This is a sandbox in which I am learning to create images and texts to share, starting with promotions for "My Milwaukee." I have been blending alluring images as I can harvest, with reviews by my friends. Hopefully, here are examples from my facebook posts:
So there are 2 copies of "My Milwaukee" at Lion's Tooth Books on KK, I will be dropping 2 off at Fischbergers on Holton. They are priced at $10, with $3 for Clarke Graphics, $2 for myself, and $5 for these inspiring stores. If any wannabe readers can't handle the $10, send me an email at godsil.james@gmail.com and we can talk barter. This is my first post from Milwaukee Renaissanace dot org blog. Hope it works! Here's a link to lots of on-line everyday communion poetry.
Troubadour of Magical Transformations
Here is a review of "My Milwaukee" from my fellow grandpa of twins Darragh and Lola, Biodan Jeyifo. BJ teaches at Harvard, where Emerson gave Walt Whitman(with Rumi one of my models) a critical review. Said BJ:
Brother Godsil,
Writing also to thank you for the poetry chapbook - which I read and re-read several times with great delight and instruction. You’re a troubadour in the true sense of the word, i.e the vatic sense in which the poet writes to effect magical transformations of reality and the world.
Be well, comrade…
—BJ
The Beauty of Kindness
" In an age of arrogance, cynicism, and when most are looking at one another with grave reserve bordering on suspicion, Godsil’s My Milwaukee reminds us that meaningful art can come from humility, from an authentic social consciousness that does not self-indulge. His words are an affirmation that kindness can be beautiful. Godsil is a poet moving forward slowly, measure by measure, always taking time to revel in the others he encounters, and to make sure we’ know we’re always welcome to move along with him."
—Stephanie Shipley, Chef, Amaranth Bakery and Caf
Crown of magnificent visions and nurturing love for us all.
From poet Stephen Anderson .
It can be said that poets are their poetry, and if that is the case, James Godsil’s essense shines in his reprinted 2007 chapbook, My Milwaukee. His years as a roofer high atop some of Milwaukee’s most challenging rooftops perhaps provided him with the solitude and vantage points he needed for his visions to flourish of what Milwaukee could become as evidenced by concepts like Milwaukee someday morphing into the “Holy City of the Sweet Water Seas” and “becoming a permaculture city”; his perception that our intrinsic worth is manifest in our someday becoming “each other’s feast”; the potential for creating much needed sustainability through conciousness-raising and the development of true-grit determination and effort to make Milwaukee a city full of the promise that deep down he knows it is capable of: one shining from the spikes on Olde Godsil’s crown of magnificent visions and nurturing love for us all.
So Tomatoes May Grow
Godsil conjures-up hopeful images, grounded in the soil beneath cracking asphalt and abandoned lots. He digs deeply into our melting-pot-socialist history, reminding us that Milwaukee was built on the unflagging energy of immigrants determined to invent a new world. Celebrating that foundation, Godsil paints a vision of how this city may tug itself upward by the bootstraps, rescuing its just and noble destiny from the clutches of despair. Godsil’s poetry shines light into shadowy spaces so that tomatoes may grow.
—Singer/Songwriter Howard Lewis of Embedded Reporter
Walt Whitman Lives in Bay View!
Jeff Eagam has been my dear buddy since 1973, a while before he became first director of ESHAC Inc., a community development non profit which played a key role in Riverwest’s Renaissance. In this picture he has just given me a Craftsman "briefcase," and below has mightily endorsed my chapbook "My Milwaukee," available at Lion's Tooth and Fischbergers on KK and Holton respectively.
Maybe Walt Whitman never really died. Perhaps New Jersey’s bardic yalper was reincarnated in the Cream City a century later as: A robust roofer, a marketeer extraordinaire, and a social entrepreneur; A serial monogamist still mothering his brood of 4 children, 6 grandchildren. A refugee expelled like Lot from the burning groves of the Academe, never looking back; A Keeper of the Eternal Flame for the Fallen at the Garden of the Soldier’s Home; An organic intellectual conducting Agorizing reappraisals; and A Marxist from the Karl, Groucho, and Gramscian tendancies; His name would be Jim Godsil, poet of “My Milwaukee”, a blue/red/green collar collection of manic rhymes worthy of Whitman’s handle. Do yourself a favor. Cheap enough to buy two and share with a pal, thin enough to fit into the back pocket of your jeans, pick up “My Milwaukee” and prepare to pick yourself up. Whitman lives in Bay View!!!" —Jeff Eagan, key founder and first Executive Director of ESHAC, Inc., which played major role in Riverwest’s early renaissance back in the late 1970s.
The Philosopher Roofer
by David Luhrssen “ Holy City of the Sweet Water Seas ” is a Beat poet way of describing Milwaukee . For social activist/professional roofer/part-time poet Jim Godsil, Milwaukee is a Promised Land of potential, a shining city on the bluffs above Lake Michigan . In his latest chapbook he dreams of the once-reviled Milwaukee transforming into a “city of city farms and gardens, And neighborhood co-ops, Of a Central Park /With a great river in the middle, A cleansing river/With cleansing shores.” Sounding that note, Godsil is an appropriate participant in the 21st annual Earth Poets & Musicians performance, 7 p.m., April 18, at the Urban Ecology Center, 1500 E. Park Place; and 8 p.m., April 19, at the Coffee House, 631 N. 19th St. The weekend roster also includes performances by Jahmes Finlayson, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Jeff Poniewaz, Suzanne Rosenblatt, Harvey Taylor and Holly Haebig.
Eucharist of the Ordinary
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens And then, we remember when someone like Olde Godsil mails a precious gift of My Milwaukee. And we feel the holy city by the sweetwater sea in the palm of our hand and the communion transforms us wisdom grows and we are in love with this precious life.
Kt Rusch, tai chi and spiritual healer, poet/songwriter/musician, electrical engineer, polymath
I am so happy right now! Going to sit down and read a poem or two right now.
Lisa Langsdorf
Such an honor being let into the sweetness of your soul…and the dreams for our sweet city! A beautiful read inspiring such hope.
Eva Hagenhofer
Here's some notes re "My Milwaukee " from progressive educator and life long activist , Eva Hagenhofer, whom I have admired since 1973! There were several of your poems that just really stood out for me: · You’re Golden ( what an evocative adjective! ) · Poison Arrows ( yes, piercing and venomous ) · Athenians Contra Spartans ( reminded me of a poem by Jack Agueros, “Correspondence Between The Stonehaulers”) · Red White and Blue Are Now Green ( especially about Uncle Sam needing a ‘smart woman’ J ) · and of course, “Confessions of a Sissy Roofer” ! And then there are the little lovely phrases that really get me smiling and sighing. So I thought I’d let you know which ones I especially loved: From “Out of the Closet” “Not in closets, nor even lush fields, But in ineffably resonant worlds Of sweet ones, where utopian visions Are pursued amidst gales of laughter” From “The Mouse and the Worm …” “And 10,000 garden blossomed in neighborhoods once written off As ghetto and violent and ugly, and the people reconnected with Nature, used waste products for radiant energy, Became strong and sure enough to ask neighbors for favors …” From “Milwaukee’s Resurrection” “My Milwaukee, Our Milwaukee ….. Finding new ways To clarify What is to be done.” Thanks for sharing, old friend. Stay well and write/right on! Eva
Lisa Corry
Jim Godsil’s poetry envisions a socially-just, resilient, and inclusive Milwaukee, where community activism shapes a bright and attainable future. This compelling poetry is balm to the soul. Do yourself a favor: read it! And continue the good work
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