Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

from Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
read by Lucille Clifton

How to Make a Dadaist Poem

tristan tzara

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

a few poems from Russell Edson's The Tunnel

Counting Sheep

   A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He wonders if he should try to shrink a pasture for them.
   They are like grains of rice.
   He wonders if it is possible to shrink something out of existence.
   He wonders if the sheep are aware of their tininess, if they have any sense of scale. Perhaps they think the test tube is a glass barn ...
   He wonders what he should do with them; they certainly have less meat and wool than ordinary sheep. Has he reduced their commercial value?
   He wonders if they could be used as a substitute for rice, a sort of woolly rice . . .
   He wonders if he shouldn't rub them into a red paste between his fingers. 
   He wonders if they are breeding, or if any of them have died.
   He puts them under a microscope, and falls asleep counting them.   

The Fall

   There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree.

   To which they said go into the yard and do not grow in the living-room as your roots may ruin the carpet.

  He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he dropped his leaves.

   But his parents said look it is fall.

APE

   You haven't finished your ape, said mother to father, who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.

   I've had enough monkey, cried father.

   You didn't eat the hands, and I went to all the trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.

   I'll just nibble on its forehead, and then I've had enough, said father.

   I stuffed its nose with garlic, just like you like it, said mother.

   Why don't you have the butcher cut these apes up?  You lay the whole thing on the table every night; the same fractured skull, the same singed fur, like someone who died horribly.  These aren't dinners, these are post-mortem dissections.

   Try a piece of its gum, I've stuffed its mouth with bread, said mother.

   Ugh, it looks like a mouth full of vomit.  How can I bit into its cheek with bread spilling out of its mouth? cried father.

   Break one of the ears off, they're so crispy, said mother.

   I wish to hell you'd put underpants on these apes; even a jockstrap, screamed father.

   Father, how dare you insinuate that I see the ape as anything more than simple meat, screamed mother.

   Well, what's with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates? screamed father.

   Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature?  that I would submit my female opening to this brute?  That after we had love on the kitchen floor I would put him in the oven, after breaking his head with a frying pan; and then serve him to my husband, that my husband might eat the evidence of my infidelity ...?

I'm just saying that I'm damn sick of ape every night, cried father.

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up your mum and dad

They may not mean to, but they do. 

They fill you with the faults they had   

And add some extra, just for you.  

But they were fucked up in their turn   

By fools in old-style hats and coats, 

Who half the time were soppy-stern   

And half at one another's throats.  

Man hands on misery to man.   

It deepens like a coastal shelf. 

Get out as early as you can,   

And don't have any kids yourself. 

Philip Larkin

kenneth koch's parodies of "this is just to say"

here

For anyone who didn't get a chance to see Andrea Gibson on Saturday, here is a beautifully shot video by Cory Zapatka and Mathew McNamara of her poem "Swing-set". Enjoy!

Andrea Gibson - Swingset from Mathew McNamara on Vimeo.

-Stephanie

jamila woods

"pigeon man"

the little song

the master

the wizard

handclasp

handclasp jen + will

Visual Poetry

The visual poetry of Ebon Heath.

fred shuttlesworth, 1922-2011

“The Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head.”

steve jobs 1955-2011

how to live before you die

Vinnie Seamonster Song

seamonster