Archive for July, 2009
« Previous EntriesPoetry is what ever gets you to the next page
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
There is a long history of poets and critics declaring poetry is something completely other than prose, a separate art approximating a form of meta-writing that penetrates the circumscribed certainties of words and makes them work harder, in service to imagination, to reveal the ambiguity that is [...]
Stages
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Average Poet Blog
Tonight I’ll flirt with Destiny
and every circumstance
I know will get the best of me
if given half a chance,
but will it hold an audience
with dialogue that’s dry?
I’ve got to act with confidence,
we all have plots to ply.
There is no lasting happiness
just moments more serene
that counteract the craziness
before the [...]
12:15
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
quarter past midnight
clock hands at ninety degrees
thermometer too
Collection available! Knocking from Inside
Tanka Poetry: The Heart Of A Sailor By M. Kei
Rating 4.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by World Class Poetry Blog
First, World Class Poetry offered “Twitter Haiku and Other Gems” by Gene Myers. Now, our second Twitter chapbook focusing on Japanese short forms is available for free through the World Class Poetry Toolbar.
“The Heart Of A Sailor” is a collection of 26 tanka poems by gay [...]
Hybrid Poetry: Post Avant Or Something Else?
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by World Class Poetry Blog
I just finished reading American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology Of New Poetry edited by Cole Swensen and David St. John. The book is a compilation of poets and a selection of their poems that have been published over the past 10 or 20 years, illustrating the [...]
notes on poems by Mark Strand and May Swenson
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
The quiet side appeals to me as well, much as I love abrasive post-bop jazz improvisation ala Cecil Taylor or the raucous cacophony of Charles Ives. Strip-mining the mediums alone won’t satisfy what I can at best call a sweet tooth, a need to have pleasure. Sometimes [...]
Plein Air
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
Portland area poets, take note: The Columbia Center for the Arts is sponsoring the 5th annual Plein Air Writing Exhibition.
What’s that?
An incentive to go out and visit scenic locales in the incomparable Columbia Gorge, write about it, maybe get published.
Go ye forth and admire!
Collection available! Knocking [...]
Green Skin
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
Reworked the previous into a sonnet. All my friends swear I’m a reptile.
Photosynthesis can make you drunk
in summer heat and sunlight, just as if
you were saguaro, tall and leafless trunk
all tilting-tipsy on aperitifs
of carbohydrate. Sugar-high: the curse
of C4 metabolic pathways, sweet
intoxication. Fire in reverse,
producing fuel and [...]
Photosynthesis
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
in very strong sunlight
can make you drunk–
tipsy, anyway
feels like a sugar high.
My sap is thickening with
carbohydrate bounty
and if you cut me I’ll bleed
maple syrup on the sidewalk.
Hide in the shade if you must
turn up the AC and drink
ice water– I’m storing up
photon energy for winter.
102 degrees. [...]
A familiar set of reshuffled notes
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
But to impose is not
To discover. To discover an order as of
A season, to discover summer and know it,
To discover winter and know it well, to find,
Not to impose, not to have reasoned at all,
Out of nothing to have come on major weather,
It is possible, possible, possible. [...]
Proof
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Average Poet Blog
Some pleasures that I’ve sought to shun
enjoyed would see my world undone
for am I not my mother’s son—
aware the bottle’s less than half
but daily forcing out a laugh
insisting on a full carafe;
and though it caused her cruel demise
I’ll snuggle up with all my lies
until the fire takes [...]
Photo in Sepia
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
This is a monochrome memory
This is a blast from the past
Blurred by the passing of history
Faded by moving too fast.
This is a photo in sepia
This is the friends that we were
This is our once-private area
Hidden by tombstone and fir.
Tell me the cost of remembering
Tell me the [...]
PV=nRT
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
If there were one law that I could revoke
this ain’t it. Pressure-cooker tyranny
on hapless gas must finally provoke
eruption: particles will seek a free
path, mean or not. But infinite compression,
populace compacted into mass
as dense as neutron stars, curtailed expression—
tyrants dream of bringing this to pass.
The globe is [...]
Play The Google Books Game, Win A Sony Reader
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by World Class Poetry Blog
It takes all of 10 minutes. You answer five questions about literature (it’s an open book test) and present a 50-word essay about what the future of reading will be like. You can do it 10 times in 10 days (actually only 9 days left). And [...]
15 Words Contemporary Poets Overuse (And Overuse Again)
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by World Class Poetry Blog
I once met a journal editor who said he’d never publish a poem with the word “soul” in it. I thought it was extreme. Sure, it’s an overused word, but what if it was the right word for the poem?
I asked my poetic friend what was [...]
Writing after drying out
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
I used to insist that poems that didn’t have “dirt under the fingernails” were without value, insisting that live as it’s lived by working men and women in America were more interesting , more complex and more important than the dense, academic poems one was made to [...]
Stillwater King
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
Bubbles rise under the watchful
gaze of the Stillwater King.
My treasure is lost now: my chestful
of bubbles that rise under watchful
eyes that could make a man thoughtful
if he were not drowning. A ring
of bubbles is caught by the watchful
gaze of the Stillwater King.
Made by merging an [...]
World Class Poet’s Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-26
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by World Class Poetry Blog
It’s Sunday,/all day a fun day/with hope for Monday/being a not alone day. #twitpoem #
Book reviews for one whole month! Starts August 1. #
Coming soon! One month of book reviews. August 1. #
We’re nearing the end of the month. Is your tool this cool? More pubs [...]
Poems For The Utopian Nihilist
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by World Class Poetry Blog
When I was a young rebellious man (as opposed to now being an old rebellious man) I thought it crafty to take two opposing ideas and juxtapose them by melding them into one phrase that on the surface appeared to be a contradiction, an oxymoron. Examples [...]
Courage
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
A fellow contributor to an internet forum I frequent presented this quote for general discussion
In “Time Out of Mind,” Leonard Michaels wrote: “Courage is continuing to perform your daily tasks, and being hopeful despite the odds; not inflicting your fears on others, and remaining sensitive to their [...]
How God Created the World
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
I heard during a lecture that Thomas Pynchon had written somewhere that God is the original conspiracy theory; I haven’t found the source of the quote, but the saying appears in many places around the Internet, and it seems that the sentiment has resonated loudly with quite [...]
The D chases its tail
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
A rant, beating a dead horse-tb
Deconstruction, which arises from a tradition of structuralist and post-structuralist practice , seems more a trivial pursuit these days. So much time was spent belaboring such bromides like “every text contains it’s counter argument” and “there is nothing outside the text” (to [...]
a poem from Clive James: those who criticize can also do
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Ted Burke Blog
Critic Clive James has complained that ours is an age where everyone is writing poetry yet no is able to write a poem. A formalist at heart, we can properly assume that he means that very few have the old graces of scansion, rhyme, meter. It would [...]
My yard in summer
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
It’s the last week of July and the days are starting to shorten perceptibly. Meanwhile the temperatures are climbing into the triple digits. The peony stems look healthy, green and plump, but the foliage is a little scorched. Queen Anne’s lace is blooming, white umbels like [...]
Urban Warfare
Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]Submitted by Knocking from Inside Blog
The air smells of burning tires
because the swings from the playground
have been thrown on the barricades.
The surly cadres cared nothing for
any trespass against the sanctity
of a space devoted to child’s-play
and their crafty-eyed leader supposed
the neighborhood would be cowed—
he didn’t expect outraged PTA mothers
and Eagle Scout fathers [...]