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Submitted by RonPrice (Sep 27, 2006)

I'm not sure a comment on one's own work is allowed, but I'll give it a try and will understand should the moderators not let it through. Here is some more on Steinbeck who has influenced my writing a good deal. These comments will give a more complete picture of what I was trying to say in the first prose-poem above. ___________________________________ A REVELATION Steinbeck identifies his vision of history with organic, biological processes. The Grapes of Wrath is a novel about an old system dying, and a new one beginning to take root. Movement...scatters “the leaves dead” and carries forward “The winged seeds.”.....Working a profound change in our sensibilities is his rheorical task....to redefine the meaning in our lives....the capacity for spiritual regeneration is at the heart of Steinbeck’s view of our essence....the conversions Steinbeck writes of are inward ones, where individuals find purpose and inner peace in terms of feeling and seeing oneness with all of life. Society must be recreated by an inward spiritual redefinition. -Ron Price with appreciation to Stephen Railton, “Pilgrims’ Politics: Steinbeck’s Art of Conversion”, New Essays on the Grapes of Wrath, David Wyatt, editor, Cambridge University Press, NY, 1990, pp.27-46. You knew there had to be a revolution; you could feel it coming in seeds already planted and it nearly killed you to write about it back then when the seed had been growing in the American soil for nearly half a century. But you did not know, for these were still early days in a radical respiritualization going to the very roots of culture everywhere. You knew the rains would come, the floods. There would be replenishment, chaos, enigmatic mystery, the need for an epic endurance, selflessness and a universal affinity and oneness: so you could see in images of startling clarity like a revelation. 25/2/96. (the line phrasing does not come off well in this small box...but it is the ideas that count for me,,,not the spacing: just ask Kevin Spacey. He will explain.)