Poetry Mixtape for July 2013

Wow been a while hey? Anyway here’s a bunch of poems I’ve found on the internodes that me likey.

Alex Skovron – The Rearrangement

Inside each field the books will be arranged
by Height, or Alphabet, or Colour – I’m not sure yet:
some years the undersystem doesn’t quite emerge
till well beyond the Rearrangement.

This is a fantastic poem about rearranging bookshelves that will appeal to anyone who’s ever filled a bookshelf, or anyone with even the slightest amount of OCD. The poem itself is a rearrangment, each of the fifteen stanzas that follow the initial 15-line stanza finishing with a line from the first stanza so that if you read the last lines of stanzas 2-16 in order it recreates the first stanza of the poem. It’s a great formal detail that doesn’t distract from the rest of the poem, instead lying in wait for observant readers to appreciate. So I guess I’ve totally spoiled that, then.

Bob Hicok – Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem

I like the idea of different

theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook

of a cousin universe I’ve never defiled or betrayed
anyone.

He’s talking about left and right hands and then all of a sudden you realise he’s actually talking about the death of a partner and parallel universes and it’s all really clever and funny and then there’s those two last lines that make you go “awwww…” and how often do we get to say THAT about poems these days?

Klare Lanson – Seduction of the Cloud Mistress (for Mrs. Matthews)

Those puny dirty
little man made creeks

normally trickle out of the balding hills;
sad sauntering through town, they
rose like full version Angry Birds
Sonic Titan ravaged earth.
No hopeful moon no shining sun
the rocks wet and sloppy.

A flood poem by Ms. K. Lanson, a favourite around these parts, retelling the tragedy of the flood that drowned a woman and her baby in her own home while her neighbour escaped to safety. Beautiful and dangerous, this one. Kind of like water when there’s too much of it.

Tracy Ryan – Mother Tongues

I pull on the tip and up
comes a whole scarf, colourful,

knotted to others and
not about to stop, a magical

evisceration but I want
all of you, things you have

names for that aren’t
seen here: Zwiebelturm,

Trachten, Bergbahn…

There’s a lot happening in this poem – so much detail and interesting “note for further research” stuff, from tricking spies into giving themselves away by doing their times tables to the German word for rosehip jam, all wrapped up in a love poem, which would make two for this particular mixtape.

The Triffids – Hometown Farewell Kiss

Now I drive familiar smoky streets
I know this town, I know where to turn
All the while I kept a road map in my head
I just came back to see the people and their houses burn

I was reading a friend’s Facebook post about almost going to her high school reunion until she remembered how everyone at her high school was a shithead. I dedicate the lyrics of this, one of my many favourite Triffids songs, to her.