Two Butterflies went out at Noon – Emily Dickinson

November 21st, 2009

Two Butterflies went out at Noon—
And waltzed above a Farm—
Then stepped straight through the Firmament
And rested on a Beam—

And then—together bore away
Upon a shining Sea—
Though never yet, in any Port—
Their coming mentioned—be—

If spoken by the distant Bird—
If met in Ether Sea
By Frigate, or by Merchantman—
No notice—was—to me—

Link Wednesday – Twitter, Kooser, Bach

November 10th, 2009

Happy November!

Item 1 – Just in case we have another long break between posts, here is a link that will pass some time – The Longest Poem in the World courtesy of Twitter. It collects people’s tweets and splices them together in rhymed couplets, creating sometimes charming and always ephemeral results. Couplet of the moment:

Just stay positive and positive things will come…
were the but naked women and all the food at, hmmm???

Item 2American Life in Poetry. This is a weekly column written by p.otw.org favorite Ted Kooser. He features young and mostly unknown poets and couples it with a short musing of his own. A recent-ish column caught my eye due to the event it references.

It’s likely that if you found the original handwritten manuscript of T. S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem, “The Waste Land,” you wouldn’t be able to trade it for a candy bar at the Quick Shop on your corner. Here’s a poem by David Lee Garrison of Ohio about how unsuccessfully classical music fits into a subway.

Bach in the DC Subway

As an experiment,
The Washington Post
asked a concert violinist—
wearing jeans, tennis shoes,
and a baseball cap—
to stand near a trash can
at rush hour in the subway
and play Bach
on a Stradivarius.
Partita No. 2 in D Minor
called out to commuters
like an ocean to waves,
sang to the station
about why we should bother
to live.

A thousand people
streamed by. Seven of them
paused for a minute or so
and thirty-two dollars floated
into the open violin case.
A café hostess who drifted
over to the open door
each time she was free
said later that Bach
gave her peace,
and all the children,
all of them,
waded into the music
as if it were water,
listening until they had to be
rescued by parents
who had somewhere else to go.

and a video of Joshua Bell, the Bach-performing violinist in 2007.

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night – Dylan Thomas

August 21st, 2009

(1:33)
read by Dylan Thomas. audio from salon.com.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(1951)

On the Cards and Dice – Sir Walter Raleigh

July 31st, 2009

(:59)
read by Robert Pinsky audio from The Slate Poetry Podcast.

Before the sixth day of the next new year,
Strange wonders in this kingdom shall appear:
Four kings shall be assembled in this isle,
Where they shall keep great tumult for awhile.
Many men then shall have an end of crosses,
And many likewise shall sustain great losses;
Many that now full joyful are and glad,
Shall at that time be sorrowful and sad;
Full many a Christian’s heart shall quake for fear,
The dreadful sound of trump when he shall hear.
Dead bones shall then be tumbled up and down,
In every city and in every town.
By day or night this tumult shall not cease,
Until an herald shall proclaim a peace;
An herald strange, the like was never born,
Whose very beard is flesh and mouth is horn.

“as freedom is a breakfast food” and internet searches

June 21st, 2009

The tendency is for viewers of this site to read for a while and pass on quietly – so it is rare I receive comments or thoughts on the postings or poems. But in the spirit of counteracting this trend I pose a question to readers both regular and not. Over the past two months a fair amount of traffic has come to poem.oftheweek.org due to searches for E.E. Cummings’ “as freedom is a breakfast food”. A month ago there were 60 unique hits on that page – certainly an oddity for potw.org. Why is this? The poem does not seem to have cropped up in the zeitgeist recently in any significant way that I have noticed. My hope is that one of these searchers will pause on this post to answer, but all readers are welcome to hypothesize (my current theory is that questions on the American high school AP English test may have centered around this poem, though I have have no verification).

Link Friday – Recession? What Recession? Poets are already broke.

May 29th, 2009

NPR brings an interesting angle to the current economic discussion. Noting that while publishing is in a tailspin, poetry publishing is relatively sheltered, being used to living on scraps. So next time your parents flip out that you live on ramen noodles and scribble words on scraps of paper, you can gently remind them that they’ll be joining you soon enough.

The above site also provides a link to a Planet Money Haiku contest. I think my favorite is the following:

Technical writer
Moved to the Haiku Department –
Still paid by the word.
–Thomas Lanaghan

Link Tuesday – National Poetry Month, Poets play baseball and graduate Nixon

April 21st, 2009

The site has been quiet recently – lots going on. But we certainly couldn’t let National Poetry Month pass us by. Since April has been so named it gives news organizations license to run their “special interest” pieces. We certainly could never hope (nor wish) to link to all of them, but you will find a few. And if over the course of the month you come across particular sites or stories of interest, please share them. Now read on for assorted and sundry links!

  • Poem in Your Pocket Day. About what it sounds like. On April 30th various organizations encourage you to carry a poem in your pocket – share it with your friends. I think the most famous example of someone carrying a poem in his (or her) pocket was Percy Shelley – supposedly he had Keats’ poetry in his shirt pocket on the day Shelley drowned. So, there’s that (link courtesy of nataline).
  • So Thursday (4/23) is Shakespeare’s birthday. Cool. Apparently people are encouraging Talk Like Shakespeare Day to celebrate this. p.otw.org will not be participating.
  • NPR has been doing a number of poetry stories recently (no doubt tied to NaPoMo). Here’s one that discusses performing Wendell Berry’s work. Wish we could have seen the performance.
  • And unrelated to anything at all – faithful reader johnlos alerts us to the existence of the Whittier College Poets. As he notes in his email, “Whittier College is probably most famous for being where Richard Nixon went to undergrad. For some reason their athletics aren’t very well known…” Alas.

from Helen in Egypt – H.D.

March 2nd, 2009

(3:32)
excerpt read by H.D. audio from Poetry Speaks: Expanded.

3

few were the words we said,
nor knew each other,
nor asked, are you Spirit?

are you sister? are you brother?
are you alive?
are you dead?

the harpers will sing forever
of how Achilles met Helen
among the shades,

but we were not, we are not shadows;
as we walk, heel and sole
leave our sandal-prints in the sand,

though the wounded heel treads lightly
and more lightly follow,
the purple sandals.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Sightseers – Paul Muldoon

February 23rd, 2009

(1:04)
read by Paul Muldoon. audio from paulmuldoon.net

My father and mother, my brother and sister
and I, with uncle Pat, our dour best-loved uncle,
had set out that Sunday afternoon in July
in his broken-down Ford

not to visit some graveyard—one died of shingles,
one of fever, another’s knees turned to jelly—
but the brand-new roundabout at Ballygawley,
the first in mid-Ulster.

Uncle Pat was telling us how the B-Specials
had stopped him one night somewhere near Ballygawley
and smashed his bicycle

and made him sing the Sash and curse the Pope of Rome.
They held a pistol so hard against his forehead
there was still the mark of an O when he got home.

Link Wednesday – John Updike, the Obamas, poetry slamming

February 18th, 2009

Against all odds, the feature returns. This will be playing a bit of catch-up, touching on some stories over the past couple of weeks.

  • On January 27 John Updike passed away. He was best known for his prose work (books like Rabbit, Run), but was also a well-regarded poet. Much has been written about him, but this obituary from the New York times was particularly well-written and thoughtful.
  • The Times also printed a poem from his forthcoming collection:

    Requiem

    It came to me the other day:
    Were I to die, no one would say,
    “Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
    Of promise — depths unplumbable!”

    Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
    Will greet my overdue demise;
    The wide response will be, I know,
    “I thought he died a while ago.”

    For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
    And death is real, and dark, and huge.
    The shock of it will register
    Nowhere but where it will occur.

    — JOHN UPDIKE

  • The North Carolina Literary Festival website has finally been launched. It will be hosted by UNC-Chapel Hill from September 10-13 2009. More as it develops.
  • A little slam poetry about Barack and Michelle Obama’s imagined first date. Make of it as you will. (link courtesy of nataline).
  • Continuing with poetry slam, NPR features four poets and their writings about love. We here at potw.org may have missed Valentine’s Day by a few days, but you can still check it out. The link includes text and readings.