Apr. 12th, 2023

stonepicnicking_okapi: black coral (matissebnw)
This is the second batch of poems from Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America's Poets Respond to the Pandemic edited by Alice Quinn. There were several poems with lines I liked but I didn't like the whole poem.

They include:

from Shelter in Place by Peter Cooley

I savor my sense of smell. I'm well, I'm safe at home.
Reader, help me to tongue-taste these flowers' hues:
piquant crimsons, tart amethysts, honey-ambers.


and the opening lines of A Private Life by Mark Wunderlich

Now that all life is private life
I am more a fiction than previously thought.


But there were four I liked in their entirety.

The Burning One by Li-Young Lee [and if you want to hear the poet read it, you can here.]

Say, Ahhhh.

Stop saying, Death lives
because Life dies,
thus rendering the impossible possible.

Read more... )

The End of Poetry by Ada Limón [read by the poet here]

Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower
and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot,
enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy
and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis
of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god
not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,
enough of the will to go on and not go on or how
a certain light does a certain thing, enough
of the kneeling and the rising and the looking
inward and the looking up, enough of the gun,
the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost
letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and
the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough
of the mother and the child and the father and the child
and enough of the pointing to the world, weary
and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border,
enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough
I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate,
enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high
water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,
I am asking you to touch me.

----

I haven't been able to find cut and pasteable versions of two more poems I like "Poem for My Students" by Sharon Olds and "Fantasia in a Time of Plague" by Rown Ricardo Phillips so I may scan them and post them later today. Wednesday is shopping day so I'm off to do that.
stonepicnicking_okapi: otherwords (otherwords)
Here's the two pandemic poems I couldn't find to cut and paste.

"Poem for My Students" by Sharon Olds and "Fantasia in a Time of Plague" by Rowan Ricardo Phillips. It did amuse me that Sharon Olds is still talking about her father. At least it's not his dick. She's a wonderful poet but I distinctly remember getting sick of hearing about her father when I tried to read a book of nothing but her poetry.



stonepicnicking_okapi: books (books)
I've got a bingo! Hurrah!



Written by an Author from your State or Country: When I saw Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America's Poets Respond to the Pandemic I thought of this square. I normally try to find a Baltimore writer but I think this book fulfills the spirit of the prompt very well.

Person's Name in the Title: Jumping Jenny by Anthony Berkley. Anthony Berkley is a mystery writer from the Golden Age of Crime. He is brilliant. He is also an obnoxious misogynist. It depends on my mood whether I can ignore the latter in favor of the former. He also likes his last minute twists (which I love). The murder takes place at a fancy dress/costume party where guests dress as famous murderers or victims and the victim has a severe case of Borderline Personality Disorder, for those familiar with it. I have BPD myself so it's easy to see. And Roger Sherringham (Berkley's detective) loathes her. But the crime is clever and the twists are many, many and I did get some glee in watching Sherringham twist himself into knots. Amazing ending, too. Excellent narration. I listened to it on youtube here.

ebook or audiobook: Post after Post-mortem by ECR Lorac. Another Golden Age of Crime work. I love Lorac and was very pleased to find this full length version on Youtube here. Lorace's detective MacDonald investigates the supposed suicide of a young writer. A letter lost in the mail which arrives after the death makes the family suspicious that it wasn't suicide after all. Very well done. Good narration, too.

The full list )

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