BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: POETS & POETRY

POE or 30d

EMILY DICKINSON COULD TALK YOUR HEAD OFF

"Emily Dickinson could talk your head off with a remark. When I was in the early stages of writing her biography I ran across a few that put me on my guard. There was the one about the old lady who came to the door to ask about rentals in Amherst. Emily said, 'I directed her to the cemetery to save her the trouble of moving."

Richard B. Sewell."In Search of Emily Dickinson" in Extraordinary Lives, edited by William Zinsser (New York: American Heritage, 1985)
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NICKNAME FOR A POET

CAPTAIN RAGS

“Captain Rags was the nickname given to Edmund Smith, the English poet, when he was an undergraduate at Oxford, partly on account of his being so great a sloven, and also from the tattered condition of his gown, which was always flying in rags about him…”

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A contemporary Poet Worth knowing

"David Mason
Born and raised in Bellingham, Washington, David Mason has lived in many places. His books of poems began with The Buried Houses (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), The Country I Remember (winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award), and Arrivals. His verse novel, Ludlow, was published in 2007 (2nd ed. 2010), and named best poetry book of the year by the Contemporary Poetry Review and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. It was also featured on the PBS News Hour and won the Colorado Book Award.

His website is: https://davidmasonpoet.com
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THINKING ABOUT THIS POEM
 
Reading this poem
Will make you more intelligent,
But just think
What not reading this poem
Can do for you.

LJP
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OF POETRY & SALAD

"I make salad like I write poetry. I put everything in. In salad -- onions, lettuce, cucumber, oil, grapefruit juice. In poetry  --classical style, folk styles, sad things, happy things. But in both poetry and salads I have one rule: Everything must be fresh."
                                Yegeny Yevtushenko
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Preview YouTube video Seimone Augustus | Hall of Fame Enshrinement Speech
 
 
Seimone Augustus | Hall of Fame Enshrinement Speech
 
    SOUND & SENSE        

 "A needless Alexandrine ends the song
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length                                             
                  along."
 
Alexander Pope  from"An Essay in Criticism"
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OF POETRY AND  KITING CHECKS or WHAT IS A RHYME FOR FORGERY
 
    The following item appeared in Time magazine’s Miscellany
For January 6, 1958:
 
        In Jersey City , Samuel Silverman, 22, in jail
Awaiting trial on a check forgery charge, casually scribbled a verse that police promptly confiscated as evidence:
 
              I bounced a check,
              A cop bounced me.
              The Judge said, “Son,
              You’ll do about three.”
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POETS & POETRY

"...W.H. Auden told us that on his own passport gave his profession as a 'writer' because 'poet' would have embarrassed people and would have been implausible since, in his words, 'everybody knows that nobody can earn a living by writing poetry.'"
Shirley Hazzard. "We Need Silence  to Find Out What We Think" (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016)
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"I used to construe only Homer and Xenophone, but I have lately been put into Aeschylus."
                 Matthew Arnold at age 10
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SPEED READING EMILY DICKINSON

Because I cd  not  understand
Poetry, alas --
I took courses at university
Where I learned to read really fast --

More than 1,000 words per minute:
Dickinson, Emily--
14 verses at a glance --
Nature, ships, snakes, family --

The whole shebang in 12 seconds.
I knew much haste
Do people spend a lot of time
On rhymey stuff? What a waste!

I paused upon a line that seemed
At first a blur--
Its meaning scarcely visible --
Simile? Metaphor?

& then a dash. Eccentric.
I sped across quatrains --
Scarcely intelligible,
Then a riddle about a train --


Since then -- One minute later --
Yet feels incredibly long--
Since I first surmised --
How quickly we absorb a song; 

I skimmed a naked robin, 
Time left to watch Dune.
I'm done with that ditsy dame.
Who's next? John Donne?

 I'll give him 16 seconds, no more.
 Put on my Nikes, then out the door.


Louis Phillips


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