Poetry Detectives

Quick reminders

2010-08-01T21:23:00.000-04:00

Just a reminder that two sets of lyrics are up for discussion now and that Rebekah will be posting a couple of poems sometime soon. We will *NOT* have a sampler in August, so we hope to see you at the Poplar Grove Schoolhouse at 10 a.m. Sept. 11.

July's Poetry Detectives poetry

2010-07-11T14:15:00.007-04:00

Hello, detectives. This month, I present two songs from Radiohead: "Bulletproof ... I wish I was" and "Videotape." I also included links to the songs on YouTube.

Bulletproof ... I wish I was

Limb by limb and tooth by tooth
It's tearing up inside of me
Every day, every hour
I wish that I was bulletproof

Wax me, mould me
Heat the pins and stab them in
You have turned me into this
Just wish that it was bulletproof

Was bulletproof

So pay the money and take a shot
Lead-fill the hole in me
I could burst a million bubbles
All surrogate and bulletproof

Bulletproof
Bulletproof
Bulletproof

(Click here for song: Bulletproof ... I wish I was, from The Bends)

Videotape

When I'm at the Pearly Gates
This will be on my videotape, my videotape
Mephistopheles is just beneath
and he's reaching up to grab me

This is one for the good old days
And i have it all here
In red, blue, green
In red, blue, green

You are my center
When I spin away
Out of control on videotape
on videotape
on videotape
on videotape

This is my way of saying goodbye
Because I can't do it face to face
I'm talking to you before

No matter what happens now
You shouldn't be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen.

(Click here for song: Videotape, from In Rainbows)

-- j.e.t.

Poem 2 for June: My Father’s Loveletters, Yusef Komunyakaa, (b.1947)

2010-06-09T11:25:00.000-04:00

My Father’s Loveletters, Yusef Komunyakaa, (b.1947)

On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax,
Close his eyes, & ask me to write
The same letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than a man. He’d beg her
Return & promised to never
Beat her again. I was almost happy
She was gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in something bad.
His carpenter’s apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer Holstered in a loop at his side
& extension cords coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under
The pressure of my ballpoint:
Love, Baby, Honey, Please.
We lingered in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences… the hearless
Gleam of a two-pound wedge
On the concrete floor.
A sunset in the doorway
Of the tool shed.
I wondered if she’d laugh
As she held them over a flame.
My father could only sign
His name, but he’d look at blueprints
& tell you how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, stood there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word,
Opened like a fresh wound, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

Poem 1 for June: Letters & Other Worlds, Michael Ondaatje (b.1943)

2010-06-09T11:18:00.003-04:00

Letters & Other Worlds, Michael Ondaatje (b.1943)

“For there was no more darkness for him and, no doubt like Adam before the fall,
he see in the dark.”

My father’s body was a globe of fear
His body was a town we never knew
He hid that he had been where we were going
His letters were a room he seldom lived in

In the logic of his love could grow.
My father’s body was a town of fear
He was the only witness to its fear dance
He hid where he had been that we might lose him
His letters were a room his body scared

He came to death with his mind drowning.
on the last day he enclosed himself
in a room with two bottles of gin, later
fell the length of his body
so that brain blood moved
to new compartments
that never knew the wash of fluid
and he died in minutes of new equilibrium.
His early life was a terrifying comedy
and my mother divorced him again and again.
He would rush into tunnels magnetized
by the white eye of trains
and once, gaining instant fame,
managed to stop a Perahara in Ceylon
-- the whole procession of elephants dancers
local dignitaries – by falling
dead drunk onto the street.
As a semi-official, and semi-white at that,
the act was seen as a crucial
turning point in the Home Rule Movement
and led to Ceylon’s independence in 1948.

(My mother had her share too –
her driving so bad
she was stoned by villagers
whenever her car was recognized)

For 14 years of marriage
each of them claimed he or she
was the injured party.
Once on the Columbo docks
Saying goodby to a recently married couple
my father, jealous
at my mother’s articulate emotion,
dove into the waters of the harbour
and swam after the ship waving farewell.
My mother pretending no affiliation
mingled with the crowd back to the hotel.

Once again he made the papers
though this time my mother
with a note to the editor
corrected the report –saying he was drunk
rather than broken hearted at the parting of friends.
The married couple received both editions
of The Ceylon Times when their ship reached Aden.

And then in his last years
he was the silent drinker
the one who once a week
disappeared into his room with bottles
and stayed there until he was drunk
and until he was sober.

There speeches, head dreams, apologies,
the gentle letters, were composed.
With the clarity of architects
he would write of the new blue flowers
his new wife had planted,
the plans for electricity on the house,
how my half-sister fell near a snake
and it had awakened and not touched her.
Letters in a clear hand of the most complete empathy
His heart widening and widening and widening
to all manner of change in his children and friends
while he himself edged
into the terrible acute hatred
of his own privacy
till he balanced and fell
the length of his body
the blood entering
the empty reservoir of bones
the blood searching in his head without metaphor

Welcome

2009-08-27T21:30:00.002-04:00

We want to welcome you to our Poetry Detectives blog. Please join us in our quest to demystify poetry. We meet at the Poplar Grove School ( see the link). It's a warm and welcoming place and the perfect setting to get comfortable and dig into a poem or two on the second Saturday of every month. We invite you to share your thoughts on poetry and what it has meant to you in your life. Can you remember the first poem you read that really spoke to you? We'd love to hear about it. So please join our Poetry Detectives in this journey to unfold the beauty of poetry in our lives.

Rebekah

September 12th, 10:00 a.m. Meeting

2009-08-27T20:41:00.003-04:00

Please check out the next meeting of the Poetry Detectives Club. Clues below. Click the image to see the flyer full size.