2011 02 13

71Almanac — Eliza Acton d.1859; Faiz Ahmed Faiz b.1911; Christopher Levenson b.1934; Judith Rodriguez b.1936; Lucille Clifton d.2010

Reading, each both silently and aloud —

1. Twelve poems: (1) moonchild; (2) telling our stories; (3) the times; (4) why some people be mad at me sometimes; (5) lorena; (6) homage to my hips; (7) poem to my uterus; (8) to my last period; (9) 1994; (10) lumpectomy eve; (11) hag riding; and (12) song at midnight — Lucille Clifton (d.2/13/2010) [Persimmon Tree Magazine^♥]
2. Water-Based Lubricant — Matthew J. Spireng [Rattle^♥] “might have been my fault, / exposed as I was” – one difference between poetry and science being that the experiment won’t be repeated to confirm the results?
3. Long Distance II — Tony Harrison [E-Verse Radio] I’ve read this before, and recently, just can’t put my hands on it. This is why I persist in the vain hope that this journal might help unscatter some of it for me. When I randomly re-encounter the notes I remember making of this on my prior encounter, I can come back to relink that up with the notes I didn’t make this time because of wasting time on this note instead.
4. TWA sometimes posts its daily content several days in advance (in stark contrast with the Poetry Foundation, which is habitually late on its daily poems and never bothers to even try to catch up). And I just now noticed that several days ago I skipped a TWA day, so had been reading ahead since. Nice to feel like I was ahead for one very tiny segment of my life for once, but now I’ll skip back and pick up the one I passed over, from February 11: The Best Thing I Did ♫ — Ron Padgett [The Writer’s Almanac^♠] And Freud would chuckle at that one being the one I’d managed to skip. And some would find it one more excuse to find fault.
5. What I Disliked about the Pleistocene Era — Patty Seyburn [Poetry Daily^♠]
6. Suppose You Were a Moray Eel — Aimee Nezhukumatathil [Verse Daily^♠] “Wait instead for what your thin veins forecast, / what they decide to pulse for and where.”
7. Life in a Love — Robert Browning [Poets.org^♠] Yes, I know I read this yesterday. Never hurts to read a good poem more than once. Even on consecutive days.
8. Why Poetry Cannot Be Skimmed — Jessica Jopp [Poetry Foundation^♠] Which might explain why the Poetry Foundation can take days to get around to posting a new “Poem of the Day”? But we never skim here. We submerge in. Drown in. Saturate with.
9. The Sun Rising — John Donne [Poetry Out Loud^♠] Already in my collection of aubades.
10. Friends — W. B. Yeats [Everyday Poems]
11. Hunting Song ♫ — Walter Scott [Poetry Moment]
12. Freedom — Ambrose Bierce [Representative Poetry Online] Let’s go spread it around, why don’t we.
13. You’re Beautiful — Simon Armitage [Poetry Archive] “I’m ugly because desperation is impossible to hide.”
14. My Last Duchess — Robert Browning [Poetry In Voice]
15. The Gifted Child — Lorna Crozier [Canadian Poetry Online]
16. Agatha — Alfred Austin [Black Cat Poems]
17. Let Me Out — LaDonna English [Lilt] “Push it open Johnny, / don’t be so polite.” We’re all friends here, right?
18. The Crucifix ♫ — Alex Dimitrov [From the Fishouse]
19. This Living Hand — John Keats; with reading by Patrick Donnelly ♫ [Poets on Poets]
20. Modern Love: ◄ II [“It ended, and the morrow brought the task”] ► — George Meredith [Wikisource]
21. Sonnets from the Portuguese: ◄ VIII [“What can I give thee back, O liberal”] ► — Elizabeth Barrett Browning [Wikisource] “Not so; not cold,–but very poor instead.”
22. In Memoriam A. H. H.: ◄ XII [“Lo, as a dove when up she springs”] ► — Alfred, Lord Tennyson [Wikisource] “‘Is this the end? Is this the end?'”
23. ◄ Sonnet XLIV [“If the dull substance of my flesh were thought”] ► — William Shakespeare [EServer Poetry Collection] “But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought / To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone”
24. ◄ The Appeal ► — Sir Thomas Wyatt [The Oxford Book of English Verse] Subtitle: An Earnest Suit to his Unkind Mistress, not to Forsake him
25. The Raven and Other Poems: ◄ Sonnet — Silence ► — Edgar Allan Poe [Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore]
26. A Boy’s Will: ◄ A Dream Pang ► — Robert Frost [Wikisource] A Petrarchan sonnet from early Frost.
27. Sing a Song of Sixpence — [Anonymous] [Poem of the Week (Sarah E. Smith)] Yes, I read this one aloud too, just as I do all the ones I see here and offline.
28. The Purist — Ogden Nash [Poetry 365] And this one too, but of course.
29. A Band of Hair Beneath the Veil — Will Garrett-Petts [Canadian Literature^♥]
30. Man Tearing Down a Chimney — Anita Lahey [The Antigonish Review^♥]
31. Beloved — Richard Capling [The New Quarterly^♥] “We watched for them, / long after they disappeared.” Or at least one of us did.
32. Wasps — Scott Provence [Whistling Shade^♥] “giving up / the pinch that separates / head from heart.”
33. Spirit in the Dark — Ed Skoog [Burnside Review^♥]
34. Watching Reruns — Michael Cantor [Tilt-a-Whirl^♥] An excellent terzanelle!
35. So let’s read another: Terzanelle at twilight — Aparna Raghunath [OurKarnataka]
36. Melon Balls — Mary Meriam [Sixty-Six^♥] “I’m most familiar with my quiet table / . . . / with satisfying simple daily needs.”
37. A Midnight In Manchester — Tony Connor [Ambit^♥]
38. The Second Day (Jan 09) — Jennifer Cooke [Great Works]
39. Testament: ninth muse — Alan Loney [Jacket^♥]
40. Little Mag — Peter Finch [Asheville Poetry Review^♥] “Poetry is short on miracles.” Then again, who needs a miracle anyway.
41. More reading and re-archiving from the Internet Archive: Three poems: (1) A poem for you; (2) Surfing; and (3) Red on white — Zane Ivy [Electric Acorn^♥]
42. When it dies — David Solway [The New Criterion^♥] “the zing marches from the versicle”
43. And among those re-read today from the stack I read and listed a month ago here: Release the Sterile Moths — D.A. Powell [Verse Daily^♠]
44. As I Went Out One Morning — Bob Dylan [Bob Dylan]

“It’s far enough past Christmas, I can probably throw out all these receipts.” — Susan, dusting and tidying, concerning the collection of gift receipts held in case a return or exchange was required. Uh, don’t throw out the one for the Poetry gift subscription just yet. I’m seriously thinking of telling the Poetry Foundation not to bother, just give us a refund that I can direct to a poetry journal that will actually send its new subscribers something to read other than a receipt ….