crow on lamppost
contemplates a CAW!
but is silenced
by a morsel clamped
in its beak.
Crow Mind [Kyōka]
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Category Archives: Poetry
Little Blue [Haiku]
from a gliding boat,
a little blue flower spied
as all else blurs.
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Nature’s AC [Haiku]
water rolls past
moss green rocks;
hikers pause in cool.
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Tree Hell [Tanka]
pine cone wedged
in a rotten sleeper,
on derelict tracks,
may become a tree
and made into sleepers.
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BOOK: “New Comic Limericks” ed. by Ivanette Dennis
New Comic Limericks by Ivanette DennisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This anthology consists of 63 pages of whimsical limericks with amusing cartoon illustrations by Louis Marak. There aren’t laugh-out-loud yucks to be had here, but the wordplay of these poems is clever and the limericks are more well-crafted than most. It should be pointed out that there is nothing risqué in the collection either. The most best-known limerick writers included are Ogden Nash, Edward Lear, Gelett Burgess, and Charles Barsotti. [Incidentally, the most famous writers included are Rudyard Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and Robert Louis Stevenson.]
The pieces take a wide variety playful approaches to the limerick from eye rhymes, slant rhymes and the shape poetry of Charles Barsotti.
If you’re interested in limericks and wordplay, there is a lot to learn from the examples presented in this anthology.
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BOOK: “Lonesome Cities” by Rod McKuen
LONESOME CITIES LTD EDIT by Rod McKuenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Google Books Page
Rod McKuen is the posterchild for poets who were loathed and brutalized by critics, yet who had massive popular followings. He is the Minecraft Movie of poets. McKuen was also a songwriter and recording artist. Poet and lyricist seem almost identical career fields (one makes money for being a simplified version of the other [the poor] one,) but I suspect in their differences one finds a big chunk of the resolution to the aforementioned disparity. At the end of this collection is a chapter entitled “13 Songs” that contains a baker’s dozen of poems that are pop lyric-esque. Until I got to these, I thought McKuen may have been getting an unfair wrap for being schmaltzy and pedestrian, but when I got to them, I could see the truth in the criticism.
This is not to say McKuen would have been as harshly judged today as he was in 1968 when this book came out. He was a bisexual man who is most famous for writing “Seasons in the Sun” (an unambiguously schmaltzy song made popular by Terry Jacks in a much more up-tempo version,) and in an era in which academics were “total squares.”
At any rate, this collection, which is largely organized by city, is a fun read.
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Prickly Pear [Haiku]
prickly pears bloom:
yellow offering bowls —
bees give & take.
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Vanishing [Haiku]
moving up valley,
fog thickens until there
is only the step.
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Mountain Blue [Haiku]
mountain skies:
fade to a blue so deep
it chills the bones.
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This Is Not My World [Free Verse]
Every once in a while,
you see a sight
that makes you say,
"This cannot be
the world I know!"
Tiger Riding for Beginners 