mandag 21. november 2011

Lakota lullaby


Lastet opp av ‪meethaa1 13. juni 2010

chante waste hokshila
(good hearted boy)
lahkge estemah
(go back to sleep)
han hepi kin waste
(the night is good)
wa yelo heya
( I have spoken)


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fredag 14. oktober 2011

Billy Collins: Introduction To Poetry



Introduction To Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

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mandag 19. september 2011

søndag 18. september 2011

Bob Hicok: Calling him back from layoff



Calling him back from layoff

I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause
during which it would have been

confusing to say hello again so I said
how are you doing and guess what, he said
fine and wondered aloud how I was

and it turns out I'm OK. He
was on the couch watching cars
painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars

painted with ads for Tide around an oval
that's a metaphor for life because
most of us run out of gas and settle

for getting drunk in the stands
and shouting at someone in a t-shirt
we want kraut on our dog. I said

he could have his job back and during
the pause that followed his whiskers
scrubbed the mouthpiece clean

and his breath passed in and out
in the tidal fashion popular
with mammals until he broke through

with the words how soon thank you
ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove
through the wires on the backs of ions

as one long word as one hard prayer
of relief meant to be heard
by the sky. When he began to cry I tried

with the shape of my silence to say
I understood but each confession
of fear and poverty was more awkward

than what you learn in the shower.
After he hung up I went outside and sat
with one hand in the bower of the other

and thought if I turn my head to the left
it changes the song of the oriole
and if I give a job to one stomach other

forks are naked and if tonight a steak
sizzles in his kitchen do the seven
other people staring at their phones

hear?


lørdag 17. september 2011

søndag 24. juli 2011

Adrienne Rich - What Kind of Times Are These



What Kind of Times Are These

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.

“What Kind of Times Are These”. © 2002, 1995 by Adrienne Rich, from The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 by Adrienne Rich.

Litt om Adrienne Rich her!

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mandag 7. mars 2011

Mark Doty: "Brian, Age 7"



Litt om Mark Doty & hans foredrag "Why poetry matters now" her!

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fredag 4. mars 2011

Tim Minchin: "Storm"








Litt om Tim Minchin her!



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mandag 31. januar 2011

Ted Kooser: "Nest"

Desemberutgaven av tidsskriftet Ames Progressive presenterer et nytt dikt av Ted Kooser - jeg siterer:

Ted Kooser was born in Ames in 1939 and graduated from Iowa State University. He served as US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006 and currently edits the weekly newspaper series “American Life in Poetry.” He has published many books over the past four decades and has been awarded numerous literary honors. In 2005 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Delights and Shadows.

NEST

In late November,
I found, in a bare
forsythia bush,
a bird nest woven
of pin oak leaves,
a rattly little thing
too loose for eggs
or so I thought,
but in it, like baby birds,
were curled a few
brown pin oak leaves
the winter sky
was feeding.

*

(Vokste selv opp i Ames og ble ganske henrykt da jeg nylig snublet over nettstedet til Ames Progressive - og der oppdaget et nytt dikt av en av yndlingspoetene mine. Link til tidsskriftet fins i menyen til høyre.)