blog.rightreading.com » poetry http://www.rightreading.com/blog concept to publication Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:52:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Poetry Elect http://www.rightreading.com/blog/poetry/poetry-elect/ http://www.rightreading.com/blog/poetry/poetry-elect/#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:09:42 +0000 xensen http://www.rightreading.com/blog/?p=1179 Post from Right Reading, Tom Christensen's guide to print and electronic book publishing.
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Poetry Elect

]]> walcott's collected poems in the clutch of barack obama

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 Walcott

The 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 you

all 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.

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via Telegraph UK

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Post from Right Reading, Tom Christensen's guide to print and electronic book publishing.
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Poetry Elect

]]> http://www.rightreading.com/blog/poetry/poetry-elect/feed/ 5 A poetry challenge http://www.rightreading.com/blog/poetry/a-poetry-challenge/ http://www.rightreading.com/blog/poetry/a-poetry-challenge/#comments Mon, 17 Sep 2007 13:00:59 +0000 xensen http://www.rightreading.com/blog/2007/09/17/a-poetry-challenge/ Post from Right Reading, Tom Christensen's guide to print and electronic book publishing.
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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 Christensen

Light 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.)

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A poetry challenge

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