Monday, August 1, 2016



~Albert Einstein

How do we, mankind as a whole and individually, define purpose? In our day to day steps, from dawn until dusk, do we strive only in self-motivation, or a combination of self and others? What is are our personal resolve or intention in life? Do we calculate our design and dreams beyond personal goals and development? Does the bigger picture extend to the world or is it constrained to only the four walls in which we reside? In a world in which times are difficult: economically, with constant threats of terror, famine and pestilence, leave many with a fear of the unknown. A fear which draws one personally into one’s own world, resulting in selfish gain and vision of only personal achievement. Life’s purpose has resolved itself into the instinct to survive; varying in the result of positive or negative personal actions. As mankind, as a whole, we need to grasp a vision of oneness, moving beyond personal gain and into the purpose of visualizing the bigger picture in the world in which we live.

Finding the purpose of oneness will allow many avenues to converge into one common road. With a common purpose, visualizing as a whole, mankind can move beyond prejudice and focus on the well-being of others. The use of the word “oneness,” is not an intended statement for everyone to be the same, but finding a common goal to heal and move beyond our fears to feed the hungry, cloth the poor, step in and resolve unfairness. There are many cultures, ethnic groups and beliefs that make up our world called Earth. Each group and individual, as a human being needs to be respected as a fellow human being. Not every human being is bad, feeding into the fears of others. Not every human being is selfish, robbing mankind. Not every human being is full of evil and hate. There are those, who have been left in the rubble of constant fear that do not know which avenue to pursue, due to fear of being robbed monetarily or robbed of life. The love of many have run cold; some are mean and/or ruthless and others do not want to extend compassion, because compassion has not been evident in their surroundings. So where does that leave mankind, in a pursuit of purpose, to aid in the well-being of others? Love overcomes evil even when the fruit of love is not received by the intended. Connecting the avenues which make up mankind, and meeting on the road, with an intended purpose to pursue peace and unity, mankind as a whole may find the light at the end of the dark tunnel in which we walk day to day.

The pursuit of negative personal gain has tightened its vice, squeezing the life out of many. People are driven by greed, fueled by pride and self- glory. Narcissism leaves compassion for others in the coldest of winter rains, blowing its frozen intentions across the world. The ideals of self, consume the world, setting ablaze hatred toward others. Self-love, with no consideration for mankind has turned the world into a dark place. The candle of hope can be relit when we visualize the bigger picture for mankind.

So as poets, poetess’ and writers, may our focus fall upon the bigger picture. Let us inspire, motivate and encourage all of humanity. May our words pour out humility from within, along with the moving power of integrity, to all who read our words. May the fountain of hope drench the world in which we live, filling all with peace and comforting the soul. We, as individuals and society as a whole, can make a difference in the world.

“The pursuit of peace lies within the soul of each individual. Reach down, deep within, and pull out that which can make the world sing in perfect harmony.”

~Stacia Lynn Reynolds

In the August Edition of OPA, we are pleased to introduce, the beautiful and inspirational poetess, Irsa Ruci, in her own words. I encourage all to read the interview with Irsa, and learn about her writing experiences, along with her aspirations in life as well. Our Poetry Archive would also like to thank every participant who has agreed to be interviewed, beginning with OPA’s first “Poet of the Month,” Ana Nedelcu, in April; followed by Sandy Sass in May; Michael Marrotti, in the June Edition, and Thomas DeAngelo’s interview in the July’s Edition. It has been an exciting adventure, and a great pleasure reading everyone’s answers from the interviews. Also, with our utmost appreciation, we would like to thank all the contributors who participated in our online Anthology, “Poetry for Unity Against Racism.” This Special Edition is receiving immense popularity and support among readers from around the world! The positive impact of support is the first step in our pursuit for unity among mankind, and for this reason our gratitude extends to all poets, poetesses and readers.

Those who would like to participate in our upcoming editions, please send at least three poems and a profile picture, along with the explicit confirmation of your permission for publication in OPA well before the 21st of every month. Our mail address is

Author Stacia Lynn Reynolds, editor, sincerely thanks each and every poet, poetess and reader who is actively involved in this wonderful Poetry Journal and continued support of Our Poetry Archive.

From The Editorial Desk




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OPA How long have you been writing Poetry? We would like to know the early stories about your growing up as a poet or writer in general. Who are your favorite Poets? What are some of your favorite genres to read and to write? Have they inspired you; do you believe in inspiration as a guiding force behind writings at all?

IRSA The first words I have written trying to form a poem (so naive that the age itself), were written 18 years ago. It was December of 1998 when, for the first time, I felt the magic of words coming to me, like a whisper of dreams, or like the light that comes from the soul giving light to the world. I even have saved my first poem, the torn paper with my childlike handwriting; full of mistakes and at the end of the page my name, my signature and the date of that day.

This is my first poem:

A bird tweeted in my window
this sweet song
woke me up,
small bird requested me food
but I bestowed upon the dream
to migrated away.

Its eyes seemed thanked
a tear fell from its soul
and I felt as it said:
"Nobody treated me like you,
and that I never forget."

As I read these "lines" I feel happy that my first attempts to write a poem was dedicated to the theme of gratitude. It doesn't matter what makes us feel grateful, during our journey in life a lot of setbacks are put in our way, and it is important not to forget this feeling. Poetry has changed me.... before I started to write I was a fussy girl, very noisy and unstable. But after I started to dedicate myself more to it, I gained the wisdom of contemplating, I cultivated the tranquillity of reason, but something was never changed in me: being a disobedient rebel not able to make compromises except with myself. And something else I’d like to add a poet is never grown enough to give up on his childhood. I don’t to want to mention the name of one or several poets as my favourites. Of course, there are poets who have inspired me the most with their power of speech or with the ideas that their works transmit, but I more often than not, I don’t judge by the name of the poet to read poetry. Sometimes, to be an authority in poetry doesn't mean that every stanza of him is excellent. Every poem that survives through the years and crosses every boundary deserves to be in a pedestal. I have read a lot, I have grown with books, I love the scent of the paper and I have read almost every great author. I like reading everything that it is in my tastes, every genre especially poetry. I believe in inspiration, but I believe as much in the will power and hard work. The brain is a muscle and like every muscle needs to work. I write each day, of course not everyone deserves to be called literary but I oblige myself to write every day. Because work and experience are equally important to me.


IRSA Critique is always changing depending on the publication or how the author has reflected to improve oneself from the critique. I have never had one critique that has put me in difficulties. I have always heard words but time will judge if they are true. They have helped to believe in my writings and by rejoicing their comments and taking seriously their critics. There are always beautiful compliments. The poets are considered a little weird because of the ability to translate feelings in words. I get elaborated compliments but I am aware that they are out of subjectivism. The weirdest thing is when different readers ask me to write about some birthday of their son, for some sister, also girls whom I don’t know ask me to write about their lovers etc. Because they believe poetry can help them nurture their relationships. I don’t have the physical time to reply to each of them but I feel happy that seek shelter in poetry.


IRSA A poem goes through several phases, it is the phase of emotions that collect and pour on the paper. It is the phase of selecting the stream of thoughts and adapting them in lines, and the other phase is reflecting about the final version. The last phase consists in checking the poem in complete coldness trying to be as objective as possible. I don’t have a favourite poem. Sometimes I feel like a love a little more the poems which have been awarded, which have given me the faith that my words are valuable. But as soon as I write a new poem, I feel like this one is a little bit better. I believe this is positive because it motivates me to write. Of course, in time I have grown professionally, in form and in thematic and now I can be the critic of my own poems.


IRSA  Poets are guardians of the soul; they speak with feelings, are read in silence, they live with ideals and they believe that the light comes first from the heart. What I love most about being a poet is that I feel that I can read the beauty of a soul, to discover pure human love to understand even the darkest thoughts that lies hidden in our conscience. I love how I feel and understand connotations of words, to use words to register the good that lives in each of us. The least favourite? ...Hhmm, the general opinion of people that poets are with their heads over the clouds. I refuse the bitter reality and that is why I idealize another universe built in innocence, raised in kindness inherited to the Human.

OPA Did you get to quit your day job and become a writer and or author, or do you still have a day job and writing is something you do for fun? If you still have a day job, what is it?

IRSA It is completely impossible in my country to live by working as a poet; it is a luxury I cannot permit to myself. Poets are the least evaluated persons, which would practically starve if they would live only by their writings. I work as a speechwriter in one of the most important Governmental Institutions in Albania. I am also a lecturer in the university I have studied. Of course, poetry it is not only a hobby for me. I cannot see it just like this, poetry gives me the motif to live beautifully, it gives me breathe to have a taste of the eternity in each day. I see poetry as a very serious intention, since that day that the sparkle was lighten inside of me and I haven't allowed it to escape from myself.


IRSA I love travelling; to those places which give me the spirit of romanticism; but also to know the history of places which fanatically preserve their culture, to know the culture of different countries, to meet new people, to play the piano, to take up sports, etc. I have experimented a lot with poetry. I keep investing a lot of time and energy in poetry. I have also written poetic prose, essay, publicist writings and long prose. Probably, because these are the genres which I prefer the most.

OPA: Do you think literature or poetry is really essential in your life? If so why? How does it relate to the general history of mankind?

IRSA  Is poetry important in my life? ... No, poetry is the most important part of my life. Poetry is like the glasses that I see the world through. Poetry has helped to shape my personal and professional character, to gain the tranquility and the clarity of thought. To fight for the right and never stop to seek for hope, even when there is not; to never stop giving and taking knowledge; to never stop writing lines even when history is being written by bullets. The history of humanity is preserved in poetry. Because in lines roars the ultimate truth but seen by people who are not able to make compromises, that kneel when they face the truth. These people should be feared because they are unattainable (the conscience of a country written in lines).


IRSA If I would go on with the opinion that I was saying previously, I would sum up the importance of poetry in my life, in the stimulation that poetry has given to me to understand better the society, seeing deep and not judging superficially, to know people beyond the appearance but to know them from the inside, to judge them not only by the reason but also with heart; to believe ... to believe that miracles exist, they are un extension of the human inside.


IRSA Technology offers facilities in communication; giving everyone the commodity of having the world in the palm of his hand. Everyone can possess the same information, at the same time, from every angle of the world. Very often I hear that technology has under valuated books. It is not entirely true or entirely proven. If technology has made books worthless, then it has made even humans so. Because a human who doesn't read, it is like a deserted castle worth to be inhabited by rats. But this facility has created to everyone the space to express his ideas like one wants, without going through certain ethical filters, has produced "poets" that write, publish and launch in the market their experience. And being in a disoriented market, uncontrolled and disorganized the readers encounter difficulties to depict true writers from the mediocre ones. Not serious authors will produce not serious literature and will be read not with the seriously that they are produced. But a true author is not interested in being massive; this kind of author seeks for the crust and not the mass. This author writes not to be read temporarily but to become eternal. And is this certain author changes with his art not the mood but the way one sees life.

OPA Now if we try to understand the tradition and modernism, do you think literature can play a pivotal role in it?  If so, how? Again how can an individual writer relate himself or herself with the tradition and modernism?

IRSA We live in the present with the experiences of the past on our shoulders. And modernity did not arise out of thin air, but on the ruins of another time, which brought it into attention in a different form. Poetry is living sensation that doesn’t go along with fashion, does not recognize the old times, poetry lives within time and preserves every detail of history. Poetry "renews" tradition, as much as traditionalizes the modern times. This means that the terms melt when arrays are lost; and life always remains the sweet taste of the word. Which means, that poets cannot be divided into traditional or modernist based on the themes they write about neither of the ages where they lived and contributed? There is only eternity that unites poetry and poets that unite generations.


IRSA Of course, the social environment plays an important role in shaping the character of an individual, much more than a poet; which often is the product of his word and the word of the poet, the product of rebellion for what does not fit to the ideas said in the arrays. Since we are in summer, we can do a little comparison: If the city where the poet grew is the sea, his friendship is the sand, while the human person the individuals are castles built on the shore. But, if in that castle full of dreams comes a wave of power and everything collapses ... are the dreams lost or the sea? You can build the castle again somewhere else far, no wave that can tear it down but the sea will lose beauty in front of him. Like the poet, as traces of the rising and growing company that can feel disappointments, but he is a bohemian traveler who always finds a haven for those who want to read. The poet is not a product of a country; it is a composite of people that enjoy words. I write about the society in which I live, my rebellion writes; speak because I want a more active, more productive and more humane society. And of course that this company is my formative factor and sometimes even the character and actor that forms my string.

OPA Are you a feminist? Can literature play any decisive role in feminism at all?

IRSA I am not a feminist. Because do not believe that there are weak women’s that need my pity. Beyond the fragile female portrait is hidden a soul that knows how to fight for what is worthy and they take everything that they want with strength of mind and will of being. To see women as the weak sex is malevolence to make them feel weak. But I have always thought that being a female is difficult. You have given two different worlds of each - other, which must not only recognize, but also to live with dignity: that out of you, alien world, the egret, what requires to be sufficiently for not ever losing time, independent, determined, invincible; and the inner world, where you feel free to fly with the wings of madness, happy fragility yourself, soft up to seduction, sweet to drunkenness, equipped with the capability of meeting any pain to turn on power , true, ah yes, true to the core, but also the carrier of featureless female instinct never to err. A female without intuition is like a ship without a rudder, taking the evil winds of the times. Oh, after that I said, I let your desire to call me a feminist, or not...But literature can… Give voice to women, because female poetry is as powerful as male strength, also it produces sweetness, a strong sweetness of poetry.

OPA Do you believe that all writers are by and large the product of their nationality and is it an incentive or an obstacle for becoming a truly international writer?

IRSA Perhaps a writer is the product of the nationality where he lives, but a writer is much more than that ... the wind where image is breathing, it is the reflex of the future is to be built across borders. A writer doesn’t have a place to live to stay; the writer's refuge is home to every reader. A writer is the keeper of your dreams, when involuntarily falls asleep with the book in hand; guest is you everyday life, when from the edge it  quietly spies your library ... Surely a writer living in America for example has much more changes to internationalize than a writer who comes from my small country, not as known as Albania. But these are barriers that should not discourage anyone who writes, but should give strength if he believes in his talent, never stop the fugitive and what he believes he deserves.

OPA What 7 words would you use to describe yourself?

IRSA The first method of Presentation:
 1. Correct
2. Courage
3. Rebel
4. Responsible
5. Challenging
6. Persistent
7. Poet
The second method of - the presentation:
I am the word that the soul turns into poetry.
(PS. However, I believe that to describe themselves will no longer suffice as a whole book written with sheet unwritten (left on the whiteness of the opinion), because a poet often speaks with silence, or makes others keep silent of his speech).


IRSA Poetry heals the soul, so read as much as you can...  You will never feel the same as you escape from the daily life of some beautiful verses, because a friend of the poet is anyone who loves to see beyond the ordinary. Avoid the mistakes made, the desire to understand the poets, because you will never know them deeply or discover the depth of their ideals; you just need to breathe the poet, like air, as higher freedom of the soul, like a poem written over time... But poetry heals the soul, so please read!



Irsa Ruçi

One day I’ll forgive anyone who wanted to give me sadness
Only with laughter
And the misery force while feeling
While people find at me
The self they never found.

Only the aging beings from their own consciousness
While they vomit the hatred at other
Given that their selfishness suffocates them in rancour:
The evil has the form the spirit that comes!

One day I’ll turn words in prayers
That hearts full of envy,
To cultivate them with love.
© Irsa Ruçi    (Translated by Silva Daci)


I free myself like the air when grabs the waves
I breathe beyond my peace, in the secret solitude of spirit
Look to not be lost in the street of the heart.

I always seek the light’s fountain
In the magic of a smile
Or in the brilliance of the tears in the eyes
In the wave, through the whisper of the leafs
Beyond the music of the nightingales…

I always found the fountain of life
In the kindness of words, in the love’s stone road
Because I am not afraid from the divine feelings
I am a book that you need the capability to understand
To read quietly,
And there’s no more magical moment
While eyes are suffocated in the soul…

I live,
I love,
I dream,
Beyond every time
I create poetically in the threshold of wishes
When I close my eyes I nap sheltered in my universe
Because I am “Irsa in the wonderland”.
© Irsa Ruçi    (Translated by Silva Daci)


Names written like absence, time is left with no remembrance
The future is like an infant, dandled in dreams
With the taste of the past
That often frightens after cries in the sleep.

No more rain from the skies, pains are raining
The rain falls from the eyes
Suffocated in loneliness, in the denial form
Rebelled for the light that for so long
We see it

Streets are empty path of events
The aging steps weigh more,
Than nothingness, in bare footedness
Prophecies read in the palm of the hand
Like suffering is read in wrinkles…

Epochs who give birth to dessert, nothing to remember
Despite the formless noise
Like the scream within a room
No objects
That echoes
Till the repetition of itself…

Then there is silence;
Silence that weighs more than any word.
© Irsa Ruçi    (Translated by Silva Daci)

Shshshttt... Listen to the sparrows
Knitting plans behind the wings
And ask yourself
If the words are enough
To build a city of gossips
Under the sparrow's songs...

Come now, return from pain
That with courage you build it in days, and every day
While it tears down like sandy castles
In the nights
When you shed in tears
Freezes the hurricanes;
But enough already:
Even slavery is drunkenness!

Spy a little on the silence
While is speaking
And tell me:
How many were killed by the despicable silence of hers
When none of us bothered
To look for answers?
Meaning takes form only in subconscious.

A drop of liquor let's have today
Till the end
For the end of the two-facets
That don't know end
And let's sing together,
Sing with us
The sparrow's song...!
© Irsa Ruçi              (Translated by Silva Daci)


In the field where his mother laboured
He paced each day
Every time he faced the sun, said his prayers
Looking into her eyes;
His sister came after, playing
With her brother’s longing
Reciting with infant words
And the three of them smiled; …smiled
With the voice of time echoing
Their path
… A path filled with light!

He bowed to receive his mother’s blessing
Feeling the wrinkles in his mother’s hands
On his soft hair
And on his manly forehead raised by her kisses…

He sensed the scent of the earth just like his mother’s
That’s why he laid every evening under a tree
With the sun in his soul, singing to life…
(Translated by Silva Daci)