The heart is painted with thick layers of desire.*Their carts filled with informalities at bargain prices.*The day opened wide as a book opened often, to a favorite page.*Willows hunch, creaking arthritically in gusty breeze.*The subterranean culture swallowed up the past; it is but fumes of sulfur- that residual stench of palpability.*The last day extends a hand, as if to offer some basis to anticipate comfort without suspicion.
Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize Laureate and featured speaker for the 2006 University of Kentucky Main Commencement Ceremony. Heaney will also read on campus from his work as well as his latest book of poems new book of poems, "District and Circle" which will be released by Farrar Straus & Giroux this month. [source]
So National Poetry Month is past, but I still have a treasure trove of wonderful quotes from poets. Hence I will continue to spoon feed them to you but perhaps not on a daily basis.
You know when people say to you, "You really should get out more?" I think my version of that line to writers is, "Your really should read other people's stuff more."
It's May 1st and you older folks like me can probably remember all the May Day photos we used to see in the papers of the long parades in the Soviet Union where they would roll out all their military hardware down the streets for the world to see. I was thinking about that this morning and how that has all changed. I was also thinking about how across the nation hundreds of thousands of immigrants - some illegally in this country will take to the streets and demonstrate for immigration reform that is favorable to their plight. At the risk of using a metaphor that may sound demeaning to them, it is kind of like cockroaches coming out of the floor molding. Here are all these people that for the most part are a part of a subterranean culture that will today be quite visible. So today, my old image of May Day is being replaced with a more contemporary. Both of these have political implications. Somewhere in all this, I'm sure I have a poem brewing.
Oh, is anyone else finding it trifling the Senator Bill Frist wants to help us poor American drivers by giving us a $100 tax rebate because of the high gas prices? Surprise!!! The GOP plan also includes a controversial proposal to open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration. (source)