The ReadWritePoem tour stops at Jill Crammond Wickham's blog, where there's a very kind review of my chapbook. Thank you! There have been a couple other reviews as part of the tour recently, which you can also read here and here. I appreciate ReadWritePoem's arranging the virtual tour. A lot.
Speaking of ReadWritePoem , this week they're talking about knock-out first lines of poems. I did something similar last year for first lines of novels, but the first line of a poem is even more important. I chimed in with mine, but here's a fuller list, which I may add to.
"My chest wants and does not want its color" Cesar Vallejo - untitled poem
"How much 14 there has been in existence!" Cesar Vallejo's Anniversary
"At last you are weary of this ancient world" Guillaume Apollinaire's Zone
"My love is building a building" ee cummings
"supposing i dreamed this)" ee cummings
"When I went out to kill myself, I caught / a pack of hoodlums beating up a man" James Wright's Saint Judas
"The whole town has come into my room" Philippe Soupault's Horizon
"Brave as a postage stamp" Philippe Soupault's Sporting Goods
"You do not do, you do not do / Anymore black shoe." Sylvia Plath's Daddy
"Let's spit the two of us let's spit / on what we loved" Louis Aragon's Poem to Shout in the Ruins
"Sky of a hanged man, is it going to rain" Benjamin Péret's Song in the Time of Drought
"Since you ask, most days I cannot remember" Anne Sexton's Waiting to Die
"I want the water to go on without its bed" Lorca's Ghazal of the Terrifying Presence
Please chime in if you have a favorite first line(s).
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
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3 comments:
Read the reviews. I agree. Your poetry makes my heart ooze. Keep it up. I follow.
Best first lines can, at times, be an ephemeral thing for me. Here are some recent ones. I like last lines too.
"I was at the foot of a department store escalator when I died."-Shinkichi Takahashi's Wild Camomiles
"Once a novelist showed me how a whole life might be taught in a single brief sentence: She was a woman who never walked in rain."-Dick Allen's Being Taught
"What we have been becomes the country where we are."-Wendell Berry's An Anniversary
"Whenever I read the newspaper I learn my money is going to hell."-I can't remember the poet's name. smile
'The owl and the pussy cat went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat'
...Lear
'Where the bee sucks there suck I'
'Have you seen but a whyte lily grow before rude hands have touched it'..Will
These lines capture my interest
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