Free Stallion Poems

INTRODUCTION Introducing one's self is a difficult task. Talking about yourself in the narrative does not give a clear view of who you are; that is why I asked my dear friend Jack to write a more biographic opening. But what I found from the experience of putting this book together was an overwhelming sense of self-understanding, a sort of third-person love for whoever has been growing inside of me for years. I am blessed to be surrounded with the kind of love that does not cater to the spectacle of a career based on an image, as the entertainment business makes me feel at times. It's the kind of love that pursues and pushes the constant fine-tuning of an artist who funnels the truth through one woman's eyes. And my eyes have seen the best and worst of both worlds. This is what I hope to share with you through this collection of poems, Free Stallion.I began writing poetry at a very early age, maybe about eight or nine years old. I wrote essays and short stories with my father, who heartily encouraged my budding imagination. Growing up, my parents surrounded me with the many creative influences they were fortunate to have, from artists like George Herms, Wallace Berman, Dean Stockwell, Bruce Conner, Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper, David Lynch, Neil Young, and many more. I watched and learned and, like a sponge, I absorbed everything around me. My father taught me that "the meaning of life is the search for the meaning of life," an expression that I live by when trying to write down something I cannot explain. The search is always the most important thing. He and my mother opened me up to philosophers, writers, and poets such as J. Krishnamurti, Deepak Chopra, Diane Di Prima, Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Wanda Coleman, and Nietzsche. Within the world of poetry, there was one person who stood as a rebel warrior for the sonnet of my conscience. Jack Hirschman, a man I emulated style-wise as a little girl, was the father figure and master in encouraging and training my existential concepts and views on womanhood, Hollywood, the death of a high school love, politics, and just about everything that has come my way to date. Jack was initially a professor of English at UCLA and has spent the rest of his life translating the telling work of poets all over the world. He translates in nine languages. Jack is a proletarian and an activist for the working class, and has a raw intuition on matters of the heart. He's a bear of a man, gentle, vibrant, and full of youthful energy, and he has a passionate love of life. Those who are fortunate enough to come into contact with him or hear him read poetry can be changed for life. Though he translates others, his best translation to date is one of human emotion into words of any kind -- that is a spectacular gift.My style has gone through many stages, and I am sure it will continue to do so. A few of the pieces are dream sequences. For example, the poem "Train" was inspired by a repeating dream about an experience with a man I hated to love. I had been in a relationship with someone who had not been fair to me. I hated loving him because, in love, you have no control. Inside the dream his physical form changed from a man to a horse, and I stood by and watched him get hit by a train, while at the same time I told him to cross the tracks. This dream was a very violent and vivid experience, and would cause me to wake up in a sweat. I still believe to this day that this was both a fantasy and a nightmare, which is why, when the dream repeated, the pleasure of beckoning him never went away.Because this book is a teenage timeline of sorts, you will find some work I wrote when I was as young as twelve years old. The poem I decided to put first in this book, "Kill Me So Much," was written at that very tender age. It was an homage to Jack and his political voice. I wanted a voice like his, and I still get a kick out of reading that poem. I believe IHirschman, Jack is the author of 'Free Stallion Poems', published 2005 under ISBN 9781416902591 and ISBN 1416902597.