Calling It

I'm just not keeping up. I think, therefore, that I will stop guilting myself on days when I don't and stop rushing myself on days when I do. I will start to post again, daily, at some undecided upon date in the future. Until then, this blog will go on hiatus. For your poetry needs, please refer to www.poets.org.

See you later!

A Supermarket in California (Allen Ginsberg)

What I love about this poem by Allen Ginsberg is that Walt Whitman features and that the way that A. Gins writes it mimics Whitman's prosey poems. I love that without even looking at the published date, I know approximately when this poem was written. It just smacks of the 1960s and hippies and the beat generation. Shoot, I just looked and it was actually written in 1956. Well, good stuff like him is always ahead of its time.

Favorite line: "Whole families shopping at/night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!"

In Flight (Jennifer K. Sweeney)

Not much information about the poet, but I love the poem. It's clear, clear-eyed, calm, directed. I guess that, maybe, makes it sound lame, but I mean all those adjectives in the best possible way.

I love the metaphor. I love the connection and the idea she makes between hard life - living, feeling without support or control - and the mythical Himalayan birds. God, it's just so good, so right. So damn apt.

Favorite line: "They are born in the air,/must learn to fly before falling"

MIA

I'm going to an out-of-town training for my job for the next few days. I'll be back to posting (promise!) on Thursday.

Small Talk (Eleanor Lerman)

Never heard of the poet or the poem, but that's fine, since I like this poem and I will want to explore more of the poems of this poet. Poems of the Day are like that. They (just occasionally) direct you to a gem.

This poem moves so carefully, so cautiously. If every day in the suburbs is mild than so is the poem, making no declarations, trying to stir no ripples. Even the title pushing down what the poem's getting across by calling it simply small talk. Nothing serious is said in small talk after all. Nothing important.

But then, you see, this poem is sneaky. Not all lives are dull in the suburbs and not all small talk is pointless. This poem also contains a sharp point after carefully describing how it does not. The last stanza shows that the babes of the suburban mothers to be asleep in the arms of the wind - wild in ways that suburban life cannot approach. If they are to be wild, however, it is due to the suburban mothers - the safety of their mild ways and of their mild suburbs. "Such small talk/before life begins"

Favorite line: "If there is/sunlight, it enters through the/kitchen window and spreads/itself, thin as a napkin, beside/the coffee cup"