Bouvre

Yeah, well I once said I wasn't gay, too. Look how right I was about that!

On the topic of the associative style, here's Robert Bly's, "The Fat Old Couple Whirling Around" The drum says that the night we die will be a long night. It says the children have time to play. Tell the grownups They can pull the curtains around the bed tonight. The old man wants to know how the war ended. The young girl wants her breasts to cause the sun to rise. The thinker wants to keep misunderstanding alive. It’s all right if the earthly monk is buried near the altar. It’s all right if the singer fails to turn up for her concert. It’s good if the fat old couple keeps whirling around. Let the parents sing over the cradle every night. Let the pelicans go on living in their stickly nests. Let the duck go on loving the mud around her feet. It’s all right if the ant always remembers his way home. It’s all right if Bach keeps reaching for the same note. It’s all right if we knock the ladder away from the house. Even if you are a puritan it would be all right If you join the lovers in their ruined house tonight. It’s good if you become a soul and then disappear.

Semi-related subjects can make for good poems too! (Also, I want all of that stuff above, mixed with an attempt to remember Shakespeare off the top of your head, in a poem. <3 )

Today's poem, a humorous one by Tony Hoagland that really wonderfully utilizes the line break for various tensions: Fred Had Watched a Lot of Kung Fu Episodes so when the policeman asked to see his driver's license, he said, Does the wind need permission from the hedgehog to blow? which resulted in a search of the car, which miraculously yielded nothing since Fred had swallowed all the mescaline already and was just beginning to fall in love with the bushy caterpillar eyebrows of the officer in question. In those days we could identify the fingerprints on a guitar string by the third note of the song broadcast from the window of a passing car, but we couldn't tell the difference between a personal disaster and "having an experience," so Fred thought being locked up for the night was kind of fun, with the graffiti on the drunk-tank wall chattering in Mandarin and the sentient cockroaches coming out to visit in triplicate. Back then it wasn't a question of pleasure or pain, It wasn't a question of getting to the top then trying not to fall at any cost. It was a question of staying tuned in, one episode at a time, said Fred to himself as he walked home the next morning under the spreading lotus trees on Walnut Street, feeling Oriental.

This seems like a poem waiting in itself.

I feel like it's easier to avoid romanticizing suicide by having her be a dynamic, if vindictive and manipulative, character.

It probably is poor execution trying to elicit sorrow FOR the character, but a part of me, despite its execution, is fascinated with a shitty character who committed suicide, and who we get to see be shitty on screen. Characters who commit suicide are usually given a sort of romanticized martyr treatment, and I kind of want to see that backfire? I kind of want to see a character who's an asshole despite committing suicide and having all this unresolved pain? Even if it's not their intention as creators, it would be an interesting voice to pursue, and an interesting tension especially if the protagonist had a crush on her.

I didn't know anything about the show, but now I'm thinking maybe this might be worth a watch.

Oh my god!

Another day, another poem! This one is a marvelous gem from Charles Simic's collection of short prose-poems, The World Doesn't End: We were so poor I had to take the place of the bait in the mousetrap. All alone in the cellar, I could hear them pacing upstairs, tossing and turning in their beds. “These are dark and evil days,” the mouse told me as he nibbled my ear. Years passed. My mother wore a cat-fur collar which she stroked until its sparks lit up the cellar.

Yeats is awesome. I've always loved Under Ben Bulben, and of course Sailing to Byzantine and The Second Coming. The Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland were an interesting read, but his poetry has always been my number one love.

I certainly ain't stopping you!

This pill bottle says "Take if the snakes are vomiting acid" The other bottle says "Take if the snakes are super fine but the patient is vomiting acid" Then there's the lotion for the owl legs if the owls are talons down. And a lotion for the owl legs if the owls are talons up.

I am crazier than shirttails In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us

Doppelgangbanger. Which means I've rated your doppelganger's penis, which means you still might be eligible for a 7/10 rating!

Tell that to last week.

eh, 6/10

That's what I love about you.

Rad! I prefer poet/writer translations over those who are strictly academic/immensely knowledgeable about the language (not to suggest that Pope isn't knowledgeable about the language, but he's also a poet), and Pope is a badass, so I'll have to make a note for myself to read his.

I remember having a collection of her poems when I was young and really liked them. I also think it was the first collection of poems I ever got, because it was available as one of those bookfair fundraisers in elementary school. In general, I like the simple stuff as much as I like the stuff that plays against sincerity and the like. This one made me feel a bit nostalgic.

Ooo, translations! I love talking about variations/versions of translated poetry. Do you know who did this one?

YES!

What kind?

Ahh! What an awesome choice in a poet to share (reading from that collection specifically)! <3

Haven't watched the video yet, but I'm curious to see what they say, if anything, about how the misinterpretation came to be so popularized. Being fed the misinterpretation in high school made me hate Frost, and coming back to him via "Directive" made me realize I missed out on a truly remarkable poetry experience.