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Rumors and Lies

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Using ideas from last week, I created another new poem using headlines from the Sunday New York Times. I'll let it speak for itself. Again I thank the late Lorraine O'Grady for the inspiration.

For 2025 I am fortifying myself with, among other things, Year of Wonder: Classical Music to Enjoy Day by Day, by Clemency Burton-Hill. She offers a short essay and music recommendation for each day of the year. Perhaps this will lead to some poems? Who knows!

The last Poetry Friday roundup for 2024 is at Michelle Kogan's More Art 4 All. Word Press bloggers, I apologize that my comments on your blogs do not show up; for some reason, they sometimes disappear into the ether.


Lorraine O'Grady

Here's a short feature in the Yale Review from a few years back. It concerns the work of the conceptual artist/critic/essayist Lorraine O'Grady, who died last week at the age of 90. Eugenia Bell writes,

"Her 1977 work, Cutting Out the New York Times, consists of twenty-six poems made from cut up Sunday editions of the newspaper. Forty years later, she has reimagined and reshaped the original works into twenty-six “haiku diptychs” in Cutting Out COTNYT."

Because of copyright issues, I'm not going to include any images of O'Grady's haiku diptychs, but you can see them at the Yale Review's website, linked above. These pieces and their predecessors look like good mentor poems to use in creating one's own work. Y'all know I can't resist a good process experiment, so my effort is below.

The Poetry Friday roundup for December 20th is at Jone Rush MacCulloch's blog.

Hat tips: Yale Review Bluesky account; ARTNews obituary

 

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"Weather Report" ©Susan Thomsen, 2024

Source: The New York Times, Dec. 15, 2024


The Familiar Angels of Handel's 'Messiah'

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Messiah (Christmas Portions)
 
by Mark Doty
 
A little heat caught
in gleaming rags,
in shrouds of veil,
   torn and sun-shot swaddlings:
 
   over the Methodist roof,
two clouds propose a Zion
of their own, blazing
   (colors of tarnish on copper)
 
 

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Here is a link to Mark Doty reading and talking about the poem on PBS. It's a lovely segment—with singing! Also, if you like choirs and choral music, you might enjoy Stacy Horn's book Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing with Others.

The Poetry Friday roundup for December 6th is at Carol Labuzzetta's blog, The Apples in My Orchard.