I know it’s poetry Monday, but as I’ve been camping all week, no poem today. Instead, a little preview of the current exhibit at Terminal 3 at SFO. What a great idea to have art in the long corridor that leads from airport security to the gates. As we all have time to spare at the airport these days, it’s a pleasure to be able to wander through a corridor of art or artifacts. Continue reading “Recology”
Month: July 2013
More next week…
Poetry Monday
Tony Hoagland wrote an article about teaching poetry in school, or rather about the need to change how we teach poetry in school, called Twenty Little Poems That Could Save America. His idea is that poetry as a living part of the curriculum could become part of the daily fabric of thinking and decision making. Here’s one of the poems he mentions.
Waiting for Icarus
He said he would be back and we’d drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don’t cry
I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets,
a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added : Women who love such are the
Worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.
Muriel Rukeyser
I read an account of studying with Muriel Rukeyser by Sharon Olds. It made me wish I, too, had a wonderful poetry teacher. If there are good teachers out there, I am sure many will follow Tony’s advice, and support his hope that poetry could inform the American way of thinking.
The garden as jungle
It’s the time of year when everything is overgrown and it’s very hard to harvest without treading on something. Next year, more order in the garden! But for now we have loads of produce, the kittens are having a lot of fun exploring, and they have discovered the tree. They’ve even learned how to climb down.
Neglected poets
There are so many good poets who don’t get much attention. Henri Coulette was a teacher at LA State, and influenced many lives. Here is one of his lighter, tender poems:
Petition
Lord of the Tenth Life,
Welcome my Jerome,
A fierce, gold tabby.
Make him feel at home. Continue reading “Neglected poets”
Poetry from Wall St.
You might or might not know that there was a big stock market rally yesterday. It came after the Fed announced (not quite this way) that they’re going to go on printing money to keep things all fluffed up. This made people optimistic about the future, and they wanted to buy stock. It also caught the pros by surprise, as they were expecting the Fed to be more restrained, and for the market to go lower.
These pros (like hedge fund managers) had to buy stock to cover their short positions. This short-covering meant that the pros lost a lot of money.
So much for the background behind the quote about this situation that Larry copied down for me, from Art Cashin, who directs floor operations for UBS (an investment bank) on the NY Stock Exchange:
“There’s enough blood in hedge fund alley to cater Dracula’s daughter’s wedding.”
I think there are poets who might be willing to sacrifice one of their beloved cats for a metaphor like that.
Bony Moronie
Larry has been selling his vast collection of blues and jazz autographs, mostly on eBay, but also from his website. This morning at breakfast, he was commenting on the sale of a Larry Williams autograph. In case (as for me) the name Larry Williams doesn’t signify, he was a one-hit wonder, hitting #14 on the charts in 1957 with Bony Moronie. Worth a listen even if there’s no nostalgia involved.
Larry mentioned that Williams tried to follow up with Short Fat Fannie, a song that references every hit of the period, and then Dizzy Miss Lizzie, but they never made it. They languished, but Bill Haley’s Skinny Minny made it to the top 40 in 1958. So much for breakfast this morning.
Farm chores, kittens, and poetry have been eating the days.
Foggy day with kittens
Yesterday was cold, windy and foggy. It might as well have been January. The kittens and I spent most of it on the couch with a good book, another Georgette Heyer novel. A perfect lazy day.
New poets, new poems
One of the benefits of my week at the Squaw Valley Poetry Workshop was coming home with several books of poems by poets I hadn’t read much (or any) of before. Today I’m printing a poem by a Berkeley poet, Christina Hutchins. Not only did I have a great time with her, I’m happy to print her deft, tender poem, from her book The Stranger Dissolves: Continue reading “New poets, new poems”