2011 02 16

75Almanac — Charles Cotton d.1687; Joseph Viktor von Scheffel b.1826; Thomas Bracken d.1898; Giosuè Carducci d.1907; Elisabeth Eybers b.1915; Peter Porter b.1929; Lionel Kearns b.1937; Carlos Pellicer d.1977; George MacBeth d.1992

Reading, each both silently and aloud —

1. In Early Drafts, Robert Frost Relied Heavily on the Thesaurus — Jeff Vande Zande [Rattle^♥] Except that 5,280 feet makes only the singular mile, which would leave them short of their plural destination. Which is how a math geek wrecks a joke.
2. Platypus — Les Murray [E-Verse Radio] One for my little menagerie of critters.
3. The Blind Old Man ♫ — Robert Bly [The Writer’s Almanac^♠]
4. Club Icarus — Matt W. Miller [Poetry Daily^♠]
5. Hello, Kickstand — Julia Cohen [Verse Daily^♠]
6. Three Swedish poems translated by Carol Berg: (1) Deadly Sins, Do You Still Want Me? by Eva Ström; and (2) Without Skill But With Strength and (3) What Hands Remember by Johanna Ekström ♫ [qarrtsiluni^♥]
7. Daniel in Autumn — Serena Chopra [No Tell Motel^♠]
8. U-District Incident Report — Heather McHugh [Poets.org^♠]
9. Our Motorbike — Elfriede Jelinek (translated by Michael Hofmann) [Poetry Foundation^♠]
10. Mother Carey’s Hen ♫ — David Yezzi [Poetry Foundation^♠]
11. Late Echo — John Ashbery [Poetry Out Loud^♠] “We see that there really is nothing left to write about.” Nor to read about, for that matter. I do it anyway.
12. Hélas — Oscar Wilde [Poem of the Day]
13. Safety-Clutch — Ambrose Bierce [Representative Poetry Online]
14. Marigolds — Vicki Feaver [Poetry Archive]
15. To a Mouse — Robert Burns [Poetry In Voice]
16. Books Are — Barry Dempster [Canadian Poetry Online]
17. Athena — Bacchylides [Black Cat Poems]
18. In Foreign Fields — M.A. Griffiths [Lilt]
19. The Magician’s View on the Efficacy of Marriage ♫ — Andrew Kozma [From the Fishouse]
20. Emmonsail’s Health in Winter — John Clare; with reading by Michael Collier ♫ [Poets on Poets]
21. Modern Love: ◄ V [“A message from her set his brain aflame”] ► — George Meredith [Wikisource] “The ‘What has been’ a moment seemed his own”
22. Sonnets from the Portuguese: ◄ XI [“And therefore if to love can be desert”] ► — Elizabeth Barrett Browning [Wikisource] “O Beloved, it is plain / I am not of thy worth nor for thy place!” You’ve made plain.
23. In Memoriam A. H. H.: ◄ XV [“To-night the winds begin to rise”] ► — Alfred, Lord Tennyson [Wikisource] “The last red leaf is whirl’d away, / The rooks are blown about the skies”
24. ◄ Sonnet XLVII [“Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took”] ► — William Shakespeare [EServer Poetry Collection] “For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move, / And I am still with them, and they with thee.”
25. The Joy of the Drop: ◄ Ghazal 2 [“It’s a little hard for things to be easy”] ► — Mirza Ghalib – “when even a man can’t act like a man” or is just like every other man, either one.
26. ◄ To His Lute ► — Sir Thomas Wyatt [The Oxford Book of English Verse]
27. ◄ The Star-Spangled Banner ► — Francis Scott Key [Yale Book of American Verse] Recommended reading for those wanting the stage to perform it.
28. The Raven and Other Poems: ◄ Scenes from Politian ► — Edgar Allan Poe [Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore]
29. A Boy’s Will: ◄ Mowing ► — Robert Frost [Wikisource] All humor aside, needing no thesaurus to get it right.
30. The Broken Home — James Merrill [Poem of the Week (Sarah E. Smith)]
31. How to Be Alone — Tanya Davis [Poetry 365] Useful expertise, poetically. “It’s okay if no one believes like you.” Doesn’t seem to make a difference when they do.
32. The Morning Quatrains — Charles Cotton (d.2/16/1687) [Poet’s Corner]
33. Reading MND in Form 4B — Peter Porter (b.2/16/1929) [The Poetry Archive]
34. Contra Diction — Lionel Kearns (b.2/16/1937) [Canadian Poetry Online] “At worst I think poetry / only a hobby”
35. April Morning — Arlene Ang [Arch Literary Journal^♥]
36. Pain Thinks of Still Life [pdf] — Laurie Lamon [Willow Springs^♥]
37. Coming Down in White — Lori Shine [Pilot Poetry^♥]
38. Three poems: (1) A Bird Brings a Dream in Which You Are Orphelia; (2) Orphée on the Radio; and (3) Training the Wolf-Girl — J. P. Dancing Bear [diode^♥]
39. The Aftermath — James Laughlin [Ambit^♥] “sometimes there were / brief interludes of normalcy / between the down-swing and the / up-swing”
40. The Arid Garden — Mark Smith [Great Works]
41. The Shadow of Icarus — Katalin Ladik [Asheville Poetry Review^♥]
42. More reading and re-archiving from the Internet Archive: Two poems: (1) Jonesboro, Arkansas, 1998; and (2) Air and water and land — Martin J. Kaszubowski [Electric Acorn^♥]
43. Why We No Longer Commute ♫ — Christopher Salerno [Linebreak] “Everyone wants to float down the river in a raft, to persist and drift like a dynasty of harmless circumstances.” Otherwise, it’s thought you’re only going that far for what can get got out of it. Why else would one?
44. South Dakota — Steven Lance [The Missouri Review^♥] As described, “writing significance into spaces” – similar to a good ghazal.
45. Silver Bridge — Kate Marshall Flaherty [Toronto Quarterly^♠]
46. The Iron Coin — Jorge Luis Borges [The Times Literary Supplement] “Falsely charged with infamy, why should they not love you?” Indeed. Aren’t false accusations the most sincere terms of endearment?
47. Time pieces — Rachel Wetzsteon [The New Criterion^♥] Just in time.
48. And among those re-read today from the stack I read and listed a month ago here: Susie Asado — Gertrude Stein [Poetry Out Loud^♠]
49. Abandoned Love — Bob Dylan [Bob Dylan] “I’ve given up the game, I’ve got to leave / The pot of gold is only make-believe”