April 2011
3 posts
3 tags
WALKING TALKING MELONS / LK HOLT
I have discovered that pregnancy poetry is quite often bad. One of Plath’s least successful poems, ‘Metaphors’ (to bear, get it?), is an exercise in and about pregnancy:
I’m a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising. Money’s new-minted in this fat...
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ON POETRY & WORK / PETRA WHITE
When Peter Porter and Les Murray were around my age (35) both retired from full-time work to become full-time poets. While Porter continued to work as a freelance writer for money, his days of writing poems in the office toilet were over. Both had taken the step of putting ‘poet’ as their foremost identity, or profession. It’s a thing I can’t imagine doing: I need the stability and anonymity of...
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