i was tagged by susana....

the first poem i remember reading was....

not a poem. not really. it was Psalm 23. the holy bible. & i think after that i started reading Wisława Szymborska, View with a Grain of Sand. that's how i remember it going, anyway. i know that my love of poetry came directly from my love of the dictionary and not from any particular poem or poet. the poems & poets i loved just fueled my love of the word.

o, and my first dream about poetry went like this: i was looking at a page in a typewriter & typing an essay comparing Song of Myself to Dr. Seuss. and it made perfect sense in the dream but i've never quite been able to recapture that sense in real life.


i was forced to memorize numerous poems in school and...


actually, i wasn't. i don't remember ever having to memorize a poem in school. i had to memorize the Pledge of Allegiance in school. and Waltzing Matilda. but not a poem. My father made me memorize a poem that HE had to memorize in school & this is it:

One bright day in the Middle of the Night
Two dead boys began to fight
back to back they faced each other
drew their swords
& shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
and came and killed those two dead boys.


i read Poetry because...

it can satisfy my linguistical needs. as primal as it can get. like sex & water.


a poem i am likely to think about when asked what my favorite poem is....

i'm likely to go blank & feel a lot of anxiety when asked this question & then i will think really hard & come up w/ names of poets first... & then if i'm lucky or had some tequila i will think of actual poems.

any of ted berrigan's sonnets
suzanne stein's fugitive state & also shack
elise ficarra's lip reader
brandon brown's memoirs of my nervous illness
jack spicer's Psychoanalysis: An Elegy
and, something i consider a poem, and maybe i am alone in this, but: Djuna Barnes: The Antiphon.


my experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature....

my first response is to say that i don't have a different experience.

that is not entirely true. i think poetry places me inside my body more than other types of literature. although there are a lot of critical texts that also place me more inside my body. i read those as poems, though.

will have to finish later. back to work.
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any which way... we leave for NJ / NY tomorow morning. yay! percy poodle, too.

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i tag: andrea & chris . , Julie , , Kay and my dad.