NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which takes place in November, has become a pretty big internet phenomenon, and people who would normally never try writing a novel go ahead and plug away for an entire month. It's a good opportunity to stretch yourself intellectually. Maybe NaPoWriMo could be the same way. Whether you're the type of person who dashes off poems in all their odd moments, or you haven't written one since you were required to for Fourth Grade English, if you're interested in doing NaPoWriMo, let me know! Maybe we can cross-link in mutual support, or find other ways to express our NaPoWriMo solidarity.
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"Periclean kerosene"
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Portrait of a Girl in a Red Dress
Off-shoulder red sateen and crinoline
The gray pearls nestled round your dimpled throat
Translucent cheeks above a pudgy chin
Hair like a rabbit's coat.
It seems someone has dressed this baby up
In glad rags, in all seriousness,
Placed a striped tabby kitten in her lap,
And bid the art commence.
But such hard eyes must have been stolen
Gray agates set into a marble face
That, as if seeing your future burdens,
Bear up with frightened grace.
I stare into those silver eyes, and think
You're as still as the empty sound of snow
You look past me toward a certain something.
that I don't want to know.
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UPDATE: I redid the quiz, changing the only answer from the previous time that I really thought was debatable, and ended up as Gabriel Garcia Marquez' "Love in the Time of Cholera." As a former Spanish major who managed to plug her way through all of "A Hundred Years of Solitude" in Spanish, this description of his work totally cracks me up:
Like Odysseus in a work of Homer, you demonstrate undying loyalty by sleeping with as many people as you possibly can. But in your heart you never give consent!
posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments
posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments
Maybe I've just got to let it fester a bit. Ew. I did, however, while paging through the dictionary, learn the meaning of nympholepsy: an esctasy of emotion inspired by something unattainable.
"The most common disease to genius is nympholepsy, the saddening for a spirit that the world knows not."
I don't think I've got that, as what I've been saddening for lately is more like those nifty frozen California Pizza Kitchen pizzas, but who knows? Perhaps those are more otherworldly than I think.
The best thing in the Oxford English Dictionary's online version is the example sentences:
"The wonderful rise of this quondam nip-cheese has made him very proud of his own abilities."
A nip-cheese is, apparently, a ship's purser. Ooh, let's have another! I'm sorry; I just can't stop.
Did you know that "quomodocunquize" is a word? In English? It means "to make money in any possible way." Example sentence: "Those quomodocunquizing clusterfists and rapacious varlets."
I remember reading a review of someone's work in which the reviewer praised the poet for working some variation of "rhizome" into the poem. Well, sirrah, I see your rhizome, and raise you a quomodocunquize!
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I also got out submissions to around eight different journals today. I'm still worried I sent the wrong poems to the right magazines, or vice versa, but what the hell. At least I'm trying.
________________
No Title As Yet (Calamity's Trail Song?)
Mandible shake in the saucy weather
Hooftail shank out from Abilene
O dogies, ki-yotes can scream
But you'll take no danger,
Slipshod trailing out from Abilene.
These plains are a sorrow to
Women and children
They'll drive men to drink
Pick a father's bones clean
Sometimes it seems that
The vultures are angels
Riding the wind out from Abilene.
But my papa is tough
As an indian pony
The sound of his voice
Could make scorpions scream
He's white as the moonlight
And welcome as money
At the end of the trail out from Abilene
His spurs are the fangs
Of a blinded sidewinder
His teeth, like the dipper
All sparkle and gleam
He'll meet me, he promised
At the ford of the river
Next time I'm riding out from Abilene
Men seldom befriend him,
Most women despise him
Though he can be graceful
As George Balanchine
Still, come sooner or later,
All will embrace him
Out on the trail from old Abilene
So, if out on the trail
You should see a pale rider
Just chalk yourself up
as someone who's seen
The lean cowpoke who squires
Calamity, riding
Out on the trail from old Abilene.
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Sorry I can't go into more detail, but I currently have a cold, and was hearing everything from under 30 feet of water. Shafer told me that New York does that to redheaded people. He was sort of subliminal today and demanded that Michelle, the bartender, prepare me some "tropical fun," which confused her entirely.
I snuck away soon after the reading was over, as I felt like I was going to pass out, which would be welcome. I only achieved sleep last night through the alcoholic ministrations of NyQuil. Besides, I just looked at my grand unified list of poems I need to revise, and there's twenty-one of the fricking things on it. Bah! Sleep will be my escape!
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Before
Lord Jenkins
Jan 6, 2003
"Lord Jenkins dead" and the snow still falling
The headline read over someone’'s shoulder
While our suburban bus goes crawling
Past reindeer and a huge toy soldier
Though the Christmas season's nearly over.
Their papers personal window shutters,
The riders raise their heads, then lower
Them down to the day's events. And through the gutters
The bus sloughs the snow; it spurts and sputters
While slush dissolves into the aisle.
It stops and starts with weary mutters
For nameless riders in double file
Who read silently another mile.
"Lord Jenkins dead": and there is no fame.
While one man reads of a British noble,
We others have never heard his name
And not knowing each other's, cast no blame.
"Lord Jenkins dead"; he remains unwept.
On this commute, we are all the same
And no one knows where our souls are kept
Or who would care if one were swept
Away. We travel untouched, and blessed.
The bus jostles on like a thing inept,
Yet solicitous to do its best.
But, pull the cord; our stop is next.
Lord Jenkins, too, is getting up to go
Papers down, we've each passed the test
And can light into receiving snow.
After
Lord Jenkins
Jan 6, 2003
"Lord Jenkins dead" and the snow still falling
The headline read over someone's shoulder
While our suburban bus goes crawling
Past reindeer and a huge toy soldier.
The snow's thick negative is colder,
Crisper than newsprint's black-on-white text.
We sink into the bus's uplit smolder
And grow dreadful. The last stop is next.
_________
Less is more? Less is more! Suggestions welcome.
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Magical
So my new hobby is writing shit
And sending it to magazines.
My boyfriend's hobby is writing
Letters to the editor.
He also writes to Roger Ebert:
One time, about a racist
cinematic phenomenon he calls
"the magical black man,"
a guy whose latent juju is entirely
at the service of some white
dude with no soul. "No soul"
is why my first boyfriend's
mom made him quit the piano.
She should just have admitted it;
She'd popped out a robot, and no
Black man could save her from that.
I've known midi machines with more
Humanity than her kid. He dumped me--
Get this--because I laughed
At shit he didn't understand.
He always thought I was
Laughing at him, which maybe
I shoulda been, 'cause, in
Retrospect, he was pretty
Funny. Not the things he
Said. Just him. Robot
Boyfriend in the Third Dimension!
I got a new boyfriend now
But no magazine article
But maybe
I could find a magical
Black magazine to send
Shit to, get me what soul I lack, yeah,
And maybe if Ebert got himself a tan,
He'd finally answer one of
My boyfriend's fucking letters.
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