- An interesting perspective from Quico Toro on resolving the global warming crisis without stifling economic development: How to Save the Planet Without Screwing Over Poor People.
- When “effective immediately” means “maybe.”
- Richard Gilbert explains why I was confused by Harold G. Henderson’s statement that “haiku is written in 5-7-5 jion.”
- Two pieces that sound the alarm that everything is ruined, by Julian Baggini and Christian B. Miller. I agree with Miller that patience is still a virtue to be sought, but the dependence on instant answers pre-dates easy access to LLMs and AI-assisted search.
- I Am Hummingbird, Lord of Your Doorknob, by Julie Sharbutt.
So you and your creatures went inside to stuff your flesh beaks with sauce worms and stare at your RAWRAWRAWR wall. The time was nigh and I went to work, collecting twigs and sticks and dog fur and stems and cattails and twigs and string and SNAKESKIN and bark and moss and fish scales and thistle and hay and twine and thread and tinsel and CAT WHISKERS and leaves and twigs and DANDELION DOWN and pine needles and Halloween wig hair and USED SPIDERWEBS—THEY WERE EMPTY WHEN I FOUND THEM, GET A GRIP, THE SPIDERS ARE FINE, YOU THINK A SPIDER’S NOT JUST FINE?
Category: Poetry
Squared
“On a Clear Day,” by Victoria Chang, homage to Agnes Martin.
… the trees//won’t tell/me. That//
Red
In the beginning there was the film…
—Stav Poleg, “Two Pictures of a Rose in the Dark”
Weir-doo
Exquisite loss: “March 3,” by Eileen Myles.
…in the day
and the
night
before. It snowed
but it was
supposed
to be larger…
For Leta: 8
“A Letter from the End of Days (Come In. Clean the House. We Have Died.)” by Malachi Black, at Poetry Daily.
… there is nothing else
to help you. There is no one here
at all.
For Leta: 7
Dara Weir’s “in the still of the night” at Poetry Daily.
no crickets, no crickets singing
For Leta: 6
“Lisburn Road,” by Michael Hofmann.
A trunk holding a suitcase holding a holdall,
The travel equivalent of the turducken…
Dark slope
A word peeked sometimes from the cave mouth
only to shuffle back,
Hooked me with the first simile
Abecedarian lipogram
Adam Bertocci reworks “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Rude good wood rued
I like poetry that rhymes and doesn’t rhyme, like today’s offering, Rebecca Foust’s “Dream of the Rood.”
Perfectly peachy poem
Rita Dove’s “Ode to My Right Knee,” verse with a slightly concealed structural constraint.
the caesura of the seventh inning stretch
“The Poets at the Ball Game,” by Reginald Harris.
Gone
Wednesday’s poem at Poetry Daily is a killer, “Things That Have Changed Since You Died:”, by Laura Kasischke.
…We
send each other mail without stamps.
Six sides
Awesome Christmas-themed sestina (sestina, that Rubik’s cube of poetic forms) by Marcy Campbell.