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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Aug. 16 -- Toy Bone, Town of Hill

A few sentences can capture a whole world within interactions of two people...
Ted Kooser selection
Toy Bone : triggered by the find of a toy bone in the attic, a stanza (room) filled with memory, a snapshot of a lonely boy, the simplicity of loving a dog, ending on the pause for breath
Town of Hill -- music always wins... Hall's comments on this poem in his book Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird give insight to this thin-column of "dream water" anchored by a real story.
Ronnyy Someck: Algeria -- translated from his book of the same, in 2009. I found this on "phatitude" is a copyrighted by Phatitude. You will see 4 of his poems here:
http://phatitude.org/online/phatitude-online/poets-corner/


ALGERIA

If I had another daughter
I’d call her Algeria,
and you would doff your colonial hats to me
and call me “Abu Algeria.”
In the morning, when she opened her chocolate eyes
I would say: “Now Africa is waking up,”
and she would caress the blonde on her sister’s head
certain that she had rediscovered gold.
The grains on the seashore would be her sandbox
and in the footprints of the French who fled from there
she would hide the dates that dropped from the trees.
“Algeria,” I would clasp the railing of the balcony and call to her:
“Algeria, come home, and see how I’m painting the eastern wall
with the brush of the Sun.”


Ted Kooser picked this poem introducing it this way:
Anton Chekhov, the master of the short story, was able to see whole worlds within the interactions of simple Russian peasants, and in this little poem by Leo Dangel, who grew up in rural South Dakota, something similar happens.
One September Afternoon

Home from town
the two of them sit
looking over what they have bought
spread out on the kitchen table
like gifts to themselves.
She holds a card of buttons
against the new dress material
and asks if they match.
The hay is dry enough to rake,
but he watches her
empty the grocery bag.
He reads the label
on a grape jelly glass
and tries on
the new straw hat again

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