I wish I could write erotic poetry about laundry day like Erica Jong does: This is the dirty laundry poem— because we have traveled from town to town accumulating soiled linen & sweaty shirts & blue-jeans caked & clotted with our juice & teeshirts crumpled by our gloriously messy passion & underwear made stiff by all our joy. No, my laundry poetry would sound a little more like This shirt, perfectly clean has been kicked…
The New Stranger by Sharon Olds (from Blood, Tin, Straw) They would peer in the carriage and ask was your father Chinese, your lustrous, curly-lidded, slightly tilted eyes, your elegant forehead. You were a stranger to me— I thought I would know you, but I had to get to know you— I know your bowl brow, and serious eyes, but sometimes you were alien to me as a foetus, the large-brained head, the brain forming…
The Flood by Leonard Cohen The flood it is gathering Soon it will move Across every valley Across every roof The body will drown And the soul will break loose I write all this down But I don’t have the proof [Project 365]
My mother has been grieving for weeks over a ring that my dad gave her on April 1 four years ago that she lost recently. She left me the saddest voice mail earlier today, first recapping all the local news (my sister has pneumonia, my dad’s heart doctor appointment here in town is for the 9th, etc.) and then wrapping up the message by saying how she was kinda down today because of the missing…
Scanning Memphis blogs, came upon this poem. It’s fantastic. Emptying Town by Nick Flynn I want to erase your footprints from my walls. Each pillow is thick with your reasons. Omens fill the sidewalk below my window: a woman in a party hat, clinging to a tin-foil balloon. Shadows creep slowly across the tar, someone yells, “Stop!” and I close my eyes. I can’t watch as this town slowly empties, leaving me strung between bon-voyages,…
I can’t imagine anything more … odd … than an old-poetry dump here at T&G, since I don’t write much poetry these days and poetry is one of those things that people either love or hate. (And most people lean toward the hate side.) But for whatever reason, I was combing through my e-mail drafts earlier today (*cough*boredom*cough*) and rediscovered all sorts of weird little blank verses I’d written over the past four years, and…
It’s late and I’ve had some leftover champagne, so surely I can be forgiven for waxing romantic about notions of life and creativity and love on all levels. I was reading a fairly depressing comment thread over at Salon the other day (depressing in that so many people want to dispense advice to an author who isn’t even asking for it) and this poem cropped up in it, like some little pearl ascending out of…
[for Wednesday, July 25] My vacation from the internet earlier today (Wednesday) was actually quite nice. Granted, I was practically under house arrest while I waited for the landlord to call me back, but it was still a very quiet, contemplative morning and afternoon. I fetched Stranger Music from the bookshelf and reacquainted myself with the world of blank verse. It’s a scary world, actually. But one I very much enjoy. The words, if you’re…
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