२४ जुलै, २०२३

X marks the spot.

 Have you ever read this poem by Rita Dove?

 
Here's an excellent podcast about that particular poem, which of course has nothing to do with Elon Musk's renaming Twitter "X"... unless it does. You know, you can always put any 2 things side by side and come up with connections.

१६ टिप्पण्या:

Ampersand म्हणाले...

So many poems have a few rewarding lines, and an awful lot of stuff that takes me nowhere. It's rare that I understand why the poem has reached its endpoint. It's rare that I read a poem that wouldn't be improved with more clarity and concision.

RideSpaceMountain म्हणाले...

"You know, you can always put any 2 things side by side and come up with connections."

The 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Kate म्हणाले...

I don't know Rita Dove. That was lovely, thanks. Pages of writing like cords of wood to be chopped and stacked ...

Quaestor म्हणाले...

That's not poetry, that's random carriage control.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

She isn’t much of a poet, is she?

Quaestor म्हणाले...

It was the best of times. It was the blurst of times.

planetgeo म्हणाले...

I occasionally enjoy American prosetry,
like writing equity chopped and stacked in
odd lengths, lots
of X-nothings to maybe find
one lone IKEA.

Wince म्हणाले...

Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

And when I awoke I was alone
This bird had flown
So I lit a fire
Isn't it good Norwegian wood?

planetgeo म्हणाले...

@Big Mike, here's the answer to your question, courtesy of Wikipedia:

"Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86).

Quaestor म्हणाले...

Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

Well, that explains the shitty legislation of the mid-nineties, the Bills didn't rhyme.

Quaestor म्हणाले...

All kidding aside, the next amendment to the Constitution ought to be a requirement that all bills and proposed acts brought before Congress must be drafted in iambic pentameter with the AXXA rhyme scheme. At least that would guarantee somebody applied some degree of thought to our national body of law. $174,000 is a lot of scratch to pay for a monkey chained to a typewriter.

dave_WI म्हणाले...

I guess ‘The Bird is not the word’, anymore.

Tina Trent म्हणाले...

I stopped reading Rita Dove when she wrote a poem about hating her infant daughter's skin color because Dove is married to a white man (or was then) and it made her think of the innocent infant as her oppressor.

She also stripped half the white poets out of the newer edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry and replaced them mostly with lesser minority poets.

She is good at one thing: maintaining an extraordinary amount of resentment towards institutions that literally shower her with awards and money for her semi-average work.

Nancy म्हणाले...

That is not a poem.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

@planetgeo, it was an observation, not a question. So she was an affirmative action hire at the Library of Congress? That or there weren’t many decent poets in 1993. Either way [shrug].

(N.B., the appeal to authority fallacy does not work with me.)

Bob म्हणाले...

One of Edgar Allan Poe's lesser-known stories is a bit of hackwork titled X-ing a Paragrab, about a war between two newspapers and the theft of lead type used to operate the printing presses. It also features some racist humor on Poe's part, with an African-American printer's assistant speaking in stereotyped dialect.