Myth of Arrival

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.

- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"

(probably braining in some poor S.O.B. passing by Henry's window … you know how grum poets can be, especially anyone forced to live in New England)

I know Lansing isn't the poetry meccca Agana, Guam¹ or Underwood, North Dakota is, but next week we will actually be having two (2) poetry events in one (1) week. Not just the Dead Poets reading² but Tim Lane reminds us:

Magdalena Teahouse Open Mic Poetry Reading Series
Tuesday, Oct. 25
sign up 7:45

You should go to that if you happen to be in Lansing. You can go as a Dead Poet. A Dead Poet! Ruelaine writes: "To date, the list of Dead Poets scheduled to appear at the Creole Gallery on Wed. Oct. 26th includes:

Dylan Thomas
Jane Kenyon (who is dead)
Rosalia de Castro — tho' we are looking for English translations of her work. . . anybody have any?
Sappho
Rumi
Shel Silverstein
Gertrude Stein
Emily Dickenson
Walt Whitman"

Hurrah for Good, Gray poets! Speaking of which, I have noticed a trend in blogs at the end of the week to randomly link to various other people's home sites simply because they have nothing to say on a Friday morning, probably still sleep-hung over from a long night spent changing adult diapers on the dementia ward and answering call-lights (just a guess, really).

As a vehement blog poet, I loath such tactics. So what if people say nice things about you when there are repetitive villanelles to write? And the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack to make snide comments about? And Poets & Writer's selections of debut poetry featuring: Andrea Baker, Christian Barter, Geoff Bouvier, Leslie Bumstead, Victoria Chang, Geri Doran, K.E. Duffin, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Dana Goodyear, Sarah Gridley, Tyehimba Jess, Corinne Lee, Sheryl Luna, Rusty Morrison, Dead Poets!, Matthew Shenoda, Laura Sims, Mark Sullivan and Catherine Wing? And those damn, lying apes? However, if I was going to do something like that, it would look a little like this:

I have been laughing all week over Jim Behrle's " What the Hell is Up With Your Author Photo?" series, this week featuring poor, abused Forrest Gander.

Here is a photo of Marci Johnson in action at the April 2005 AWP Conference in Vancouver, Canada.

Come this Thursday (Oct. 27, suckers) The Gore Gore Girls (lo-fi energy! b-horror movies! go-go boots!) will be playing at Mac's Bar in Lansing. Hurrah! The Gore Gore Girls Rock!

The Happy Booker kicks off Elizabeth Poliner week on her blog.

I finally found another artistic nurse! Unkempt Woman is wonderful, worth the 1.6 seconds it takes to click on her link for her "Nurse Cow" quip.

Just because my local alt dot collge dot com radio station still plays it, here is everything you ever wanted to know about The Nails' 88 Lines About 44 Women.

The Radish King orders you: "Buy Books! Buy mine, especially. And Punk Poems by John Burgess. And Kathryn Rantala's Missing Pieces." Or as Pax Fuscata puts it: "These spunky books have volunteered to help out the way we all do: Uno alla volta. One at a time."

Isn't it odd that during time of social peace poets write poems of anarchy and chaos but when actual disaster strikes our fair country poets almost never advocate rioting? I discovered today that "riots" in Italian is "Tumulti;" in German "Aufstände;" in French "Émeutes;" and in Chinese "暴亂." I think that is where today's villanelle should start:

Poets
faking
riots;

their jackets
burning.
Rebecca Riots;

burning her couplets
(romanticizing
raging riots)

Bathos forfeits
rage; for raging
poets

this merits
woe, slurring
"limits" with "riots."

As if poets have limits.
As if rhyming
poets
start riots.

1. By the way, if you happen to land at Agana Won Pat International Airport, having intended to go to 2006 Manchester Poetry Festival (hint, hint Shelby) but realizing at the last moment no one goes to Manchester when there is Guam, remember what Elizabeth Warnock Fernea said in "A View of the Nile": "Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It's just not done." [back]
2. Question: have I flogged this enough? It's a Dead Poet reading, folk. Dead Poets! [back]

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2005 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Scantily Clad Info Dump, Forms, Original Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.