Plums -

A painting of the plums that William Carlos Williams might have eaten is in the shares below.  Every year one of my friends makes beautiful cakes studded with seeded half plums when the black plums are out.  I ate one bag of plums about 3 weeks ago.  They were delicious, with a tough black/purple skin and red soft sweet inside flesh. 

The trick is to squeeze the plums through the plastic bag and buy the soft ones.

As they are soft, they are also on sale and are not like the hard crisp ones that remind me of silicon, not that I have ever tasted silicon.

KMK

"I have eaten the plums -- "
William Carlos Williams -
I won the William Carlos Williams Award of the Academy of American Poets in 1993 through the Department of English at the Univ University of Pennsylvania for my first five poems. My student health counselor suggested I send them in, after I found an article about Ann Sexton in a magazine in her waiting room.
kmk

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15535

FB & blog 9-12-2013

My official website www.KMKaung.com is now searchable on all web browsers

http://www.kmkaung.com/

Kyi May Kaung's dissertation oral defense in 1993 -

My Pol. Sci. dissertation chair had earlier said, "It will be a bestseller."

Burma expert Prof. Josef Silverstein came to my orals and I took him on the D bus and treated him to lunch at the Burmese restaurant.

My dissertation in its entirety can be found on line at Penn Commons.

I proved based on a theory that I formulated myself and various country experiences, that central control and planning do not work.

The countries I looked at included Burma, the then Soviet Union, Paraguay (dictatorship), Zaire (former Belgium Congo), the People's Republic of China, India under its five year plans.

I will relate more about my subject areas, comprehensive exams. etc later.

Kyi May Kaung

Shout out from Kanlaon about my novella Black Rice -

Shout out about my novella Black Rice from Kanlaon - Thank you!!

Kyi-May Kaung has published a new book, Black Rice, about Burma during World War II. You can order here, or, if you have Kindle, here. Kyi is a very powerful writer.

Dr. Kyi May Kaung has accepted new board membership with Burma Independence Advocates

Accepted new bd membership

http://t.co/Gtqp2DPcJN

Founder Nay Zaw Aung @ London School of Economics.

xcited to work with my colleagues.

About BIA

At last I found my poem - At the Races in Havana - by Kyi May Kaung

At last I have found my poem that fits these trishaw pictures - of thin people peddling fat people -

At the Races in Havana

By Kyi May Kaung

Three times out of four
we marched
so as to appear active
not inactive our heels
ground down --
at the fair grounds
passing by the stables
a horse still there
smelling of horse shit --
The aging teacher flirting
with her young student
all night --
The leaders exhorting exhorting
no bigger than chilli flakes
in the distance
whisked in
in their black
Mercedes Benz.

We turned around and left
our sons in green longyis.

I've been there at the gate
when they suddenly closed the grate
and four soldiers stood guard
facing out.

We exhausted from
our march drinking
over-sweet coffee in
the coffee shop.

Did you see that?
My friend said
she and I between us
300 lbs -- The trishaw
peddler thin peddling
furiously
uphill -- Lucky we got out when
we did --
did you see that?

And inside the speechifying
and the slogans
long live the revolution
long live the revolution
little slips of paper
passed out 5 minutes
before --

We avoid each others' eyes
as we mumble
muddled and cowed.

Copyright Kyi May Kaung
from
Pelted with Petals:  The Burmese Poems,
Intertext, Anchorage, AK, 1996.

Daniel Heyman - artist who went to Iraq -

Artist Daniel Heyman - The Detainee Project - etc.

http://www.detaineeproject.org/#/Detainee%20Portraits/Chris%20Bartlett/1

I knew Daniel briefly in Philadelphia, when we both worked at Annenberg Center - I wanted him to illustrate my book length poem/novel She-Monkey goes West, but that did not work out, as I moved to DC.  Since the 90s, Daniel had produced this amazing body of work, as you see here, including prints made of a trip to Iraq.

I post this here as a response to the young lady who said, "But Aunty, your work is full of dead bodies!"

Is art mean to make us feel happy?  Is it meant to me (merely) pretty?

Or is is meant to jolt us and make us think?

She-Monkey was a Pew Finalist Script in 1995.

The conversation continues - Who is she? Who am I? - Kyi May Kaung - talks to U Myo Nyunt -

• Myo Nyunt Kyi May The p[otamac I prsume. The lady in the middle can be either of Asian descent but American. Thats great in the USA, not like other countries-- you know.

  Yesterday at 11:22am · Like
• 

  Kyi May Kaung Yes, every time I come home, I appreciate how lucky I am to live in America. It is the Tidal Basin at Cherry Blossom time, peaked last week - lovely lady in middle is our own Khin Phyu Htway who works at VOA - I am happy you said, "it could be anyone...See More

  Yesterday at 1:28pm · Like
• 

  Myo Nyunt Well Kyi May, we all are in (or either trapped) liminal or better still Liquid States-- formations -- ala Bauman, You know, i do not know what I am anymore. Having seen - experienced to an extent, the evil and good together.. Having lived-crossed into different worlds, languages/tongues spoken , religeon, places. To me, while walking , this morning to the small shopping centre ( 15 mins brisk walk) to buy the Sunday newspaper, hoping to read wether war has started in the Korean Peninsular , just read that Us and China would see to it that it wont happen. SAVED.. I am serious for my old seniile curiosity wether anything about DAw Sus US will be in The Australian newspaper. On the face book. Branden Brazil photos keep my wild emotions satiated for the time being, knowing that he will say what is a reflection of the "reality" and not of the "human frailities" and the circus we always have to watch and live with. Meeting-departing, in my years of living , I am nowadays reconciled to to the fact that-- there are tears of sadness as there are also tears of joy. Hope lives on. A young friend, he 57 told me he would pick me up to go to a Buddhist Monastry this afternoon, for tet kyee kadaw pwe, but as usual I could not. Anyway I am quite comfortable to accompany Khin Myo to the Myanmar Baptist Church, listen to the sermons in Myanmar and the hyms in Burmese all written by Anglo- Saxon Chritians of yore. Being born in Burma of a two half castes or mixed breeds, one a Buddhist and another a Zaroastan, I do really like to think and perhaps live as a Sufi or a Nomad ( Kyi may you being a scholar, poet, artist is one-- smile) . Maybe I was one in my past lives roaming with the camel caravns with merchants, mercenaries, missionariies and the militants, in The Middle Crescent

  

  , Tigris and Nile Valley and the wide Arabian Desert.. Will pour water on The Buddha and light canles now. With Metta

  16 hours ago · Like
• 

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Kyi May Kaung's article "Aung San Suu Kyi: A Strange Collection of Clear Victories" in special Burma edition of International Gallerie

http://www.gallerie.net/issue31.html

Religious fragment from K.M. Kaung's novel Wolf

Embedded deep in the innermost portion of the stupa was the htapanar taik or jewel chamber, which no one could reach now.  It was said to contain eight strands of the sacred hair of the historic Buddha, Gautama ― who had once been Prince Siddhartha in a city state in northeast India, shielded from the world by his father the King ― before he saw The Four Signs:  A sick man, an old man, a rotting corpse and a religious medicant.  Due to The Four Signs he renounced everything and became a wandering ascetic and then the Buddha after his Enlightenment.  

Copyright Kyi May Kaung

Fragment from my novel Wolf, describing Shwedagone Pagoda -

.  .  .  built up in layers over the centuries by famous kings and queens who kept encasing the old in the new, each time making it bigger and taller.  There were unknown kings and queens from more than two thousand years ago.  They were mostly Mon-Khmer.  There must have been tens of thousands of other religious patrons of many different ethnicities and city states and common people who contributed a lot, but no one knew who they were.

Kyi May Kaung

Page views of this blog up in USA and China -

I mean up overall, not up at the expense of blog hits in other countries -

I believe it is due to my Facebook presence -

K.M.Kaung - my comment on Aung San Suu Kyi confronted by hundreds of angry protestors -

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi confronted by hundreds of protestors about copper mine -

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/29352

People should stop blaming her - instead of gallivanting all over Gen. Thein Sein should go down and confront/talk to the demonstrators - his appointing Daw Suu to head the inquiry commission was just step number 2 or 3 in their plan to put Daw Suu in a spot.

This is very worrisome - images of the death of Benazir Bhutto come before my eyes daily.

They could just say some angry person in the crowd hit her -- it's happened before, doesn't anyone remember??

Coca cola by Ai Wei Wei

Photo copyright Kyi May Kaung

Rose after rain -

Photo copyright Kyi May Kaung (K.M. Kaung)

My Weedy Garden with cinqfoil berries

Photos copyright Kyi May Kaung (K.M.Kaung)

My Saatchi on line site -

http://www.saatchionline.com/KyiMayKaungArt

Sorry, still a hub as I try to focus on my writing life - or my life.

Re-posting after one year - Potemkin Politics: Are Burmese reforms real by Kyi May Kaung

http://www.himalmag.com/component/content/article/4842-potemkin-politics.html I am happy to have the last word, though sad that I am right about Burma yet again./ In the end, I get to say "I told you so," but the Burmese people suffer more under the regime, which is still the same old, same old military./ Where is the so-called reform. Nowhere./ K.M. Kaung

Kyi May Kaung - comment on IFC and microfinance in Burma -

Microfinance alone cannot solve even all of Burma's agricultural sector problems, when so much land has been taken by the cronies and govt projects./ where would the microfinance be used - maybe in small scale craft projects?/ but if there is so much land lost - so many displaced - it will be as the Burmese say, "throwing sesame seeds to feed an elephant."/ Dr Kyi May Kaung, DC-based analyst./

Comment left on Kanlaon Blog - The Structure of a Play -

Did you like Homebody Kabul - I met the actress who understudied for part - she did a monolog at my other friend's house, they met in Afghanistan! I am a great admirer of Angels in America and my play Shaman has a similar structure - saw Angels 9 times as an usher at Philadelphia's Annenberg Center. Kyi May Kaung