Tuesday, January 19, 2010

let's spit on what we loved

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 PĂ©ret'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).

3 comments:

Kass said...

Read the reviews. I agree. Your poetry makes my heart ooze. Keep it up. I follow.

ron hardy said...

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

rallentanda said...

'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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