April 2012
122 posts
4 tags
MOST WRITERS
Poem submission by ericboydblog
are idiots. they aren’t even writers at all. they are turtlenecked housewives and college-degreed hamburger flippers who talk about a whole lot more than they have to say.
they don’t suffer and they don’t beg or cry or do time or kiss ass or break down or find god. they sit around feeling smug smug smug. most writers try to squeeze wine out of a raisin , the...
2 tags
Kenneth Koch's "A Schoolroom in Haiti"
Kenneth Koch (1925-2002) was a legendary teacher of poetry, whose presence is still felt among the many young poets who passed through his classroom. He liked to teach elementary-school children as well as the usual graduate students; today’s poem, which appeared in his final collection, A Possible World, came out of a trip he took to Haiti in 1975, invited by the American ambassador to teach...
4 tags
Clams Casino
Poem submission by David Jibson
I sometimes worry about the unexpected death the grand piano that falls from the third story window when the rope the movers are using breaks or being struck by lightning on a sunny day when I’m nowhere near a golf course the Lincoln Continental that drives through the front window of the restaurant and crushes me when I’m just about to order the clams casino that...
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Looking for Poetry at Barton Creek
Poem submission by kelwomack
There has to be something here
Perhaps the way the water bends
And slides over the rocks as an image
Of your hair cascading the crevices
And angles of your shoulders, the collar-
Bones as branches wedged into the
Draws formed by gently winding
Trapezius. Or maybe they’re just
Rocks, and water, simply, beautifully
And without the responsibility
Of living up...
4 tags
Nature God
Poem submission by ben-davis-poetry
Nature God
In a tree
In a field
On grass
Mountain top
In storms
Under sun
On two feet
Running fast
Snow angel
Moon dweller
True to life
Human nature
Touching god
Feeling world
One universe
And one soul.
14 tags
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Mary Kinzie's "Theine"
Mary Kinzie’s interest in the expressive fragmenting of language gives her verse a particular poignancy - a kind of a melancholy nod to the passing beauty and potential of our words.
- Knopf Poetry Team
*** Theine
If compelled
to give it up
I would lift
as leaves do
...
4 tags
The World and I
Poem submission by nicedice
Sometimes
i dive into the ocean just to feel the blue.
And i pick the peaches from trees
because i like the sound of separating stem from branch.
I’ll often walk along any road i please
to feel something solid beneath my feet.
And i wonder sometimes what the world does to me
just for the simple pleasures.
Is the breeze because it likes the feel of my hair...
4 tags
Dancer
A poem submission by T.L. Kirk
I pull warm words out from my pocket and Splatter them on yellowing leaflet pages A literary Jackson Pollock I stand over my canvas, Let the brush dance and Fill the floor with a series of pirouettes and pliés Won’t the crowd love me? Litter my feet with round, red roses But please, Remove the thorns
4 tags
sellout.
Poem submission by seesheflies
You’re typical: cigarettes and liquor and tailored, fitted hats,
with shoes that blend seamlessly
with the dirt, the earth, the nature of our youth.
Dark, but iridescent, eyes that change
with the passing of your memories
fade and return, unmoved.
And what left, but an empty glass and ring on the table
of condensation—condescension— gliding...
2 tags
Laurie Sheck's A MONSTER'S NOTES
In poet Laurie Sheck’s reimagining of Mary Shelley’s famous monster, the creature we come to know is a highly sensitive observer of the strange lives and works of human beings (who’ve shunned him, with the partial exception of Mary herself; in Sheck’s telling, she meets him at her mother’s graveside as a girl, and later draws upon their relationship to create the novel)....
4 tags
excerpts from a dead sea
Poem submission by Harley Prechtel-Cortez
I breathed new life into some old language swimming around my head. I deciphered it’s meanings and gave it lungs from the remains of muted gills. Now I swallow pain night and day in the vain of things still left to say. My aquatic grandfather spoke a Cherokee tongue but that was before that teary eyed trail left him blind. In this cuneiform-ed...
4 tags
Blind Man
Poem submission by Enrique Rosas
A man came for a job His English was okay And his dress was tidy. He was not slow, He checked often for full garbage bags, He walked back and forth And asked if there was something else he could do He was here for two days The excuse for him being fired was, He did not sweep or mop properly. Really? Is that so? Well then how come others have stayed, ...
4 tags
Chambers of the Heart
Poem submission by peaceindiscord
Icy as the chill of a winter breeze,
Fiery as the sting from the frozen seas.
Wild as the tears from a child’s cries,
Calm as the pierce from young staring eyes
Behind each soul, a story untold,
Unlock the secret, and a world unfolds.
Heart’s still beating, but life is still
This world anew, is yours to fill.
Paint the skies and add new lands,
Turn stars to...
4 tags
New Words
Poem submission by Benvenuto Garisto
Words cannot express, So I will make a new alphabet! A new language! New stories! New libraries! I will make new dungeons to house it’s secrets. I’ll make new voices that can’t be heard and have no sound. I’ll make it all! I’ll make new legends, new legacies, new testaments, and lore, I’ll make everything and nothing, I’m yearning for more! More towers, more...
4 tags
W. H. Auden's "Leap Before You Look"
W. H. Auden’s social, political, and personal consciousness—not to mention his well-rhymed music—hits a tonic note even seventy years later, in our own disorganized time.
- Knopf Poetry Team
***
Leap Before You Look
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
...
5 tags
Jonathan Galassi's "Pretzels"
In Jonathan Galassi’s Left-handed, a transformation unfolds in three powerful sections, as the book’s speaker, at midlife, tries for what he calls in the first section, “A Clean Slate.” He feels his way through a difficult, if at times exhilarating, middle passage (“A Crossing”), to arrive at last at the tentative joys he discovers in the final group of poems in...
4 tags
The last page
Poem submission by Guy Peace
Days pass by like pages flapping in the wind
One by one,
Many in one go
Often
And then the last page goes
And you turn all over again
From the first one
Memories erase memory
Days days
Leaving me blank
Leaving me alone at last
4 tags
Third House
Poem submission by Amy Li Baksh
There is a cloud over my house
It rained and rained, and I am trapped.
A cloud over my house
That I built up so fine and neat
The water dripped in, and I have no bucket.
A cloud over my house
My third house, built this time of stone
Not the soft thatch that blew away with the winds
Not the twigs I had gathered that snapped to bits.
There is a cloud over my house
I...
4 tags
The sound of your soul
Poem submission by Josh Wilson
