Comrade Cletar’s fabulous haiku works around the subject of the Iowa caucus made me think we should harness more of that poetic creativity here at Crasstalk.
I propose the poetry type be a Shakespearian sonnet. (The link will refresh those who have forgotten the sonnet rules.) The subject Michelle Bachmann her manly husband Marcus, disappointment and unrequited love. Continue reading
Each week we bring you a poet, some of their work, and leave the rest up to you.
This week’s poet is Anne Sexton. Also, this week, EthologyNerd is substitute-hosting for Jennywren.
Anne Sexton was the Courtney Love of 1960’s American poetry. Sylvia Plath, her good friend and main rival at the time, was winning awards and smiling dutifully at receptions; Anne was showing up drunk to receptions if at all, lighting hundred-dollar bills on fire in restaurants, having multiple affairs, and was generally considered the one poet you had to see read…again, if she made it and you could understand what she was saying.
Widely considered to have opened the door for modern “confessional” poetry, she tackled all manner of controversial topics in her writing, including menstruation, abortion, her mania and depression, and her rebellion against her straitlaced, WASPy, somewhat abusive upbringing. As her mental illness worsened, so did her personal relationships. Her decades-long marriage ended in divorce in the early 1970s as Anne descended further into prescription drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and her suicide attempts, of which there had been several in the past, became more frequent and more serious. Her last suicide attempt in 1974 was successful. Continue reading
Each week we bring you a poet, some of their work, and leave the rest up to you.
This week’s poet is Billy Collins* Continue reading
The limerick packs laughs anatomical 
In space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
– Author Unknown, but I’d like to have a beer with him
We had our high-brow poetry column on Monday, but I think this crowd could really do some bang up limericks. Continue reading
Here is a new, hopefully weekly, segment where we discuss a poet and some of their work.
This week’s poet is one of my favorites, Ted Kooser.
Ted Kooser was born in Ames, Iowa in 1939. He earned a B.A. from Iowa State University in 1962 and an M.A. in English from the University of Nebraska in 1968. For most of his life he worked as an insurance executive in Lincoln, Nebraska and would get up early to write poetry before going to work. He is now retired, and lives near the village of Garland, Nebraska with his wife Kathleen Rutledge.
If you use Google Voice, you know that it has a transcription feature. At its most useful, this feature allows you to surreptitiously read a voicemail when you cannot listen to it. At its worst–or best–this feature can make it seem as though a lunatic has left you a voicemail, as though Google Voice is actually a psychotic poetry generator. So today I present to you a poem by Google Voice, which we’ll call:
Close your eyes; be still.
Feel each present moment,
that often is lost in a blur
of doing and acquiring
Slow the pace; feel your breath
and the harmony of here:
the quiet, gentle wisdom
of being and becoming
Release the expectations
which have bombarded your senses,
and tune into the truth
of your own innate perfection
Untether your psyche
from the realm of lack and fear,
and luxuriate in the body
that is your most sacred temple
Whether or not we see it fully,
we have been puppets and pawns
in the passionless play
of a materially-obsessed world
We’re acting out characters
we neither like nor understand;
living an unwitting charade,
for no hope of real reward
What a profligate waste
of time, energy and resources
(because you’ll never be rich,
thin, attractive or young enough)!
In scarcity, welcome abundance
with gratitude and humility;
Impecuniousness is far richer
than a lack of spiritual substance
Overwhelmed by artifice, it’s easy
to lose sight of what’s real
But there’s nothing we could need
that we haven’t always possessed
Sadly, there are no mainstream sages
to help us nurture this awareness;
The visionaries with true power and insight
have all been relegated to obscurity
The gurus in the limelight
offer little but cold comfort
to warm the existential numbness
that’s slowly taken over our souls
But there is the great equalizer: choice.
Will we continue to fruitlessly pursue
a relentless litany of unsatisfied desires
or take the reins of responsible maturity?
In the end, who gets to decide
the value and direction of our lives:
compulsive, greed-driven conformity,
or our magnificent human potential?
It would truly blow your mind
if you ever fully realized
how resplendently glorious
you absolutely (already) are
Living with conscious intention
yields often invisible, infinite rewards
and if we’re up for the challenge,
the truth is all ours to discover.