Bringing prairie to the city & the mind

 

Trip to library today, picked up some poetry books to read, and a novel. I don’t often read fiction these days, but I thought I’d get something light to do recreational reading. Poetry really doesn't quite fit that bill for me though I do often really enjoy reading poetry, but I generally consider it more a act of academic endeavor.

After the library I made a stop at a nearby track in the heart of the city where a natural prairie environment has been recreated.  I got a good exercise walk in then went back around a captured some pictures.

Funny, this make me think of Emily Dickinson writing on the topic of prairie:  “To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, / One clover, and a bee. / And revery. / The revery alone will do, / If bees are few.”

Technorati Tags: prairie in the city,Emily Dickinson

Fantasy Tour Update

As the Tour de France is coming to a close – One more day till it’s history…. The latest fantasy team challenge between my daughter and I:

• Team Poetry –914
• DieuxVelo – 400

*Note to daughter – this is purely informational and not bragging.

This thing

This thing you call success
is holed up in the laundry room
attached to black hoses
on life support

Poetry Prize Shortlist

 

The Forward Prizes were founded in 1992 to raise the profile of contemporary poetry – and annual award that carries a £10,000 prize. The shortlist is out and a final announcement of the winner will come in October.  The list  follows:

• Glyn Maxwell - Hide Now
• Sharon Olds - One Secret Thing
• Don Paterson – Rain
• Peter Porter- Better than God
• Christopher Reid - A Scattering
• Hugo Williams - West End Final

Source: BBC

Technorati Tags: The Forward Prize for poetry,Hugh Williams,Glyn Maxwell,Sharon Olds,Don Paterson,Peter Porter,Christopher Reid

A few powerful lines

I was reading an essay yesterday by Joyce Carol Oats in which Oats offers that confessional poetry has been replaced with what might be called the memoir of crisis. I find interesting her supposition that current literary culture is obsessed with memoirs.  Getting into the meat of the essay I was taken by surprise at her mention of Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face. I read this book a number of years back as well and her second book, As Seen on Television and found her to be a an exceedingly talented writer. What really took me by surprise was the mention of her death. For some reason this was totally off my radar. I had not knowledge whatsoever.

Grealy’s first book was a memoir of the sad and tragic life – a victim at an early age of a rare form of cancer of the Jaw, she was greatly disfigured through the illness and subsequent multiple surgical procedures. But for all that the young girl endured, her candor and ability to express herself was a gift to all who read her words.

Lucy Grealy was also a poet, and after reading her second book I went looking for any poetry I could find published. My efforts at the time fell short. I could find nothing. Today I was able to locate two lines attributed  to her. They are profound. Somewhere there must be other gems.

“When I dream of fire / you’re still the one I’d save / though I’ve come to think of myself / as the flames, the splintering rafters.” - Lucy Grealy

Technorati Tags: Lucy Grealy,Joyce Carol Oats,memoirs

a thought…

Depression is melancholy minus its charms - the animation, the fits. ~Susan Sontag

 

Technorati Tags: Susan Sontag,depression,melancholy

A Whose Who of Literary Magazines

Every Writer’s Resource has put out a list of the top 50 Literary Magazines. I’m sure it will likely have some additions or omissions from any list that you or I would compile. I’m not posting it for the sake of debate, but rather because it’s generally not a bad list and may be worthwhile to look at and see what publications you’ve perhaps missed and might find worthy of looking into further.

Top 50 Literary Magazines

Technorati Tags: 50 Literary Magazines,Every Writers Resource