks, what can I say Mutt??? Thanks a lot for your (unpaid) commercial here... I was pretty surprised but also gratified that Dappled Things saw something in these little experimental poems to make them worth running in their on-line journal. I hope that a few people out there might read them and enjoy them. Either way though, it has been an interesting experience for me to write them, and as I go on I will surely continue to try and write original, thoughtful poetry that attempts to say something new about old truths/themes.; 8:59 PM

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Duke Altum's Recommended Films

Monsters (2010) – As many have already said, calling Monsters a movie about an alien occupation of Earth seems to do this fascinating, original film a disservice. Certainly the fact that huge, bioluminescent squid-like extraterrestrials are running amok through the jungles of Central America is an important (and entertaining) element of the plot, but anyone coming into this one looking for non-stop, Aliens-style action or special effects eye candy a la the concurrent alien invasion flick Skyline is going to be sorely disappointed. Instead, what you have with Monsters is an intriguing and meditative hybrid of road movie, post-apocalyptic thriller and surprisingly believable human drama. Director Gareth Edwards wrote, edited and created special effects for the film on his own, which gave him the freedom to make exactly the kind of movie he wanted to make - that is, a love story that just happens to feature alien life forms ominously howling and lurking in the background (this approach, by the way, gives the film its pervasive suspense and intensity, as you are as in the dark as the characters are about when the next encounter with a pissed-off, tentacled alien might occur). The many scenes of unscripted, natural banter between the lead actors as they trek across the "infected zone" and get to know one another help you, crucially, to identify with them enough to care by the final act - which provides an unexpected, subtle twist that gives the entire story added poignancy and irony. I am sure that a great many viewers of this unusual film will come out feeling somewhere between perplexed and downright cheated, and Edwards does provide so little backstory about the aliens and what they might be up to that one may well wonder why they were in the movie at all (and, justifiably, why the film was ever called "Monsters"). But I found that their mysterious, vaguely menacing presence gave the entire story a kind of haunted and other-wordly atmosphere that reminded me a bit of the best bits of James Cameron's The Abyss. I guess you could say that early encounters with new life forms - like those with potential lovers - can be both exhilarating and weirdly disconcerting at the same time.