4 posts tagged “poetry”
I doubt that many people would make the connection that I did of Oscar Wilde (yeah, I'm still reading the biography, but I'm over half way through it now...) and this video of Hugh Laurie as a prize-winning young poet explaining his poem to his headmaster, but it's hilarious either way.
Show us how you keep yourself entertained.
I read. I browse, I buy, I read, I sometimes sell, I have scouted for other people. I read, I have occasionally reviewed, I research, and sometimes, if a book is particularly old, or simply well-made, I will lift it to my nose and and breathe it in. Some people love the new car smell. I love the book smell.
I read by author, or genre, or whatever is available at the time. This year I have read an avalanche of mysteries and crime books- all of the Carol O'Connell books, many Rex Stout books, some Dick Francis books, many many "cozies," and I have just read a few of the Lincoln Rhyme books by Jeffrey Deaver, which I like alot.
Yesterday I read Sue Monk Kidd's "The Mermaid Chair," which I liked, although I found it oddly incomplete in a certain sense, regarding one of the primary relationships.
And other times I love to read biographies, and poetry, and books on music and photography. History, culture, and for God's sake, let us not forget the cookbooks. I love cookbooks.
Reading for me is much the same as coffee. Although I love a fresh, delicious cup of well made coffee, I would rather have a bad cup than none at all.
Show us what inspires you to write.
It would be difficult to actually show what inspires me to write, because the themes that inspire me to write are usually along the lines of loss, death, memories... The opening lines of a song I have never quite completed go like this:
"Must I tell you of the spaces you leave,
whenever you go?
The holiness of empty places
is all we seem to know..."
I am also inspired by music, art, other peoples photographs. Several years ago in New York, I was editing the collection of photographer Tony Vaccaro, who had done a great session with Jackson Pollock, portraits of him painting, talking, etc. And sometime later, I sat down at my computer with the memory of the photos and wrote what is probably the shortest poem ever, simply entitled "Jackson Pollock."
"Jackson, Jackson.
It was always
in your eyes."
Another poem I wrote years ago was entitled "Honor," and in a way it speaks to me now of several relationships, not just the one it was actually written about.
"And I honored you with silence
all these years
While you led your life
somewhere else, and I knew
that you were living
You were living in other people's lives
and still in mine, but I was the museum
that housed you
in silence."
And another, unfinished, poem that I started several years ago, with my sister in mind, starts like this:
"We rose by something like
God's grace
from the wreckage of our childhood
After years spent kneeling
before the holy altar of grief..."
and another part goes like this:
"You call me
the keeper of our childhood memories
The place where your memory
ends and begins again
is fluid
And I never know
at what point you will meet me
but I know that you will
eventually meet me"
Maybe someday I'll actually finish that one.
I like Billy Collins. I didn't at first, I admit, but he grew on me. Somehow, I don't think Billy would care either way. But I read this poem today, for the third or fourth time, and it seemed to fit.
I also like Joy Harjo, Wallace Stevens, Adrienne Rich, Sherman Alexie, Clenn Reed, and perhaps a dozen more poets, but today Billy hit home.
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