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DC
I live and work in DC.
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This inspires me to pick up Paz again. Thanks.
One by Octavio [by Megin Jimenez]
Here is an airy, early poem by the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz (and he is truly a great, not just as in "yeah, he's great"). I just realized that every year, I pick up the big white bilingual paperback collection of his poems (edited by Eliot Weinberger) when it starts to get hot again, I'...
I'm enjoying these posts. I think poets need to work on their spoken delivery. And I say this as a stutterer who never reads out loud but who thinks a lot about the best way to read out loud. I think poems should be delivered with as little verbal drama as possible. If the poem has power then it does not need any verbal drama to propel it. I don't speak my poems, but I hear them clearly, and I can hear myself in my mind delivering them to an audience in a slow, even manner. Not necessarily too dry or too dignified or uppity in any way. Just devoid of drama.
Many people associate poetry with drama or handwringing or mere complaint. I think poets can do a lot to improve the image of poetry if they instill some discipline into their delivery.
Why do people go to poetry readings? [by Megin Jimenez]
Why do people go to poetry readings? We have access to books, DVDs, your friend's band's show tonight, Facebook, dinner parties, The Real Housewives, tap dancing classes, movie theaters, long drives, symphony orchestras, YouTube, picnics in the park... Why would anyone go to a poetry reading?...
What a great post.
I've been very troubled by the yellow journalism that attends the BP oil spill. Reading AP articles, it seems as if BP is a favorite sports team pitted against a particularly truculent opponent, go team.
Top Kill, Junk Shot, Hair Booms [by Megin Jimenez]
I have more to come specifically on poetry, but as oil continues to pour ceaselessly into the Gulf of Mexico, I'm feeling compelled to write a note on the language coming out of this disaster, it seems now, the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States. The names BP ha...
>>>People feel at home doing things that they watched their parents do when they were growing up.
I am very conscious of it, and since my parents / stepparents did so many nonproductive or detrimental things, I try hard to NOT be like them. It is sometimes a struggle to not respond as they to a given situation, or behave as they in an ongoing way. My father has become a gentle, kind, and wise man and most often I try to do what he does.
Whatcha doing? A Psycho-philosophical hypothesis. [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]
Dear Bleaders, How are you? I am doing okay, or I am a wreck, depending on who you are, and how you are doing. Use whatever calculus amuses you. Today I’d like to talk to you about an idea that I haven’t written about before, but which is like the ideas I talk about in my book The Happiness...
dreampost
Write a dream, lose a reader, so they say. I have a dream to report and it contains a lot of nudity. Would you keep reading for the promise of nudity? But without photos, only more or less descriptive text? What if the text contained enticing words like proud or well-formed or the very exciting word, wobble? I'm thinking about the Greenaway film Prospero's Books: "Knowing I lov'd my books he furnished me from mine own library volumes that I prize above my dukedom." The dream was a dukedom of books. Books and naked people (both genders, many ages), paper, wind, water and, somehow in a wet windy environment inimical to candles, candles. I won't record it here anymore, don't worry. Still reading? Here's a poem by Merrill about a dream. An old favorite. Try not to nod off! I hope you are enjoying your day. Read about Merrill at the Poetry Foundation. The Mad Scene by James Merrill Again last night I dreamed the dream called Laundry. In it, the sheets and towels of a life we were going to share, The milk-stiff bibs, the shroud, each rag to be ever Trampled or soiled, bled on or groped for blindly, Came swooning out of an enormous willow hamper Onto moon-marbly boards. We had just met. I watched From outer darkness. I had dressed myself in clothes Of a new fiber that never stains or wrinkles, never Wears thin. The opera house sparkled with tiers And tiers of eyes, like mine enlarged by belladonna, Trained inward. There I saw the cloud-clot, gust by gust, Form, and the lightning bite, and the roan mane unloosen. Fingers were running in panic over the flute's nine gates. Why did I flinch? I loved you. And in the downpour laughed To have us wrung white, gnarled together, one Topmost mordent of wisteria, As the lean tree burst into grief. from Collected Poems Alfred A. Knopf, 2001 -- Eric Bourland 27 May 2010 for BAP Continue reading
Posted May 27, 2010 at The Best American Poetry
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Go Bill. I'm glad he's reading, and takes it seriously.
"What's the name of this gal? Oh, yeah -- Emily Dickinson... "
Bill Murray reads poetry while wearing a hard-hat:
It looks like a really great time. Wish I coulda been there.
Poetry Hi-Jinx in West Chester PA (by Laura Orem)
Here's a cool way to spend a Wednesday evening: attend a poetry reading by our own Jill Alexander Essbaum! Last night, I drove out to West Chester to hear Jill and poet Ernest Hilbert give a reading at the West Chester University Poetry Center's Poetry House. They read to a standing-room only au...
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