When Anatoly Nayman recounts his first meeting with the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, he describes her gesture of hospitality. The woman who had let me into the flat brought in a saucer on which lay a lonely boiled carrot, which had been peeled perfunctorily and had already dried up somewhat. Perhaps such was her diet, perhaps it […]
Commit Poetry: Tapping on the Walls
What about tapping on the walls? Imagine a 5 x 5 square numbered 1 to 5 horizontally along the top and vertically down the left side. Picture the letters of the alphabet running in order across each row with the letters C and K occupying the same space on the first row in the […]
Commit Poetry: The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats
Wow. It’s been so long since I’ve posted here, I was automatically logged out and had to go dig up my password. I’ve been seriously tied up with other stuff and have let the blog languish–but I see my Instagram stories are still posting down there on the right, so there’s that. Anyway, a […]
Commit Poetry: Committing Romeo (and other stuff)
Here we go again. I swear—I can’t seem to resist a good dare, especially during National Poetry Month and Tweetspeak’s “Year of Shakespeare.” This time, it’s to memorize three sections of Romeo and Juliet. Why these particular three sections? Why not ones I’m already familiar with like . . . Like what? Follow me to Tweetspeak […]
Commit Poetry: Ozymandias, Breaking Bad, and a Duck
I read a Facebook post on January 11 of this year announcing that it was the 200th anniversary of the day The Examiner published Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, “Ozymandias.” Ozzy who? I had to look up the pronunciation. Several folks say Ah-zee-mahn-dee-us. Others say Ah-zee-man-dee-us. But some say to fit the meter of the sonnet, the name […]
Commit Poetry: Edgar Guest – and My Uncle Edgar
For Edgar Gilmore with congratulations and the best wishes always of another Edgar. Sincerely, Edgar A. Guest June 17, 1939 That’s the inscription inside Edgar A. Guest says: It Can Be Done, a book I found when we were packing up to move. I called my dad the other day. “Who was Edgar Gilmore?” He didn’t know. […]
Commit Poetry: Printing in My Heart’s Wax
Although I’ve forgotten a lot about my high school years, I do recall a fear of poetry, and letting my eyes roam around the room or stare at my book while I mentally begged the teacher not to call on me in class. Yet if I really was so scared, why did I torture […]
Commit Poetry: The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps […]
Commit Poetry: Prufrock Complete And Worth It All
I grow old . . . I grow old . . . Who starts memorizing poetry at my age? If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be memorizing swaths of poetry now—on purpose—starting with a 131-line T.S. Eliot poem, I might have rolled up the bottoms of my white girlfriend jeans and […]
Commit Poetry: Ten Reasons Why To Memorize
It remains a mystery why Tweetspeak Poetry chose Prufrock for me to memorize. If they didn’t feel like I was done with Thomas E, or he with me, and they wanted me to extend my brainy pathways with something long, they could have chosen a more sing-songy piece—like maybe something from the Old Possum’s […]
