oh yes, poetry month

[timeripple]

I'd really like to write a long, thoughtful post about how Nobunaga no Chef is amazing and full of historical figures bursting into song and cape-swishing. But I've got a lot of reading to do tonight, so have a poem instead.

"On Finding a Bird Skull"

If she wants
to say bird
not finch
not starling
not snipe

let her

They all have
rough tongues
hollow bones
heads
made mostly

of eye

(Rebecca Farivar, from Correct Animal, Octopus Books, 2011).

Comments

[snowqueenofhoth.livejournal.com]

I like this. :)

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

I am glad that you do! :)

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

This is going in the commonplace book!
I tried to write poetry this month, but I meant to read more, too.
I need to go looking for some recent-ish poetry... any recommendations would be appreciated!

(I was going to just not comment on writing on this older post, figuring you'd read the last one anyway, but...sorry! COME TO TUMBLRRRRR)

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

Yay! The bookstore where I work now makes a big deal out of Poetry Month, and one of my co-workers singlehandedly chooses and puts together these beautifully printed poem packets. We have giant bowls of the individual poems in the store all month, and encourage people to pick a poem out to take home with them. This is my favorite from this year's packet. :)

I've been totally out of touch with various Internet poetry places lately. What are your favorites?

My friend M introduced me to Katherine Larson's Radial Symmetry (Yale University Press, New Haven: 2011), which is amazing and unlike anything I'd ever liked before. My favorite is "Love at Thirty-two Degrees," which begins "Today I dissected a squid."

I'm also a big fan of Stephen Mitchell's new translation of the Iliad--I like the energy, the sense of relentlessness that drives it forward even in the quieter moments. I keep trying to make people actually read the entire catalog of ships (a really long boring passage that lists every single bunch of dudes who showed up and where they were from and how many ships they brought) because that's the closest you'll get to the Greek without actually reading the, you know, Greek. (I also keep trying to make people read the Greek, but I'm sure you can imagine how that goes.)

edajaramsmom sent me this link in honor of Poetry Month: http://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2013-spring/selections/hunger-to-hunger-introduction/ and it's really cool!

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool--I've needed a recommendation for a poetic translation of the Iliad. I am still unread, for the very reason that if it's not reading as poetry, reading it just for the myth seems pointless to me. X)
Loved Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, would not have been able to read it otherwise.

For online poetry...I know places I've sent stuff to! I love inkscrawl.com, Strong Verse has some good stuff and whatever they have is going to be pretty plain-spoken, if you like that sort of thing as much as I do. Goblin Fruit is very strong on mood, Through the Gate is another like inkscrawl, I always find something to like there. Strong Verse is the only not-genre venue in this list, mainly because I try to read in my field at the very least. -_-;

"Today I dissected a squid."

Sounds marvelous; I love odd, prosaic opening lines like that. I hope my library has some of these.

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

And having finished that article, yes. Very interesting, and I like the opening statements about poetry best--that's going to stay with me some time.