Frugal Chariots

I’ve recently read Kay Ryan’s Say Uncle, and most of Ballistics by Billy Collins. A little while ago I mentioned reading Yellowrocket.

There’s something knocking around in my head that I’d like to say about simplicity and triviality. It’s buzzing but unfortunately not coming clear. It seems to me that there are needy poems that cling to the poets, and there are poems that stand on their own two feet. Little poems need to stand strong right from the start, they have no time to assert independence, they can’t start out needy and grow … Continue Reading

I love Yellowrocket. It’s fun, lively, touching, precise, lovely. Just read Ruin – irresistible.

The Heart has narrow Banks
It measures like the Sea
In mighty – unremitting Bass
And Blue Monotony

Till Hurricane bisect
And as itself discerns
Its insufficient Area
The Heart convulsive learns

That Calm is but a Wall
Of unattempted Gauze
An instant’s Push demolishes
A Questioning – dissolves.

-Emily Dickinson

I Could Give All To Time
by Robert Frost

To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.

What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time’s lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.

I could give all to Time except – except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the customs … Continue Reading

This guide to facial expressions for artists is pretty cool. I did memorize Anecdote of the Jar. In search of a new poem to spend time with, I picked up Wordsworth for the first time today. Found it quite beautiful and thoroughly enjoyed some sonnets, particularly The World is too much with us.

Jane Hirshfield’s After is also truly beautiful… I’m still reading The Light the Dead See too. Been in a poetry mood recently.Yet another beautiful thing – having the windows open. Spring! It may only be 49 degrees out, but the sun is shining & that’s good enough for me.

It would make me happy if someone out there would pick up a copy of The Light the Dead See by Frank Stanford and read (particularly) the poem Snake Doctors….