21st Century Literature discussion

I don't have my copy of this book, yet! But here's a great link to Billy Collins reading from this book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq56QY...

Still don't have my copy (hopefully this afternoon?) but found this link to an Emory University discussion on creativity with BC. Yes, I sat still for the entire hour and six minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRlftn...

Did your copy come in this afternoon?

I don't have to work tomorrow, so I'm going to watch those YouTube videos! Thanks for posting them.

Graves

What do you think of my new glasses
I asked as I stood under a shade tree
before the joined grave of my parents,

and what followed was a long silence
that descended on the rows of the dead
and on the fields and the woods beyond,

one of the one hundred kinds of silence
according to the Chinese belief,
each one distinct from the others,

but the differences being so faint
that only a few special monks
were able to tell one from another.

They make you look very scholarly,
I heard my mother say
once I lay down on the ground

and pressed an ear into the soft grass.
Then I rolled over and pressed
my other ear to the ground,

the ear my father likes to speak into,
but he would say nothing,
and I could not find a silence

among the one hundred Chinese silences
that would fit the one that he created
even though I was the one

who had just made up the business
of the one hundred Chinese silences—
the Silence of the Night Boat,

and the Silence of the Lotus,
cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell
only deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.

Listen to Billy Collins read this here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/a...

I know this poem is from one of his earlier collections, but I wanted to share it since I am snowed in this fine December afternoon! http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/...

Did you choose to highlight "Graves" because of the available recording, or did it have some special meaning to you? What about it stood out to you?

Tiffany wrote: "Did you choose to highlight "Graves" because of the available recording, or did it have some special meaning to you? What about it stood out to you?"

It was the first one in the book! :) But I do like it. I know he was(is) an only child, and I have one son. It makes me wonder what it will be like for my own son when he's the only one left in our family. It's a mind-boggling thought for me.

The Chairs That No One Sits In

You see them on porches and on lawns
down by the lakeside,
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

who might sit there and look out
at the water or the big shade trees.
The trouble is you never see anyone

sitting in these forlorn chairs
though at one time it must have seemed
a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

Sometimes there is a little table
between the chairs where no one
is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

It might be none of my business,
but it might be a good idea one day
for everyone who placed those vacant chairs

on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them
for the sake of remembering
whatever it was they thought deserved

to be viewed from two chairs
side by side with a table in between.
The clouds are high and massive that day.

The woman looks up from her book.
The man takes a sip of his drink.
Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird
then another, cries of joy or warning—
it passes the time to wonder which.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetr...

Sorry I haven't been posting much! December has been CRAZY busy!

My favorite line in the poem above is, "Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking." I just love the concept of "the sound of their looking." To me, it's so evocative.

I knew a landscape architect who believed in visual resting points: chairs you place outside so your eye will rest, but where you may never actually sit. I think of these as lost opportunities. If I'm looking longingly outside, I want to be outside!

This makes me want to write a poem about chairs!

Sophia wrote: "This makes me want to write a poem about chairs!"

... and post it when you're done. :)

Horoscopes For the Dead

Every morning since you fell down on the face of the earth,
I read about you in the newspaper
along with the box scores, the weather, and all the bad news.

Sometimes I am reminded that today
will not be a wildly romantic time for you,
nor will you be challenged by educational goals
nor will you need to be circumspect at the workplace.

Another day, I learn that you will miss
an opportunity to travel and make new friends
though you never cared much about either.

I can’t imagine you ever facing a new problem
with a positive attitude, but you will definitely not
be doing that or anything like that on this weekday in March.
And the same goes for the fun
you might have gotten from group activities,
a likelihood attributed to everyone under your sign.

A dramatic rise in income may be a reason
to treat yourself, but that would apply
more to all the Pisces who are still alive today,
still swimming up and down the stream of life
or suspended in a pool in the shade of an overhanging tree.

But it will come as a relief to learn
that you don’t need to reflect carefully before acting
nor do you have to think more of others,
and never again will creative work take a back seat
to the business responsibilities that you never really had.

And don’t worry today or any other day
about unwanted problems caused by your failure
to interact rationally with your many associates.
No more goals for you, no more pressing matters,
no more money or children, jobs or important tasks,
but then again, you were never thus encumbered.


Horoscopes For the Dead 2

So leave it to me now
to plan carefully for success and the wealth it brings,
to counsel the dear ones close to my heart
and to welcome any intellectual stimulation that comes my way
though that sounds like a lot to get done on a Tuesday.

I am better off closing the newspaper,
putting on the clothes I wore yesterday
(when I read that your financial prospects were looking up)
then pushing off on my copper-colored bicycle
and pedaling along the road by the shore of the bay.

And you go on being perfect just where you are,
lying there in your beautiful blue suit,
your hands crossed upon your chest
like the wings of a bird who has flown
in its strange migration straight up from earth
and pierced the enormous circle of the zodiac.

http://www.pen.org/poetry/horoscopes-...

Thing Two wrote: "Sophia wrote: "This makes me want to write a poem about chairs!"

... and post it when you're done. :)"

Will do!

Thing Two wrote: "I am better off closing the newspaper"

Always!

Sophia wrote: "Thing Two wrote: "putting on the clothes I wore yesterday"

Often!

Cemetery Ride

My new copper-colored bicycle
is looking pretty fine under a blue sky
as I pedal along a sandy path
in the Palm Cemetery here in Florida,

wheeling past the headstones of the Lyons,
the Campbells, the Vesers, and the Davenports,
Arthur and Ethel, who outlived him by eleven years
I slow down even more to notice,

but not so much as to fall sideways on the ground.
And here’s a guy named Happy Grant
next to his wife Jean in their endless bed.
Annie Sue Simms is right there and sounds

a lot more fun than Theodosia S. Hawley.
And good afternoon, Emily Polasek,
and to you too, George and Jane Cooper,
facing each other in profile, two sides of a coin.

I wish I could take you all for a ride
in my wire basket on this glorious April day,
not a thing as simple as your name, Bill Smith,
even trickier than Clarence Augustus Coddington.

Then how about just you, Bernice Owens?
Would you gather up your voluminous skirts
then ride sidesaddle on the crossbar
and tell me what happened between 1863 and 1931?

I’ll even let you ring the silver bell.
But if you’re not ready, I can always ask
Amanda Collier to rise from her long sleep
beneath the swaying gray beards of Spanish moss

and ride with me along these sandy paths
so I can listen to her strange laughter
as some crows flap in the blue overhead
and the spokes of my wheels catch the dazzling sun.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/a...

What imagery. The talent to write about something so ordinary.

He's earned the title "most popular poet in the US", rightfully.

Thing Two wrote: " I knew a landscape architect who believed in visual resting points: chairs you place outside so your eye will rest."

This is interesting. Colors and shapes are often used for this purpose in art quilts. Certain colors and specific shapes become resting points for the eyes in the business. They also sometimes act as guides to point the eyes in certain directions.

Most poetry I read sporadically, grabbing a book off a shelf to read a poem and putting it back. It was nice to read a complete book of poetry (each poem, one at a time at intervals) in such a short time. I think I’ve only done this one other time, a long time ago.

I loved this poem in particular:

As Usual

After we have parted, the boats
Will continue to leave the harbor at dawn.
The salmon will struggle up to the pools,
One month following the other on the wall.

The magnolia will flower,
And the bee, the noble bee –
I saw one earlier on my walk –
Will shoulder his way into the bud.

This poem brings with it, for me, a sense of freedom, release and relief.

Billy Collins is old which means that he is not new.