Visions from Far and Near: Souls on Fire
A New Book from Michael Chacko Daniels
Morning in Santiniketan
I have a new book out: a beautifully handcrafted book of 51 haiku, "Morning in Santiniketan," published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata.
In this book of fifty-one haiku, my poetic journey starts with “Morning in Santiniketan” in West Bengal, India.
Santiniketan, or abode of peace, is a small town in the Indian state of West Bengal.
There in the early 1900s, Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore started a progressive school set in a natural environment; his goal was to stimulate joy in learning.
The place and time where each of the fifty-one haiku in this book took form were a Santiniketan for me.
~A Review excerpt~
(From the review by Melanie Daniels (no relation), April 8, 2011, in Hackwriters at the bottom of the following page: http://www.hackwriters.com/Zach.htm)
“Each evening a few of us read aloud our favorite haiku from Morning in Santiniketan to each other. When I asked one friend which one was her favorite, she replied that if she sat with any one of these haiku that it would become her favorite. That’s high praise!”
Ask your local library to request
Morning in Santiniketan
from:
Michael Chacko Daniels
Post Office Box 641724
San Francisco, CA 94109, USA
It's free for schools and public libraries worldwide!
A New Short Story
from Michael Chacko Daniels
Hackwriters, Sept/Oct 2010
Grandma and the Old Warrior
Grandma Jacob, dressed in a white cotton sari and blouse, opened the door of her new home on Rural Route 2, South Riverside, on a warm day in 1975 and looked into the blue eyes of the old Polish warrior.
The sounds of birds and bees and wasps and dragonflies, and a thousand other creatures filled her ears - all making the best use of the short Michigan summer.
His feet were planted at her doorstep like two oak trees. . . .
Bits of Excitement:
Haiku, Senryu, Haibun for Our Days
Last year, my sister, Molly Daniels-Ramanujan
encouraged me to write haiku and went on
to provide feedback on over five score haiku, senryu, and haibun
I have written since then,
including:
~ Five Senryu ~
(The Twig, The Spreading Chestnut Tree, Buffers,
Evening in San Francisco, and Waiting for the Taxidermist)
which Grey Sparrow Journal published in
Issue #5, Spring 2010
~ Two Haibun ~
Rainy Day Memories (of Bombay)
which Hackwriters published in June 2010 and
which Hackwriters published in July 2010
~ One Haiku ~
Morning in Shantiniketan,
which Eclectica Magazine published
in their Oct/Nov 2009 issue,
~ Ten Haiku ~
published in its Autumn 2009 issue.
The Battered Suitcase, the flagship
publication of Vagabondage Press, LLC,
"promotes intelligent and
imaginative art and fiction."
Below are the links for your reading pleasure:
For:
Cold Stone
Big Sun Country
Summer
Moontime
Raccoon Picnic
Puffball Lion
Wood Song
Words
Trash Talk
Haiku for Spring 2009
http://www.vagabondagepress.com/90901/V2I2PT7.html
For:
Morning in Santiniketan
http://www.eclectica.org/v13n4/daniels.html
Also, please be sure to check the biographical
note in Eclectica @
http://www.eclectica.org/v13n4/contributor_notes.html#daniels
Enjoy. It's free.
~ ~ ~
My Soul Is on Fire
Hello Everyone.
November 4, 2008 was my happiest day
in 32 years as an American citizen.
I'm still savoring the results.
My friend David says, "My soul is on fire."
My friend Gary asks,
"Can you share why Nov. 4th was
the happiest day in the last 32 years?"
I reply,
"The son of a Kenyan Muslim man was elected
to the presidency of the United States."
I was in Berkeley on the Friday
after Christmas 2008, about 30 years
after I first connected with
the Center for Independent Living (CIL)
on Telegraph Ave as a
Volunteer In Service To America (VISTA)
with the single-minded objective of
building ramps for wheelchair users
for a year. Little did I know
how long my work would be connected
to Telegraph Ave!
In the clear, cool afternoon,
Telegraph Ave still seemed as if
it were opening windows to many universes.
The past year has been kind to me:
Several of my short stories were published,
plus this month a poem, the second
published in the United States since 2005.
Here's my latest success with a story
that I've been working on for years and years:
Naga in the Negev
After repeatedly dreaming that centuries ago he was a famous Bedouin healer in the Negev, Abdoul, son of Cochin Cohn, saw himself living in the Negev and nowhere else, if he were to remain in the land of Israel. So, on his thirtieth birthday, this descendent of an ancient line of South Indian Jews, collected a few personal items from his parents’ Jerusalem home and walked toward the Negev on his powerful little legs until an immigrant from Chicago gave him a ride. . . .
Read on @
http://www.hackwriters.com/Negevstories.htm
It's free!
The italics got stripped and the paragraphs got
changed in the conversion process at Hackwriters.
And here's the link to my poem
The Flea-Driven Traveler
which appeared in Quicksilver
http://academics.utep.edu/Default.aspx?tabid=56347
Quicksilver is a literary magazine published by students
in the University of Texas at El Paso's online MFA program.
My best wishes for an exciting year.
Michael Chacko Daniels
PS: Feel free to pass my story and poem forward.
About the Author,
Michael Chacko Daniels
I was born in Aden when it was under the British, grew up in Bombay, came to the United States in 1967, studied at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism for a year, worked for The Asia Foundation for four years, and became a Volunteer In Service To America (VISTA) in the 1970s.
As a community worker in and out of VISTA, I got to work with and for poor American communities in Michigan and Central and Northern California, and to discover the America hidden from the mass media of the period. For most of the decade, I organized people around housing issues, including fair housing; later, I built wheelchair ramps for persons with disabilities. In the late 1980s, I began helping homeless people find jobs in Berkeley and Oakland and helped organize the Jobs for Homeless Consortium.
Retired from community work since 2005,
I live and write in San Francisco.
My works have appeared in Apollo's Lyre, Cricket Online Review, Denver Syntax, dragonfire, Eclectica, Hackwriters, Indelible Kitchen, Quicksilver, SHALLA Magazine, and The Battered Suitcase. Books: Split in Two (Poetry, 2004), Anything Out of Place Is Dirt (Novel, 2004), and That Damn Romantic Fool (Novel, 2005); all three are from Writers Workshop, Kolkata.
Website: http://indiawritingstation.com/american-journey-writer-clown/
Visions From Far And Near
Since January 7, 2005, my daily travel has been chiefly up and down the information superhighway, a magical, hypnotic dream path, which has turned up for me--a childhood pal from Bombay, the Urbs Prima in Indis, and a couple of relatives from my parents' birthplace--Kerala, India's fabled God's Own Country, all of whom I'd lost contact with in the 1950s after they set out on their long, exciting, challenging, migratory journeys; plus the wonderful people from two continents who have taken time from their exciting work remaking our small planet to share their visions through the medium of--
US-India Writing Station
Valerie Street
Hong Hunt
Ian Moore
Peter Kline
Ralph Dranow
Joseph Kaval
Quentine Acharya
Amanda Gerrie
Brenda L. Coleman
Edathil Prabhakar Menon
Tricia Holloway
Judith Anne Buchman
Richa
Mona Lee
Prakash Joshi
Neil Marcus
Marisa Fernando
Blair R. Williams
Rev. Carol Estes
Gary Ivanek
Dr. Tezuka Osamu
Read More @
http://indiawritingstation.com/visions-for-today/
Michael Chacko Daniels
Email