the liliacs are blooming, and though there are none in my dooryard, it's hard not to think of whitman. riding my bike to the grocery store this morning, he was there on the sidewalks staring back a me. my poetic influences often do such things. their language is so part of my language that it's like they are with me all the time.
on another subject, i spent the past few days reading through mark young's episodes (xPress[ed]). great book. musicians, artists, the current war--many things emerge in this book. most of the poems are quite good, and some of the lines have stuck with me. for example, the end of "Bardo Thodol" (a poem that starts with a baseball game):
a visiting
Irish tenor sang
a saccharine anthem
but Amerika
kept adding names
to the Book
of the Dead.
i like how mark points out the disconnect between what is happening in the u.s. on a daily basis and the piles of dead our armies (the aussies are still there with us) create. the last two lines turn anapestic, and that stresses the continuing nature of the action.
back to whitman briefly. whitman is one of my greatest influences, and as i write, i often work with his words moving around my world and work. in a similar fashion, mark navigates the influence of other poets' works and what he has learned from being a poet so many years (even if many were silent years of growth).
episodes was fun reading, so i suggest it for all.
on another subject, i spent the past few days reading through mark young's episodes (xPress[ed]). great book. musicians, artists, the current war--many things emerge in this book. most of the poems are quite good, and some of the lines have stuck with me. for example, the end of "Bardo Thodol" (a poem that starts with a baseball game):
a visiting
Irish tenor sang
a saccharine anthem
but Amerika
kept adding names
to the Book
of the Dead.
i like how mark points out the disconnect between what is happening in the u.s. on a daily basis and the piles of dead our armies (the aussies are still there with us) create. the last two lines turn anapestic, and that stresses the continuing nature of the action.
back to whitman briefly. whitman is one of my greatest influences, and as i write, i often work with his words moving around my world and work. in a similar fashion, mark navigates the influence of other poets' works and what he has learned from being a poet so many years (even if many were silent years of growth).
episodes was fun reading, so i suggest it for all.
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