Young Ravens Literary Review
Issue 9 Previews & Interviews
Issue 9 Previews & Interviews
Issue 9 will be released later this December. We hope you will enjoy selected
previews of poetry, art and nonfiction, and interviews with author and artist.
previews of poetry, art and nonfiction, and interviews with author and artist.
Poetry Preview:
Wabi-Sabi
by Antoni Ooto
The tree sheds its clothes
feeding the wind,
growing in the moment.
Time finds serenities…
the old gifts in wabi-sabi.
A traveler
with deep roots,
with imperfections,
newer, older
sways naked,
ever-changing skyward.
Wabi-Sabi
by Antoni Ooto
The tree sheds its clothes
feeding the wind,
growing in the moment.
Time finds serenities…
the old gifts in wabi-sabi.
A traveler
with deep roots,
with imperfections,
newer, older
sways naked,
ever-changing skyward.
Interview with Antoni Ooto
Photo by Seth DeCroce
Describe Wabi-Sabi and what it means for you in your own life.
Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese philosophy that recognizes imperfection and the beauty in it. A person aware of Wabi-Sabi interacts with objects realizing that change and flaws over time enhances beauty. In my life, there is no such thing as absolute perfection and, I believe that is what gives each animate and inanimate object its uniqueness. It is a transformation from a “decorated" surface to the “naked" truth of an object.
A person not vested in Wabi Sabi may see a tree, at this time of year, as leafless, dead. Through Wabi-Sabi, a person sees the naked tree’s structure as a beautiful transition.
How do you nourish your creativity?
I read many poets daily…first thing in the morning. I read the poems out loud to my wife and we discuss the structure, rhythm and beauty of
the words. Reading poetry aloud (I feel) allows the voice to find a cadence that the reader might miss when seeing the words on a page.
What is your favorite line of poetry that speaks to you? Why?
I can’t remember a line of poetry that sums up everything I like about it or a particular poet. Having read numerous authors, there is a consistency in great writing that draws me. And that consistency is the ability to transform one way of seeing things into
recognizing a different perspective…if that happens within a single line, that is the thing that draws me, the multi-use of a word/phrase that expands a narrow range into a longer range.
*Antoni Ooto is a poet and flash fiction writer. He has been a frequent contributor to Palettes and Quills, and has also been published in An Upstate of Mind, Amethyst Review, and Front Porch Review. He lives and works in upstate New York with his wife, writer/storyteller, Judy DeCroce.
Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese philosophy that recognizes imperfection and the beauty in it. A person aware of Wabi-Sabi interacts with objects realizing that change and flaws over time enhances beauty. In my life, there is no such thing as absolute perfection and, I believe that is what gives each animate and inanimate object its uniqueness. It is a transformation from a “decorated" surface to the “naked" truth of an object.
A person not vested in Wabi Sabi may see a tree, at this time of year, as leafless, dead. Through Wabi-Sabi, a person sees the naked tree’s structure as a beautiful transition.
How do you nourish your creativity?
I read many poets daily…first thing in the morning. I read the poems out loud to my wife and we discuss the structure, rhythm and beauty of
the words. Reading poetry aloud (I feel) allows the voice to find a cadence that the reader might miss when seeing the words on a page.
What is your favorite line of poetry that speaks to you? Why?
I can’t remember a line of poetry that sums up everything I like about it or a particular poet. Having read numerous authors, there is a consistency in great writing that draws me. And that consistency is the ability to transform one way of seeing things into
recognizing a different perspective…if that happens within a single line, that is the thing that draws me, the multi-use of a word/phrase that expands a narrow range into a longer range.
*Antoni Ooto is a poet and flash fiction writer. He has been a frequent contributor to Palettes and Quills, and has also been published in An Upstate of Mind, Amethyst Review, and Front Porch Review. He lives and works in upstate New York with his wife, writer/storyteller, Judy DeCroce.
