Man Writes Poem

Man Writes Poem

This just in a man has begun writing a poem
in a small room in Brooklyn. His curtains
are apparently blowing in the breeze. We go now
to our man Harry on the scene, what's

the story down there Harry? "Well Chuck
he has begun the second stanza and seems
to be doing fine, he's using a blue pen, most
poets these days use blue or black ink so blue

is a fine choice. His curtains are indeed blowing
in a breeze of some kind and what's more his radiator
is 'whistling' somewhat. No metaphors have been written yet,
but I'm sure he's rummaging around down there

in the tin cans of his soul and will turn up something
for us soon. Hang on—just breaking news here Chuck,
there are 'birds singing' outside his window, and a car
with a bad muffler has just gone by. Yes ... definitely



a confirmation on the singing birds." Excuse me Harry
but the poem seems to be taking on a very auditory quality
at this point wouldn't you say? "Yes Chuck, you're right,
but after years of experience I would hesitate to predict

exactly where this poem is going to go. Why I remember
being on the scene with Frost in '47, and with Stevens in '53,
and if there's one thing about poems these days it's that
hang on, something's happening here, he's just compared the curtains

to his mother, and he's described the radiator as 'Roaring deep
with the red walrus of History.' Now that's a key line,
especially appearing here, somewhat late in the poem,
when all of the similes are about to go home. In fact he seems

a bit knocked out with the effort of writing that line,
and who wouldn't be? Looks like ... yes, he's put down his pen
and has gone to brush his teeth. Back to you Chuck." Well
thanks Harry. Wow, the life of the artist. That's it for now,

but we'll keep you informed of more details as they arise.


"Man Writes Poem" by Jay Leeming, from Dynamite on a China Plate.© The Backwaters Press

From The Writer's Almanac

Word of the Day

ignis fatuus

n., pl., ig·nes fat·u·i (ĭg'nēz făch'ū-ī').

A phosphorescent light that hovers or flits over swampy ground at night, possibly caused by spontaneous combustion of gases emitted by rotting organic matter. Also called friar's lantern, jack-o'-lantern, Also called will-o'-the-wisp, wisp.

Something that misleads or deludes; an illusion.

Curtains

Curtains  
by Ruth Stone


Putting up new curtains,
other windows intrude.
As though it is that first winter in Cambridge
when you and I had just moved in.
Now cold borscht alone in a bare kitchen.


What does it mean if I say this years later?


Listen, last night
I am on a crying jag
with my landlord, Mr. Tempesta.
I sneaked in two cats.
He screams, "No pets! No pets!"
I become my Aunt Virginia,
proud but weak in the head.
I remember Anna Magnani.

I throw a few books. I shout.
He wipes his eyes and opens his hands.
OK OK keep the dirty animals
but no nails in the walls.
We cry together.
I am so nervous, he says.


I want to dig you up and say, look,
it's like the time, remember,
when I ran into our living room naked
to get rid of that fire inspector.


See what you miss by being dead?


(Poem suggested by Jan)

Poetry Influences art and cinema

Edgar Allan Poe and the art of squalor

From the 19th-century French avant garde to Damien Hirst, artists have revelled in Poe's world of bohemian depravity

Henri-George Clouzot's Le Corbeau (1943) invokes the spectre of Edgar Allen Poe. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive


In Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1943 film Le Corbeau – The Raven – a small French town is torn apart by anonymous letters that claim to expose the citizens' crimes. Made during the German occupation, it is a disturbing, claustrophobic drama of secrets, lies and paranoia. It is also one in a long series of works of art that invoke the spectre of Edgar Allan Poe – right up to the new film The Raven that stars John Cusack.

In Le Corbeau, the poison-pen letter-writer signs his or her sinister missives with the title of Poe's most famous poem. A French audience in 1943 would have instantly recognised the reference to the American gothic writer because he had a immense influence on French modern art.

Poe was illustrated by no less a modern master than Edouard Manet, as well as the symbolist visionary Odilon Redon, and was such an icon for the avant garde that totemic quotations from him appear in the unlikeliest places. In Gauguin's painting Nevermore in the Courtauld Gallery, the chorus from The Raven becomes the title of a brooding Tahiti scene.

As soon as cinema started, the fascination of artists with his heightened world was translated into a gory stream of horror films that has never stopped – as early as 1909, DW Griffith made a film of The Raven that incorporates Poe's life. But it was avant garde French artists who led the way. What makes Poe such a haunting presence?

The French artists and poets who idolised Poe saw him as an image of the artist estranged from bourgeois society: he was the artist in America, alienated from a country they imagined as a brutal land of gunfights and gaslight. In fact, Poe invented the idea of the bohemian type. The British poet Byron led the way, and French painters doted on him, too. But it was Poe who made Romanticism modern, walking the streets of America in an alcoholic haze and writing of laudanum and derangement. He is a dark inspiration behind a painting like The Absinthe Drinker by Degas. Poe helped the first modern artists to discover squalor.

The avant garde associations of Poe survive in horror films – the archetypal Poe actor is Vincent Price because he suggests arty depravity. Meanwhile, Poe's shadow is still large in the art of today – what would he have made of Damien Hirst's Tate show?

From The Guardian 

Walk of the Heroines

This past weekend Gwen English and Chris Sessions, who were here for Melanie's service on Friday, went with Frances and me to visit the Walk of the Heroines on the PSU campus.

There is a kiosk across from the wall where you can locate the position of any heroine on the wall and read a bio.  To see the link to the Gladys Thomas Sessions bio Click Here.  To see my webpage for the bio Click Here.

End of Days

End of Days
by Marge Piercy


Almost always with cats, the end
comes creeping over the two of you—
she stops eating, his back legs
no longer support him, she leans
to your hand and purrs but cannot 
rise—sometimes a whimper of pain
although they are stoic. They see
death clearly though hooded eyes.


Then there is the long weepy
trip to the vet, the carrier no
longer necessary, the last time
in your lap. The injection is quick.
Simply they stop breathing
in your arms. You bring them
home to bury in the flower garden,
planting a bush over a deep grave.


That is how I would like to cease,
held in a lover's arms and quickly

fading to black like an old-fashioned 
movie embrace. I hate the white
silent scream of hospitals, the whine
of pain like air-conditioning's hum.
I want to click the off switch.
And if I can no longer choose


I want someone who loves me
there, not a doctor with forty patients
and his morality to keep me sort
of, kind of alive or sort of undead.
Why are we more rational and kinder
to our pets than to ourselves or our 
parents? Death is not the worst 
thing; denying it can be.


"End of Days" by Marge Piercy, from The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980 - 2010