poetry posts
Poetry Elect
Above is a picture of our President Elect clutching a book of Derek Walcott’s Collected Poems. Nice to see a president at least in the company of literature. I’m happy we elected a person who as candidate championed the power of words.
The book looks unopened and was probably a gift, but no doubt Mr. Obama will dive into the text shortly. Here’s an example of what he might find.
Love After Love
by Derek WalcottThe time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved youall your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
.
via Telegraph UK
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Posted: November 18th, 2008 under poetry.
Comments: 5
A poetry challenge
At the Guardian, John Hartley Williams posed a poetry challenge. Essentially, the assignment was to fracture a proverb and combine it in a poem with at least seven of the following words: beat, mother, fashion, ghost, pool, dance, disturb, knife, croak, shimmer.
The contest caught my fancy, and I gave it a try. I might have missed the deadline, though, unless they cut me some slack for being on the West Coast. Anyway, here’s what I came up with.
Whom God loves his bitch births pigs
A quien Dios quiere bien, la perra le pare puercos
By Thomas ChristensenLight danced round the chicken bus
Wobbling from the village of
San Juan Sacatapequez –
It shimmered from the knife of
The crone who had fashioned a
Blanket around her chest. I
Thought her a nursing mother
Until the blood pooled across
The dirty fabric that had
Clasped the pig to her body.
The beast’s eyes caught mine, disturbed,
It seemed, to be exposed at
Such an intimate moment.
El que quiere baile, the
Woman murmured, que pague
Musico. To dance to the
Beat of this world, sometimes
You have to slay the piper.
In the second line I don’t much like the word wobbling. Can anyone suggest something better (needs to be two syllables)?
(I don’t like “shimmered” either, but it’s one of the assigned words.)
Posted: September 17th, 2007 under poetry.
Comments: 2