Saturday, December 27, 2008
Enjoy this poem. I’ve excerpted the last few lines, which particularly resonate with me: If ever we accede to enlightenment, He thought, it is in one compassionate moment When what separated them from me vanishes And a shower of drops from a bunch of lilacs Pours on my face, and hers, and his, at the […]
Saturday, November 8, 2008
cruelty. don’t talk to me about cruelty or what i am capable of. when i wanted the roaches dead i wanted them dead and i killed them. i took a broom to their country and smashed and sliced without warning without stopping and i smiled all the time i was doing it. it was a […]
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Keats knows his business. If the primary goal of poetry is to strike to the heart of things succinctly, Keats nails it. This poem, for instance, tells a complete story in three stanzas of eight lines each. He wastes nothing, but doesn’t sound sparse. He maintains a sumptuous, bittersweet atmosphere without bloating, and without sounding […]
Thursday, September 18, 2008
One of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman, wrote The Dangerous Alphabet as a Christmas card, which along with his “Nicholas Was” flash piece, is an example of my favorite way to celebrate Christmas: write a creepy story. HarperCollins decided at some point The Dangerous Alphabet would make a better book than card, so they asked […]
Friday, September 12, 2008
I was thrown off, initially, by the run-on, unfinished beginning of Piedra de Sol, or The Sunstone, by Octavio Paz. It’s all one jumbled sentence and it starts mid-way. I realized, when I finished reading, that the poem loops. When you get to the end, it’s not the end; Paz repeats the beginning stanza, which […]