Solace in a Book

The ides of April

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Happy Poetry Month! Harumph, harrumph. It’s the smack dab middle of the month, also our tax deadline day, and in Chicago, the landscape is once again clearing from a surprise snow shower (see Glimpse of Solace). I wanted to share some stuff with you. First, as I have before in this space, I recommend you drop in on Dave Bonta’s poetry blog, Via Negativa. A recent post is "National Poetry Day is a failure." It will get you thinking. Dave links to the post "Against … [Read more...]

This, that, and the other

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Happy spring, happy Poetry Month, happy everything. A post on Harriet’s poetry blog on the Poetry Foundation site has been circulating through the waves of the Internet. It’s the one written recently by Camille Rankin and titled "Do What You Do, Love What You Love.” The post talks about how there is no money in poetry and how most poets have to have another kind of work for income.  But as Camille Rankine works out her logic on the value and poetry and the value of … [Read more...]

April 1: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Daffodil

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It's April Fools Day (so beware) and it's the first day of Poetry Month. To commemorate the two, I have mashed up two well-known poems (William Wordworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird) with some of my own words to create a daffy poem. Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Daffodil I After the gray snow melts, The only moving thing: A host of daffodils.   II I was of two minds, Wandering … [Read more...]