Not that I’m measuring my life out in coffee-spoons or anything, but, for context, this was posted in 2015:
Prufrock turns 100 this year, T.S. Eliot 122. Read it here. Read it now.
Tag: poetry
Stanley Fish: “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One.”
Really good. Various places.
Found Poetry from Comment Spam
“This is a little something for you. I’m in a hurry! He can’t take a joke. Could I have those two tickets, please? This is only the first half. He was married to a friend of mine. He was married to a friend of mine. Do me a favor? Feel better? There is a chair below the window.”
“Last Picnic” (Charles Simic, Harvard Review)
Came across “Last Picnic” by Charles Simic at the Harvard Review Online this past spring. It’s lovely.
Blue Collar Review and Partisan Press Remind Us That Angelfire is Still a Thing
Who knew? Check out BCR’s guidelines, hosted on Angelfire.
Stevenson on Whitman, Nietzsche on Dante and The Family Circus
Flavorwire has a list of the 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults in History up today.
Two of the first three don’t feel like insults at all:
Wouldn’t you love to be called a “large shaggy dog just unchained scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon” by RLS? I for sure would.
Nietzsche’s aphorism about Dante is hysterical even if you think he’s wrong. It’s also brilliant. And now, aren’t you thinking about how awesome it would be to write poetry on tombs? I for sure am. With the transcendent, absurd, holy, trippy joy through which I assume hyenas experience the world? Yes, please!
Speaking of Nietzsche, have you experienced Nietzsche Family Circus? It takes a random Family Circus panel and pairs it with a random Nietzsche quote. When you get results like the one below, you start to question if the whole thing isn’t rigged:
And then you keep clicking, only to watch Billy whispering into Jeffy’s ear that eventually the abyss will stare back into him (this while they’re watching their mother, Thel, playing with baby PJ) or telling Thel that God is dead. Dolly’s “why” for living is a pair of giant sunglasses. Jeffy levels some pretty hard charges against the Keane regime, and then this, which cracks me up:
It turns out that Family Circus + Nietzsche = Calvin and Hobbes.
Poetry Being the Thing
The Path
The narrow path crawling,
Shivering underneath the feet,
At the end of which
The Tree of Life has grown, shimmering…
What a big heart it has
This road to Eternity
This path for people, plants and beasts alike,
This path of winged birds…Breathe, o breeze,
Little stutterer,
Entwining and swirling
The love of life
And the harvest of the heart,
From the sea waves,
From the cloud pleats,
From the molten blaze
Of crimson flowers,
Let her light a golden light under my bosom,
And you, blow into the flame, o gentle wind,
So that my hope
Swells eternally
Over my chest…
(Komitas)
A Poem
Tell me, if I caught you one day
and kissed the sole of your foot,
wouldn’t you limp a little then,
afraid to crush my kiss?…
I Am
I am your love,
I am the heat of your love,
Yet lonely…
I am your woman,
You, you are my soul
That I depend on…
Your voice sounded as sudden thunder of love
My soul breathed as an elating lightning of spring…
I breathed your breath deep down my chest
And by your fire I became the poet of the flames…
(Komitas)
…the most memorable concern of mankind
is the guts it takes to
face the sunlight again.
(Bukowski)
Language was invented for one reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.
(John Keating, Dead Poet’s Society)
Happy Valentine’s Day, dear readers. And to my wife.
Chris Cocca 