Month: januari 2018

Reading: Don Juan in Amsterdam by Daryl Hine
Today I honor another master of words, Daryl Hine (1936-2012). We was a remarkably gifted poet whose language has been praised as exceptional. He studies the classics and philosophy, and that clearly influenced his poetic eye. Ormbsby says it better: Hines is "a poet in whom an almost irresistible exuberance of language brims to the ...
Reading: Zebra by C.K. Williams
The great American poet C.K. Williams (1947-2015) writes in characteristically very long lines. He was a very engaged poet, for example with the nuclear disaster at Three Miles Island in Tar. He earned many awards and honors (National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize). I read a seemingly simple poem called Zebra: Zebra Kids once carried tin ...
Reading: Bat Cave by Eleanor Wilner
Eleanor Wilner (b. 1937) has a clear poetic vision that she has expressed in many publications. She once said that "our culture has made us shallow and dreamless by inculcating the myth that the individual is defined and set apart by his or her own personal experience." She is happy that poetry eludes attempts at ...
Infasie
De Amerikaanse dichter William Meredith (1919-2007) werd getroffen door een zwaar herseninfarct dat hem het vermogen ontnam om de gewenste woorden te vormen. Hij moest maandenlang revalideren en zijn baan opgeven. Toch won hij daarna de National Book Award voor zijn bundel 'Effort at Speech'. In 2008 werd er een film over Meredith en zijn ...
Reading: February by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) is an acclaimed Canadian novelist who also writes poetry, that I find quite accessible. I plucked 'February' from the interwebs: February Winter. Time to eat fat and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat, a black fur sausage with yellow Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries to ...
Reading: Larksong by Douglas Dunn
Today I read Scottish poet Douglas Dunn (b. 1942) avoided draft in Vietnam by returning to Britain, where he worked in a library with Philip Larkin. He is said to be a reflective rather than a reactive poet. I read a compact and intriguing poem about a lark (laverock in Scottish): Larksong A laverock in ...
poetry is easy: make something out of nothing
poetry is easy: make something out of nothing to begin with, here is nothing, hiding somewhere in the o on your way to kindergarten you carry a pink umbrella, an antique lampshade, a fairytale turtle under which you are invisible and I think you wink to the man in the traffic light to go green ...
Márquez
Blik, de triomf vermorgend, de schering in je kruin krab de duurstem af en zing, ontstemde nacht egaal, zing, dans de losse veren gracieus in magistrale, mistrale wervelingen, zwerf over de doorstormde toendra zodra je afgevaald taalt naar de herstelling van Macombo, werk mee tegen de hemelrot Dek je erin, je nek gestrekt, de wereld ...
Gedichtendaggedicht
we laten vandaag gewoon magie opstijgen uit de kieren tussen alle tegels; gebruiken voor alles wat er gebeurt louter gepensioneerde of pasgeboren woorden de rest duwen we dan weer terug de trap op; boven, waar het volhangt met geleuterde eloquëntie worden ze opgewacht en met een boterlach geneuterd wij willen nog slechts hun bezorger zijn, ...