Darryl Price

About Me

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.
Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake, 1997
US novelist (1922 - 2007)

"If we have no concern for others, we are monsters."--Beatrice Wood

"My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all."--John Lennon

The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

"Poetry is the supreme fiction."--Wallace Stevens

I’m a poet on purpose.Poetry done right is kind of like saying the magic words.I hope you'll take time to find out exactly what I mean by that statement.My motto: don't complicate the message:love is the best way out of hell.The world is always forming and reforming itself into and around the words we choose to manifest on a daily basis..I think Poetry can help with the architecture if you will.I sometimes will send out free poems to all those who have commented on my work--kindly or otherwise--as a thank you for taking the time.Believe me it's very much appreciated by me. And from a poet this is the highest form of praise and thanks I can think of.Even when I'm sad poetry is my happy dance.

As for poetry it's a laugh that people think they know what it is. Remember the scientist and the rose? He carefully took apart each and every piece down to the atoms and still had no idea what a rose is. Poetry is like a lucky experience you can have in the wild world.Poetry is the song to your heartbeat--it's not always a happy song,granted, but it can be. You can't nail it down. It's not one single experience. It's not static. It's not logical, but it can be. It's not physical but it can be. It's not just a craft but it can be. It's not just words but it can be.Not just a set of complex linguistic parlor tricks either. I guarantee you it's been around for as long as we have and will continue to be with us to the very end. To say you completely understand its mystery or that it has somehow become irrelevant or extinct in the modern world is foolish in a sad way.I'm just trying to say people shouldn't be afraid of poetry. Poetry is a natural fact of life.

Because you matter, poetry is there to remind you that there are choices. It's okay. Keep on keeping on. There is beauty even though there is great sadness. There is always more hope on the horizon. Sometimes, if we are lucky, a poem will appear to light the path or offer just a glimpse of grace where we are living. It often stops to offer a dance--so that you may never forget to laugh.

My own brand of optimism in the artistry of poetry is just a way of being.It's there because it is right. It belongs in any discussion about the human condition. The meandering of ideas and images is simply to show that there are as many entrances and exits to the fact that we are witnessing our own being here as there are beings.All things are inevitable to conclude. But as long as we are here we are capable of certain creative action and poetry is an beautiful action taken by an individual that may or may not mean much to someone else. So why do it? Indeed. For me because it can be done with love.It can offer food for the spirit. It doesn't always do this--but it already has and can continue to.It can flood the weary world or it can fill a single cup for a thirsty traveler. You choose. It involves your freedom.No one is holding a gun to your head. The dragon is asleep but it sees through its dreams. Will you dare to ride such a beast? Many have died trying. The dragon does not care one way or the other. It knows if you have mastery and will be humbled only by your trust in its wildest nature.You may tame it somewhat but you will never own it.It gives as it gets. That's a wide and dangerous mirror to hold up to yourself. It has only to breathe once with bad purpose and you are toast. Again will you dare? It awaits your own deepest answer but time marches on.Diet kindly.

All of my life I have fought against the many tired and rigid definitions of poetry because they have become for me too restrictive and too predictable and too confining and too elitist. I know that poetry is for everybody. And I'm out to show it. It's an ancient and timeless human invention that helps us give voice to all our dreams and hopes and fears and love. A key to unlock the promise within the human spirit itself. It's a tool for art and art at its best has always fed the imagination which in turn feeds the doing of anything that gets done. It can be misused but its purpose is not to be misused.But to be one more interesting way for the truth and beauty of the human being's soul to rise and be heard and known throughout the land we call the earth, our home.

"Darryl's poetry has been known to fill one's head with a collage of images that won't quit. He can grab simple,common subjects and transform them into a "wake-up" that makes the reader thankful for not missing the light. His lines soak up the imagination and squeeze everything clean and sharp..D.P.has a distinct voice that I believe everyone should hear."--from a review in Small Press Review
"Darryl writes with the energy of the young poet. His images dart like flashes from a light show into the reader's consciousness--images concerned with fire, air, water, and earth, the four elements of early Greek philosophers. But these are not formula poems that tediously explore the basis of chemistry. D.P.'s work vibrates. All of us are among the brushstrokes on a scintillating canvas of stars, flowers, and waves. The view is sharp and well-defined."--from a review in The Green Fuse by
Stella Worley

Darryl was born in Kentucky and educated at Thomas More College. A founding member of Jack Roth's Yellow Pages Poets, he has published dozens of chapbooks, including a dual chapbook with Jennifer Bosveld, founder of Pudding House (the largest literary small press in America), and had poems in journals including The Bitter Oleander, Cornfield Review, Allegheny Poetry, Wind, Out of Sight, Paper Radio, The West Conscious Review,Pudding,Metazen, Cap City Poets, Doing It,Prick of the Spindle,Olentangy Review,Fourpaperletters,LITSNACK and the Green Fuse.

P.S.I support the ethical treatment of all beings everywhere if it's at all possible.Thanks for taking the time to enter the sometimes sloppy poetry gate before you,sorry about that, and wander around and have a look at my written flowers. They are made for just that. I tend to them constantly but they are made just for you, or people like you, who enjoy these kinds of things.

Why do you write?

Short Answer:Freedom of Speech. Long answer:Truth, Beauty and Goodwill.Creativity of the human spirit. That certainly would be the simplest way to put it but nothing's ever that simple, is it? There's also a belief that the world becomes what we say it is--that we are creating the world every time we speak it. And because of this belief poetry has the power to change things, I think, for the better, for the wiser, for the kinder. It's at least worth a try. There's more than enough of the hateful kinds of words to go around and destroy the world seventeen times over. I'm interested in spreading a few in the other, more sane direction. We don't know what will become of our poetic deeds so there's a kind of blind faith at play here. Still I do what I can to name what beauty I can where and when I see it, to create my own original works of art out of my limited vocabulary, and to share them honestly. All of which brings us back to the beginning. Life is short or life is long. In any case it won't last. While I'm here I'd very much like to give off something like a light or leave a hand print on the cave wall to simply say, yes, another person was here, just like you, full of dreams, full of hope,and fears, and every other
(human) earthling emotion and still found it somewhat important to say, hello, and goodbye.I appreciate your time. Say a poem for peace.

Any favorite authors? Books?

Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Bone by Jeff Smith
A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man by James Joyce
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
The Captain's Verses by Pablo Neruda
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Centaur by John Updike
Larry Marder's Beanworld
Landscape and Silence by Harold Pinter
Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Lost Pilot by James Tate
The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Sum-forty tales from the afterlives-David Eagleman
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Cool Richard Nash quote someone just sent me:"We are what we read, we are what we write, and we organize ourselves around and connect with one another through what we read and write."


Musical interests: The Beatles,Laura Marling, Smiths,Joy Division,New Order,Sonic Youth,My Bloody Valentine,Pixies,Nat King Cole,Cocteau Twins, They Might Be Giants,Prefab Sprout,Sam Cooke, Leonard Cohen,Lloyd Cole,Bob Dylan,Everything But The Girl,Spoon,Neko Case, The Raveonettes,The Pains of Being Pure at Heart,Bonnie 'Prince' Billy,The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir,The Who,XTC,Tom Waits,Squeeze,Mew,Belle and Sebastian,Radiohead,Saint Etienne,Smokey Robinson,Sea Wolf, Echo and the Bunnymen,Nellie McKay,Psapp,Field Mice,The Sundays,Lou Reed,Patti Smith,Neil Young,David Bowie,Camera Obscura,the Postmarks,Fleet Foxes,Modest Mouse,Miles Davis, It's A Musical,Leonard Bernstein,Spiritualized,MGMT,Alex Lilly,Beck,Billie Holiday,the Apples in Stereo,Elvis Costello,,etc.What the Beatles endured was a painful shift from adulation to worship to people lining up to receive something from them--money, healing, fame, whatever. I remember JOHN SAYING THAT 24 HOURS A DAY SOMEONE WANTED SOMETHING FROM HIM--A HANDSHAKE, A WORD, AN AUTOGRAPH, TO PITCH HIM AN IDEA. He must have felt terribly locked in a box. Pretty cool box but a box nonetheless.Their kind of fame became a golden yoke. People expected brilliance at all times. John gave what he could but he also became agitated by everyone's expectations that he could somehow save the world. Maybe their music did perform this miracle for a small while but the pressures to continue to pour out this magic on the public's heads must have been enormous to say the least. I'm always very wary of people's impressions of John--because that's just what they are--someone's impressions, nothing more. That leads to a lot of twisting of the facts to fit the axe that is being ground. John was no angel but a fascinating and complex creative soul.I've always been of the mind the sane world started to end that day when John was taken from us by stupid violence.Mix tape:There's a Place--John/I Will--Paul,Drive My Car--Paul with John,You're Gonna Lose That Girl--John,If I fell--John/I Feel Fine--John/Things We Said Today--Paul,Please Please Me--John,The Fool on the Hill--PaulThis Boy--John,Don't Bother Me--George,Help!--John,P.S.I Love You--John,Not a Second Time--John with Paul,Eleanor Rigby--Paul with John and George,I Need You--George,For No One--Paul,And Your Bird Can Sing--John,Penny Lane--Paul with John,In My Life--John,Here There and Everywhere--Paul,Within You Without You--George,Girl--John,A Day in the Life--John with Paul,No where Man--John,She Loves You--John and Paul with George,Hello Goodbye--Paul,Strawberry Fields--John,While My Guitar Gently Weeps--George,Across the Universe--John,Something--George,I Am the Walrus--John,Hey Jude--Paul,Being for the Benefit of MR. Kite--John,Because--John,Let It Be--Paul,Ticket to Ride--John,You've Got to Hide Your Love Away--John,Yesterday--Paul,I'm Only Sleeping--John,The End--Paul,Goodnight--John(Ringo sings),The Long and Winding Road--Paul,Hey Bulldog--John,Real Love--John with Paul and George(last Beatle single from Anthology),All You Need Is Love--John,Here Comes the Sun--George...That's the problem with anything having to do with the Beatles. It's easy to mythologize because the beast is so vast. There are still credible witnesses around but even those people are only looking at it from their own tiny in comparison perspective. Everything's true and also probably not quite the truth when it comes to the Beatles. The reason for this I think is because everyone who was involved with the Beatles story as it unfolded, even those who never even met or knew any of the principle players,think they've got the story straight. Therefore they tend to loom large in everyone's imaginations--their music rewired our collective planetary dna! And if you weren't there--meaning if you weren't engaged in this phenomenon while it roared you probably don't get it--but believe me it was very real. Out from the center of the Beatles poured an absolute love that transformed us all for both good and bad but mostly for good. It was like seeing a tremendously bright burning star.It happened, didn't it? You go around shouting but a lot of people were asleep and find it hard to believe it wasn't all a dream.Personal Philosophy;have more fun.SUPPORT OUR TULIPS!It seems to me the necessary fundamental complement to any so-called good life would have to include an immediate and lifelong reverance for and interaction with some form of nature("A seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."--Thoreau),be it sky, sea or land, and the cultivation of every ongoing compassionate idea for its