Category: Poetry

Between essence and descent

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Shadow descending.

You can’t go wrong with a good T.S. Eliot reference.

Hunter S. Thompson, whose larger-than-life shadow often fell between the idea and the reality, was fond of quoting “The Hollow Men.”

Francis Ford Coppola gave a strong nod to that one as well, along with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in “Apocalypse Now.”

Crash Test Dummies likewise put “Prufrock” to work, in “Afternoons & Coffeespoons.”

Lately, of course, the news is distinctly more William Butler Yeatsish, with things falling apart, mere anarchy loosed on the world, and the worst filled with passionate intensity.

It all makes me wish I’d paid more (which is to say “some”) attention during my high-school English classes. And that some other, more prominent slackers had gotten more out of history and civics.

Talking shit

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
A samurai in a latrine; outside, his three attendants hold their noses. Coloured woodcut by Hokusai, 1834. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

I stumbled across an item from the Poetry Foundation, “Haiku on Shit” by Masaoka Shiki, in my virtual wanderings and thought it a delightful departure from the daily shit monsoon, against which a parasol, a wetsuit, or a subterranean bunker are no defense.

R.I.P., VeloNews

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
The first edition of VeloNews in which a cartoon
by You Know Who appeared.

VeloNews was found dead on Jan. 1. It was just 50 years old.

Was it murder? Suicide? Natural causes? (i.e., a slow-moving form of frontotemporal dementia?)

Nah. Darwinism. Nature red in tooth and claw, baby. Or, if you prefer your poetry in the original Sicilian, “It’s strictly business.”

• Editor’s note: A tip of the VeloNews cycling cap to Steve O. for the sharp eye on the velo-news.

Book ’em

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Due in December from Copper Canyon Press.

Good news for the readers in the audience.

First, the fall issue of Alta Journal includes a special section featuring seven of the last poems by Jim Harrison. A complete collection of his poetry is slated for release in December by Copper Canyon Press.

Second, Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore will be opening a new location in downtown Bibleburg. The story doesn’t mention that it will be about a block from where the fabled Chinook Bookshop once sat. It was B-burg’s Tattered Cover Back in the Day®.

Zeezo’s they remember, but not Chinook. So much for institutional memory.

Not broken, simply unfinished

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Walk this way.

I don’t fly the flag a ton. I know where I live; sometimes I’m happy about it, and sometimes I’m not.

Today, right after Joe Biden’s hand came off the family Bible, I moseyed out front and planted two flags, one for Joe, and the other for Kamala Harris.

I wish I’d had a third one, for Amanda Gorman. But we can’t have everything, not even in a country that’s already better than the one we left at noon today. Another hill to climb.