A List of List Poems

December 21, 2017Simon Pettet
AG:  But by this anaphoric rapture, or anaphoric repetition, it {Crashaw’s poem “The Flaming  Heart”] actually builds up to rapture. So this is what Anne Waldman calls “a list poem”, actually, an early list poem. I taught a little poetry workshop this weekend and checked out list poems and the samples I used were (the) thirteenth and twenty-eighth chapters of Ecclesiastes (because there is “..or the golden bowl be broken”), and then I read Christopher Smart, I used “Like to the flaming of a star.”,  the little.. – I used that as a list
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Cherry Blues

April 27, 2017Simon Pettet

[Samuel Palmer – In A Shoreham Garden]

Cherry Blossom Season but we’re pretty certain that that colorful moment isn’t quite the kind of “cherry” that Allen’s talking about here.  (Plus, that  “Heart Failure” – ( “noisy Cherry got Heart Failure Blues”)  –  Old Age and Youth lying down together  (“Heart Failure & Cherry, Cherry in my bed”).  It’s one of the more obscure items from Allen’s  voluminous catalog, but, hey, why not.

CHERRY BLUES

Cherry in Boulder, Cherry in San Francisco too/Cherry Boulder. old Cherry San Francisco too/But Cherry Boulder trembles more than Seattle do.

Cherry in Seattle, Cherry … Read More

Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems

November 24, 2013admin

It’s a red-letter day!  (or, to be accurate, a red-and-black letters day, on a plain cream-white background!). Coffee House Press have just published, in one 800-plus single volume, The Collected Poems of Ron Padgett. “Ron Padgett‘s poems”, writes Anne Waldman, “are essential and Ron Padgett is a genius”. She goes on,”His poetry is masterful for its panoramic humanity and mind-stopping verbal wit, its breathtaking power and beauty. We want to stay with the person in these poems all day long, to be changed by the possibilities palpitating from the smallest increments of our existence to the most … Read More