Snodgrass

January 18, 2010

Oh Snodsy, thank you for your poem "Looking" and thank you Garrison Keilor for posting it.

What was I looking for today?
Lovely stanzas of six with lines 3+5; 2+ 6 rhyming.
rugs, drugs; chairs, stairs;

Everywhere I was, was wrong...
then, again; door for...

Where did the rest of the time go?
recall, all; last, past.

Clever, fun -- can be read in lots of different ways.
What do we really want? Is that what we really want?

Poetry saves me again and again.
I lost things, printed things, lost them again, tried to organize all morning... and then,
it really didn't matter. I discussed 4 wonderful poems with 10 wonderful people and we had ideas flying all around us
and who could have more fun than that...

Other Snodgrass poems discussed in O Pen: We had a really good time with his book, "De-Compositions" in March, 2009.
In February 2009: from his Selected Poems : The Lovers Go Fly a Kite : p. 90 (1963 – publ. in New Yorker)
Matisse: The red Studio : 105
If Birds Build with your hair. 175
198
201
213 //222
A darkling alphabet.

Heart's Needle. :
from the Middle-Irish Romance, The Madness of Suibhne
Your Father is dead : I’m sorry
Your mother : All pity for me has gone out of the world
Your sister: the mild sun rests on every ditch; a sister loves even though not loved
your daughter is dead: an only daughter is the needle of the heart
your little boy who used to call you Daddy, he is dead. Aye… that’s the drop that brings a man to the ground.