PEOD Archive 2003

The Music of Alan Hovhaness

tbyron — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:23:47 GMT

The music of Alan Hovhaness has changed my life forever, it is eternal, the music of Heaven.
Note to Duncan M.
4/18/2026

Light & Shadow

tbyron — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 03:11:12 GMT

The
solitary
spinner's song
lifts Heavenward
& toward
that silver of
new
April moon
[until]
well after
mid-night

4/3/2026

"Spinners": a common name for crickets, because their hum
(incidentally,like the wind shedding the leaves of the wu-tung, a typically autumn sound) "
The Collected Poems of
Li He

(790 - 816)

I have a new achievement! Skilled wanderer

tbyron — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:14:24 GMT

You've gathered 50 subscribers! Keep up good work, it pays off!

Bishop Seraphim Sigrist 2/7/2026

tbyron — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 01:06:56 GMT

We lost a true light here on this earth today-he will be greatly missed...

I know Bishop Sigrist is not gone forever, but gone to forever and we will see him again on the other side. I met Seraphim J Sigrist back in 2003 or so after reading his LiveJournal and he has been a spiritual Father and friend for me. Thank you for being a light and a guide in this world for me. I will miss our conversations, your deep wisdom and your kind and gentle ways.

*Sharing also Seraphim's LiveJournal

@ https://seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com/

and his books at Amazon for any interested

@ https://www.amazon.com/stores/Bishop-Seraphim-Sigrist/author/B079CJD3CS

An Interview with T. Byron Kelly, as told to Gina McKnight

tbyron — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 20:23:09 GMT

An Interview with T. Byron Kelly, as told to Gina McKnight
Welcome AAG Author T. Byron!

T. Byron Kelly is a poet, painter, and musician from Appalachia USA. An AAG member and author of many poetry anthologies, short stories, and more, T. Byron embraces his Appalachia heritage and inspiration from the aesthetics of his surroundings…

GM: Your poetry is rooted deep in your memories and history. What was the first poem that you penned?
TBK: One of the first pieces of poetry from notebook Poems (1987-93) is titled “Clouds” from October 1987. Read “Clouds” at tbyron.livejournal.com here.

GM: What are the requirements for a great poem?
TBK: I remember Jim Morrison said that “the self interview is the essence of creativity. Morrison’s idea was about asking questions (internally) and finding answers. I still think that poetry is the art of suggestion and it is an art form more akin to painting (and is often referred to as the sister of art). I also think that poetry remains the “spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion” as Wordsworth noted it should be. I believe the best poems are already eternal and written (as Blake supposed) in Heaven. I am not inclined to storytelling in poems at this point in my own work. I like to use word images to paint on the page and let them suggest a story rather than try to tell one. Wei T'ai wrote in the 11th century; "Poetry presents the thing in order to covey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling, for as soon as the mind responds and connects with the thing the feeling shows in words; this is how poetry enters deeply into us. If the poet presents directly feelings which overwhelm him, and keeps nothing back to linger as an aftertaste, he stirs us superficially; he cannot start the hands and feet involuntarily waving and tapping in time, far less strengthen morality and refine culture, set heaven and earth in motion and call up spirits!"

GM: How do you maintain thoughts and ideas?
TBK: I like to notice the ordinary-extraordinary things. Goethe, in ‘The Poet’s Year’ talks about making the reader observant of things which; “recur as ordinary and familiar”. Rodin’s advice to the Poet Rilke was to simply “regard and observe”.

My poetry, music and art have always been a place for me of supernatural communion between the divine and earthly realms. The liberation of the ordinary is finding the eternal in the moment now-there is a sacred space of connection which transcends time itself and is born through spontaneity and my work has been to attempt to bring forth this language of light. We are curious bystanders at the crossroads of conscious and unconscious thought. Imagination, then, is the child of the dream and the mind. Poetry is a state of Grace.

GM: Besides the beauty of Appalachia, what/who is your muse and inspiration?
TBK: I have to say the Holy Spirit in my work as a Poet and Artist.

GM: Do you have a favorite poem from your own collection?
TBK: From the Va West Va. Collection of poems I think this is an interesting selection http://vawestva.livejournal.com/6884.html.

GM: Who is your favorite poet and how have they influenced your writing?
TBK: It is very difficult for me to choose one favorite Poet. I will say that I was very influenced by Jim Morrison’s American Prayer in my early years and would probably never have begun writing poems without hearing his work. I was also amazed by the poems and relief etchings of William Blake and began to consider the idea of combining my own poems with paintings after studying his work. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke is maybe one of the most important books I own.

GM: What are you currently writing?
TBK: I am working on a new book of poems titled Wait until the Morning Star, a kind of poetic memoir. I have also been working on two selections of poetry called Light & Shadow and The Beginning of the End since 2001.

GM: List 10 things that your fans probably do not know about you...
TBK: …

I love color.

I spent some time (as my Father had) in the Corps of Cadets at VPI.

I have wandered the Jefferson National Forest on the edge of Virginia and West Virginia for years now.

My family are all from Western Virginia, West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky and many were Coal Miners.

I live in the eastern most part of Appalachia in Virginia.

On my daily walks I sometimes yell at speeding cars “Slow Down”!

I try to keep pen and paper on hand at all times (suggested also by the Poet Rilke).

I still like the idea of being in a band after all of these years.

I think Art is still endless.

I think it may be possible to have art, literacy and tutoring stations in unused (Appalachian) community buildings http://wvartsworkshop.weebly.com

Biography
Poet, Painter and Musician T. Byron Kelly has been working as an active performance artist in the South Western Virginia area (Appalachia) for over two decades and has generations of family from West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia. Live, spontaneous lyric poetry performances and gallery exhibits have been at the heart of the Poet's work. As an Undergraduate and Graduate student, Byron studied with poets Nikki Giovanni, Lucinda Roy, Grace Bauer and Anne Bromley, as well as novelist Don Secreast and painter Janet Niewald. Byron received private art instruction during that time and was also a member of Tri-M (Modern Music Masters honor society). Byron studied the relationships between poetry, painting and music and soon began to illustrate his own poems with paintings and put them to music as well. Byron has also taught creative writing and composition on the college level (currently at Pilot Mountain School and Solitude of Virginia Tech) and is a member of the Ghost House Studio-Appalachia, Spectral Arts, The Spooks-VA., WVArts, the Appalachian Writers Association (A.W.A.), the Appalachian Authors' Guild (A.A.G.), West Virginia Writers, the Virginia Writers Club, the XYZ Gallery (Blacksburg, VA.), Glencoe Museum (Radford, VA.) and the Montgomery Museum and Lewis Miller Regional Art Center (Christiansburg, VA).

T. Byron writes… I paint poems and found a kind of home there. My paintings have always been rather cartoon like and fantastically oriented, a rendering of a dream if you will - I always thought (about realist art) that if you wanted a photograph then why not take a snapshot with a camera?

Project End of Days-Selected Poems & New Selected Poems available @Amazon.com
Poetry @ http://tbyronk.livejournal.com
Music @ https://soundcloud.com/studioappal
Painting @ http://t-byron-k.pixels.com/

Note on Jim Morrison

tbyron — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 04:29:18 GMT

I began to write poetry early in my life after reading Jim Morrison's work in the Lords & The New Creatures. Later I started to add those poems to the music our bands were making at the time. I have often told my students that Jim’s poetry is far more significant than most people realize. The prologue to Wilderness should be read by anyone trying to write poetry or create in general I believe.
1/17/2026

What Remains

tbyron — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 18:18:38 GMT

What remains after nearly 40 years of trying to write and paint is the challenge to receive something eternal and worthwhie, no matter how many times it has worked well in the days now long gone. Are you still "Poet enough to call forth life's riches" as Rilke would say?

Poety, Painting & Music

tbyron — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:41:37 GMT

I think my attempts to illustrate my poems with paintings and add them to music as well began after reading Jim Morrison and listening to the Doors play along to his poetry and later looking at the magnificent relief etchings of Wm. Blake which combined his poetry with art. This approach also became a way of engaging the poetry and art together (as Gerald Stern notes) and then also engaging those forms with music ( and more formally in a Gallery setting). An image I paint can inspire a line of poetry or the image within a poem seems to need to be painted as well. Poetry and art are sister forms they say, since both are imagistic and suggestive, it made sense that they could be intertwined to me. Working with bands these last years and recording on my own have also given me the opportunity to bring poetry into a live music session that encourages spontaneity. The workshop I teach at this point asks my students to write a poem and illustrate it with a painting (then to repeat that process), I believe this simple exercise can open worlds of possibilites.
10/29/2025

T’ang Poetry, Li Ho and the Influence on the French Symbolist Movement

tbyron — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 02:33:42 GMT

I realized that the best of what the French Symbolists (like Baudelaire and Rimbaud) had to offer really began with the T’ang period and Poets like Li Ho (Li He) and it was a thousand years earlier that these early Poets laid the true groundwork for what would become the symbolist movement (which I believe is a monumental and unrivaled period for later poetry).

8/29/2025

E.A. Poe and the French Symbolists

tbyron — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 01:22:34 GMT

Edgar Allen Poe was one of the Fathers of the French Symbolist movement,

which I believe to be an example of the highest form of poetry in the last

several hundred years. He was admired and translated by Baudelaire,

who it is believed laid the later foundation for Rimbaud and Mallarne and others.

Poe's poetry is actually quite beautiful (like Baudelaires) but also haunted at times

and always memorable I think. Poe lived in Virginia for some time and attended UVa as well.

10/12/2025

Deja Vu

tbyron — Sat, 24 May 2025 00:13:14 GMT

Every single being
every one of us connected
somewhere through time
our bodies or souls
disjoints of desire or
brilliance
Always the return chaos of
things,
always night
orchid
or platonic stance
take your chances
take your chances
take all of them
and bring
it down

April 1992
University of Virginia
https://dirtypictures.bandcamp.com/track/deja-vu

"Spurious Eternity"

tbyron — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 01:50:50 GMT

It is true, as Jim Morrison noticed in his poem 'The Lords', that film "confers a kind
of spurious eternity"- such a mystical art form should potentially transcend linear reality sequences.

4/4/2025

The Beginning of The End

tbyron — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 20:18:25 GMT

Little
cloud,
little cloud-
Even the
old sunshine
needs a friend.

3/8/2025

Pilot School

tbyron — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 15:58:34 GMT

I have spent hours there (at Pilot School) with noone but the wind
and the ghosts of children out there to keep me company.
-Note to P.S. Colley
February 2025

eBookMall Interviewed T. Byron Kelly

tbyron — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 19:28:46 GMT

eBookMall interviewed the multi-talented T. Byron Kelly, a poet, painter, and musician: http://bit.ly/yQCA4k

https://twitter.com/eBookMallcom/status/172139985414258690

Interview with T. Byron Kelly

The idea of combining poetry with music and paintings is very interesting. How exactly do you display your poems with a piece of music or a painting?

My paintings are often illustrations of my poems and are framed and hung next one another in a gallery setting. Our band spectral arts has also performed music with the poems sung and spoken (much of it spontaneously) at many of my exhibits over the years. We also use a digital projector to display both paintings and poems during our shows.

Are you especially inspired by any other poets, past or present?

I am very much inspired by William Blake, Li Ho, Dante Alighieri, Mattie Stepanek, Maya Angelou, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robinson Jeffers, Kenneth Patchen, William Everson, Hermann Hesse, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Robert Bly, Boris Pasternak, Fredrico Garcia Lorca, E.A.Poe, Ekiwah Adler Belendez, John Milton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Matsuo Basho.

Do you ever write or paint while intoxicated?

I suppose I have written a few poems after a night out- I do try to keep pen and paper handy at all times. Painting is another story, it gets too messy and I usually end up having to start from scratch the next day. A long walk and some chamomile tea work wonder these days.

What type of books do you like to read in your spare time?

I read mostly poetry these days.

When you were little did you want to be a performing artist?

I had music classes as a kid and stayed involved in band and choirs until my college years. I did not realize I wanted to be an artist and teacher until I was on into college and graduate school. I remember being interested in law for a time (my Stepfather was a Lawyer) but ultimately found more imagination and freedom in art and literature.

If you had a book club, what would it be reading and why?

I have taught and tutored College English over the last few decades and like to explore both poetry and fiction in my classes and sessions. I guess my book club would be reading many of the poets on my earlier list. A poem can often say more in a few lines than an entire novel can hope to reveal.

If you listen to music while writing, what do you listen to?

That is a good question. I enjoy many genres of music- Patrick O’Hearne comes to mind right away. I am also very moved by the music of Alan Hovhaness.

What is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome in your career?

I recall the morning that the Columbine High School tragedy occurred, I was teaching a composition class and I said to myself (in front of my students) that it could never happen here. Several years later (in 2007) my school (Virginia Tech) was attacked. It was difficult to show back up on campus after that loss, but the spirit that I witnessed among the students and faculty to carry on was astounding and I will always remember. Working as an independent artist, poet and musician over the last 25 years has also been a challenge.

How much of your writing is based on things you see in real life?

I like to notice the ordinary-extraordinary things. Goethe, in ‘The Poet’s Year’ talks about making the reader observant of things which; “recur as ordinary and familiar”. Rodin’s advice to the Poet Rilke was to simply “regard and observe”.

My poetry, music and art have always been a place for me of supernatural communion between the divine and earthly realms. The liberation of the ordinary is finding the eternal in the moment now-there is a sacred space of connection which transcends time itself and is born through spontaneity and my work has been to attempt to bring forth this language of light. We are curious bystanders at the crossroads of conscious and unconscious thought. Imagination, then, is the child of the dream and the mind. Poetry is a state of Grace

Name a book that you'd blush to be seen reading on the bus.

I am not sure about blushing over a book ... but perhaps a supermarket tabloid ...

February 2012

https://www.ebookmall.com/author/t-byron-kelly

On Creativity, Imagination & Divine Revelation

tbyron — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:39:27 GMT

A Comment for Musician Rick Beato-
I find that age is only a concern when we consider ourselves to be the source for what is being created. If the imagination is an eternal link/conduit to divine revelations it has no limitations on what and how it can receive them (and this includes age limits). Writers block would cease to exsist if this were understood more clearly.

11/3/2024

The Beginning of The End

tbyron — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 19:21:30 GMT

The later
August sky
weeps of
slow diamonds
& thunder rolls
[suddenly]
like the
end of days/
Last pink
roses are still
radiant in the
faded twilight.
On my way
homeward
& one solitary
firefly is
still alight.

8/28/2024
9/10/2024

Note to Byron Hoot about Jim Morrison

tbyron — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 16:26:04 GMT

Thank you for sharing that article with me Byron,

I would love to hear the audio however rough the recording might

have been. Sharing this one as well which you may have already seen,

worth looking at again if so. I had this performance on VHS back in the 80s

and have watched it countless times. This version has been remastered I think

@ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q76QBhKHQGc

I read No One Gets Out of Here Alive back in 1985 or so and it was a life changer for me

Around 1987 or so I bought The Lords & The New Creatures (my first book of poetry)

and began trying to write poetry myself. Arthur Rimbaud's Complete verse (1976) was the second book.

I think I was most influenced by Jim's approach to writing poetry and his free verse open style as well.

I was also encouraged to try to add my own poetry to the band performances that I was starting to

involve myself in and to try to illustrate my poems with paintings. By 1988 or so Wilderness and then in 1990 The American Night were published and I was blown away by both of those books.

Sharing the latest volume of The Collected Works of Jim Morrison as well which came out in 2021.

Jim was a kind of poetic spiritual Father for me in many ways, I found my own voice and road after reading his work.

I often have stated that Jim's poetry is far more significant than most people realize, and what I mean by that is his work

is up there with the masters and I regard him as a latter day Poe or Rimbaud. This fact is eclipsed by his rock star status in my opinion,

but he should be remembered more primarily as a Poet.

Check out Professor Wallace Fowlie's book on Jim and Rimbaud as well The Rebel As Poet for more perspective on his poetry.

You can read a review I wrote a while back as well @ https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2RENKD9YFVNX5

8/7/2024

The Beginning of The End

tbyron — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 22:10:00 GMT

The lonely
spider in my
old window still
weaves through a
cold rain/
Will the spinners
still "cry chill silk"
before August
arrives?

7/17/2024

*Remembering Li Ho

Thank You

tbyron — Thu, 23 May 2024 20:57:57 GMT

T. Byron K.@ LiveJournal is a working Poetry/Art journal
Poetry/Painting/Digital Art Copyright (1987-2024) T. Byron K.
Music Copyright (1991-2024)
Dirty Pictures/Spiritworld/ Spectral Arts/Project Morning Star
Studio Appalachia
-All Rights Reserved
1145 Poems posted since July 9th 2003

North/South Afterward Volume 3

tbyron — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 15:56:09 GMT

I first remember the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia as a child, driving into them from North Virginia with my family was inspirational
and awe inspiring. I began to wander through the Jefferson and George Washington National Forests while I attended Virginia Tech and in search of a poem, which I often found beside the New River, at the edge of a cliff on Mountain Lake we called "the Rock" and in the deep woods beside Caldwell Fields. Later on I discovered an old School House at the other side of Pilot Mountain and was inspired to have poetry shows there and create a little library, it is the spirit mists and the open air of incline and sleepy blue pine that still keep me wandering out there.
The Cherokee Indians of Virginia called the Blue Ridge Mountains "'the Great Blue Hills of God "
Appalachia is a culture that is struggling to find an identity outside of the one that has been prescribed by those that are not from this region,

and the Poets and Artists of North/South have been helping to make that transformation happen very gradually. If we keep looking outside our region in Appalachia to define ourselves we will continue to be lost internally. I have always thought that Poetry is the people's art form. Good books of poetry & poems are really eternal as William Blake and Jim Morrison noticed; they are not to be read just once like a library book, but meant to be lived with and read many times over. If you are trying to make art or write poetry (or even a novel) keep writing or painting or drawing, you're doing something of value in this broken world. Keep going, the miracle of your unique "heartsongs" of words and visions may be used as a direct channel of Heaven. Thank you to those that contributed to our North/South poetry and art project for this volume and those we have previously published, your voices matter, are important and are making a difference as we seek to understand who we are and to redefine our beautiful region from hearts within it that actually care and understand it.

-T. Byron Kelly
2/3/2024
Blue Ridge Mountains
Far Eastern Region of Appalachia

Stopping By A Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost & Illustrated by Susan Jeffers

tbyron — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 16:34:09 GMT

This is my Father’s favorite poem, and he read it out loud to my Sister and I many times on cold Virginia Winter nights. It is a visionary and beautiful work, full of transcendental images, longing and mystery that Frost’s conveys quite beautifully and simply. This poem and the wonderful illustrations of this book (along with "The Pasture” by Frost) were the first multimedia experiences I had with poetry as well (long before William Blake and Jim Morrison in College). The artwork is an amazing compliment to the poetry and makes story time a joy. Frost’s "The Pasture” was also a poem performed by Cadets in the Virginia Tech Glee club that I discovered in my Father’s old record collection with him singing on it and these works opened the door of possibility for me in terms of what poetry could be. When I found this book again I sent it to my Dad, it was a gift he gave my Sister and me long ago that changed my life forever.

https://www.amazon.com/Stopping-Woods-Snowy-Evening-Robert/dp/0525467343
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4pbUQOnHis

The Beginning of The End

tbyron — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 02:54:29 GMT

Was that
your ghost
or cold death's
poem
Rippo?
Whisperings
to me alone
beneath a
snow
softened wind/
Now the lonely
road curves
farther
away into
unbroken silences,
looking long & again
for your
"last &
loveliest".

1/15/2024

An End

tbyron — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 03:00:31 GMT

An end of the ignoring of and the indifference toward the broken world begins w/in one heart.
12/27/2023

Sanitized World View

tbyron — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 18:46:40 GMT

A sanitized world view remains stuck in denial of and continually angry about the brokeness of this world. 

11/10/2023