Archive for May, 2009
« Previous EntriesDiane Wakoski kicks out the jams
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
Nothing clears the sinuses faster than a choice blast of an angry woman’s tirade, especially someone who can write sentences that way a butcher wields a knife. Witness this from poet Diane Wakoski , from her 1988 collection Emerald Ice: Selected Poems 1962-1987:
Dancing on the Grave of [...]
Transforming Grandmother
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
Original images: hut by SCervino, castle by Paul Tait, cottage by Mary Daniels, queen of spades by Sachin Godke, wolf by Michal Zacharzewski, spider by Julia Freeman-Woolpert, bubble by Marcus Buckner, spiderweb by tigre, howl by Michael Lorenzo
Collection available! Knocking from Inside
Poetry makes nothing happen
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
Poems about poetry, or PAP , are going concerns I pass up most of the time; in it’s current and most pervasive form, PAP demonstrates the demon-hearted worst of what Ron Silliman calls the School of Quietude, a dominant poetic legion that are conservative in what and [...]
Pathetic
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
Ruth Padel quits an esteemed Chair at Oxford for some dirty tricks she performs against a rival, Nobel Prize Winner Derek Walcott. What learn again what we already knew, the gods have clay feet.
I’m not surprised reading about the shenanigans among the tenured poets at Oxford, since [...]
Arise and Write
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
Lew Welch is credited with having remarked that one doesn’t write unless they’re not good at anything else, a sentiment describing writing more as process rather than discovery. The myth of writing, that of determining truths, set in place, that will not diminish, change, or expand upon [...]
Mad Birds
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
Ah God, unlid this sky
and free the wild birds who throw themselves
against it like stones against armored glass.
Unlid these sleeping eyes,
reveal the vast and turning armillary spheres
and the silent axles that support the wheels
rolling under the universe.
Smoke: all this machinery is smoke and mirrors
clotted now with [...]
Cloudy Morning
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
3 Word Wednesday: Dreary. Embrace. Timid.
dreary overcast
timid flutter of sparrows
I miss your embrace
Collection available! Knocking from Inside
Sword Words
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
Original image by mgaber
Collection available! Knocking from Inside
Vignette: Pride and Prejudice
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
Vignettes are not supposed to be
discursive. They shouldn’t veer off
into self-indulgent doldrums or irrelevant paeans—
they should be twisted tight as a torniquet,
unnecessary flesh excised.
He’s debonair and saturnine, wears
the sobriquet “Olivier” easily. She’s a bomb
hidden under an Austen-patterned parasol.
Their colloquy is punctuated
by vulpine yowls.
–words courtesy of Read [...]
Dawn’s Cafe – Seligman
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
Me and my parents in a rented car
on old Route 66. Red rimrock replacing
tropic savannahs behind our eyes,
while the young fellow at the counter
grins at my dad: maybe the only two
black men in all of Arizona in 1981.
He says he’s from Chicago. Us? It takes
fifteen minutes [...]
An exchange on Bukowski and Eliot
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
Some remarks from Barry Alfonso, writer, scholar, college chum, in parentheses. He was responding to an earlier post, The Tedium of Bukowski.Barry is, I need to say, one of the smartest scribes on matters of literature, culture and music, and that world needs more of his brand [...]
The Stonebound Swan
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
Once there was a swan who swallowed a worry-stone.
This happens from time to time. It’s good for swans to swallow stones; it helps them digest. The problem is, there’s no way to tell a worry-stone from a regular stone.
Worry-stones tend to grow.
Soon the swan found herself [...]
Susan Greenfield
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
Go to dgwillsbooks.com for more details.
Death and Birth
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
There’s not much in the way of ornamentation in Elise Partridge’s “Last Days” , but rather a stark clarity that conveys the feeling that time itself has become an irrational quality as one sits through the ongoing agony of a pregnant friend struggles with and eventually loses [...]
Benoit Mandelbrot and the Coast of Britain
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension by Benoît Mandelbrot
Water and land, like fingers interlaced
along a boundary of fractal length
divide and conquer self-similar space.
Like lovers in a close-contact embrace
they clasp each other in a couple-dance
in time stepped off in tidal increments,
the [...]
To Really Foul Things Up…
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
3 Word Wednesday: Efficient. Optimize. Treacherous.
Optimized, but wrong–
treacherous efficiency
makes mistakes faster
Collection available! Knocking from Inside
Caterpillar Cub
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
He looks a little anxious, as if he’s just realized how far he’s climbed…
Caterpillar cub
creeping up a tree
how will you get down?
Thought it would be fun
stealing from the bees
furry bear-cub clown
but now you’re very, very
far above the ground.
Caterpillar cub
how will you get down?
–for Cafe Writing
Collection available! [...]
The Game of the Friend: Nodemap
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
Collection available! Knocking from Inside
The Game of the Friend
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
I saved a pressed rose petal in the name of the Friend,
the faintest of fragrances that came from the Friend.
A tree died in my yard and I’m full of complaints
but if the roots failed to grow it’s no blame to the Friend.
A garden of prayer blooms [...]
“Howl”: Because No One Reads It Like Allen Ginsberg
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by World Class Poetry Blog
This needs no introduction. Enjoy a “Howl”:
Mindshift
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Average Poet Blog
I’ve mucked in mediocrity for many maudlin years
fettered by the ferrous chains of fundamental fears
but now a nascent noumenon is gnawing with a need
to break the bonds that keep the collars blue among my breed.
Leaving the Fortune-Teller’s
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
He leans and staggers, seems about to fall,
unbalanced, maybe wounded, drunk, half-sleeping,
leaving scarlet palm-prints on the wall.
Not blood but paint? So there’s no need to call
an ambulance for this poor guy who’s creeping,
staggering along, about to fall
through alleys past and present, through the scrawl
of palmistry symobology [...]
The all-time hit parade (and a new story)
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
I’m writing another story, which will probably not be novel-length but will be longer than a short story. One of those difficult lengths. More details here.
I installed the IceRocket hit counter here at KFI in January, and it’s been an entertaining look at what pages get [...]
Shadow Loss
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
All winter long I didn’t see my shadow
(I, like groundhogs, peering anxiously)
but now she has come back, and I am glad, oh
glad to see her once more follow me:
a swatch of dark to balance summer skies
midday reminder of the coming night,
a clever masquer in a dark [...]
Disconnection
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
A lover’s soul, in trauma from rejection
may attempt eternal self-protection
by erecting walls and barring doors
a fortress-heart, defended from all wars.
As if a sooty petrel were to soar
in fruitless search for stormless ocean shore
and never nest. The price? A disconnection,
loss of warmth, a blurring of direction.
The world [...]