The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Fri 2/29/2008)

[RetroLounge]

Hey You

Back when my head like an egg in a nest
was vowel-keen and dawdling, I shed my slick beautiful
and put it in a basket and laid it barefaced at the river
among the taxing rocks. My beautiful was all hush
and glitter. It was too moist to grasp. My beautiful
had no tongue with which to lick—no discernable
wallowing gnaw. It was really a breed of destruction
like a nick in a knife. It was a notch in the works
or a wound like a bell in a fat iron mess. My beautiful
was a drink too sopping to haul up and swig!
Therefore with the trees watching and the beavers abiding
I tossed my beautiful down at the waterway against
the screwball rocks. Even then there was no hum.
My beautiful was never ill-bred enough, no matter what
you say. If you want my blue yes everlasting, try my
she, instead. Try the why not of my low down,
Sugar, my windswept and wrecked.

Adrian Blevins

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Adrian Blevins was born in Abington, Virginia, in 1964, and holds graduate degrees from Hollins University and Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. Twenty days into her new life in Waterville, Maine, fifth-generation Virginian Adrian Blevins, who likes to discover fault lines in old mythology, says that Yankees are a kind and generous people. She writes from her new house (built in 1895) that she doesn’t mind the gaping hole in her pressed tin kitchen ceiling, though she’s confused as to why her husband is dry-walling the shed. Blevins’ The Brass Girl Brouhaha won the 2004 Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University. Among her other awards are a Rona Jaffe Writers Foundation Award for Poetry and the Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction. Blevins is also the author of The Man Who Went Out for Cigarettes, a Bright Hill chapbook. She teaches at Colby College.


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:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear Retro...

Ah, modern poetry!

This is hard to get, for me, anyway...

I had to read it several times just to begin to understand...

At least I think I understand!

It's good, though, to read things that make you sit up and say "huh?"

Thank you!

:hi:

[xchrom]

2. what i always like to hear on a hot night out --

''try the why not of my low down.''

[RetroLounge]

4. I hear that line all the time...

:rofl:

:hug:

RL

[zingaro]

3. that's a jumbled mouthful

"too sopping to haul up and swig."

I love this:

"If you want my blue yes everlasting, try my
she, instead. Try the why not of my low down,
Sugar, my windswept and wrecked."

It drags sense from nonsense. It's sort of like erotic Jabberwocky, kwim? I'll never hear "All mimsy were the borogroves" in quite the same way again.