Crush

by Ada Limon

Maybe my limbs are made

mostly for decoration,

like the way I feel about

persimmons. You can’t

really eat them. Or you

wouldn’t want to. If you grab

the soft skin with your fist

it somehow feels funny,

like you’ve been here

before and uncomfortable,

too, like you’d rather

squish it between your teeth

impatiently, before spitting

the soft parts back up

to linger on the tongue like

burnt sugar or guilt.

For starters, it was all

an accident, you cut

the right branch

and a sort of light

woke up underneath,

and the inedible fruit

grew dark and needy.

Think crucial hanging.

Think crayon orange.

There is one low, leaning

heart-shaped globe left

and dearest, can you

tell, I am trying

to love you less.

originally published in The New Yorker

Comment: To come...too tired to write now, but will write more later...

A good laugh

Take the time to listen to this great story from This American Life. It will truly brighten your day or night. It's the first act of Fiasco! You know how we look at the Grand Canyon or listen to Al Greene and feels God's or the Divine's presence? Well, sometimes we are blessed to witness something truly funny. Like manna from heaven.

Okay, I forgot what Harold Bloom looks like...

Suddenly his writing is imbued with a funniness I don't think he intended...

Pick a poem, memorize it, post it!

So I spied Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why book on my shelves the other day. It was one of those paperback freebies I scooped up at S&S, but never really read. He gave some of advice on reading and understanding poetry:

I have arrived at a first crux in how to read poems: wherever possible, memorize them. Once a staple of good teaching, memorization was abused into repeating by rote, and so was abandoned, wrongly. Silent intensive rereadings of a shorter poem that truly finds you should be followed by recitations to yourself, until you discover that you are in possession of the poem. You might start with Tennyson's beautifully orchestrated "The Eagle":

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

If you memorize "The Eagle," you may come to feel that you have written it, so universal is the poem's proud longing.

So here's a project, ladies and gentlemen! Bloom goes on to talk about pre-modern poets such as Dickinson, Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats and Shakespeare. He discusses Sonnet 144. I'm going to memorize this poem and if I get the nerve, I'll record myself reciting it and post it on the blog. Who would like to join me? Pick a poem, memorize it, post it. And even if you don't post it, memorize one. It's got to be good for the soul (and the brain!)

William Eggleston at the Corcoran

The William Eggleston exhibit, Democratic Camera, which was at the Whitney has now moved on to the Corcoran Gallery in D.C. NPR just did a piece on it and Eggleston. Once again I am envious of those who live near these world class institutions. I was only at the Corcoran once in college. It was a beautiful space and a beautiful building. Roman, if you get a chance, please go and let me know how it is!

Quote of the day

What lies behind us
and what lies before us
are small matters compared to
what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

From the land of utter exhaustion...

Hi all,

I think it goes without saying I haven't been reading much poetry lately. I'm three quarters of the way through Obama's first memoir, but fear I may not finish it. I really enjoyed it, but I just don't see myself returning to it. We'll see. I'm half-way through Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. I've read The Tipping Point and his newest, Outliers. Some of his theorizing is a little simplistic, but overall I enjoy his books. He at least gives you something to think about. For instance, when I was watching the movie Doubt, I kept thinking about the whole premise in Blink of how we "thin-slice" information so quickly and even though we don't have years of experience and hours of observation, one thing we observe in a flash second can be revelatory and often dead on. I don't know if you saw Doubt or not, but Father Flynn is guilty, no? And the nun's only real reason for suspicion is a boy's reaction to being touched on the elbow by Father Flynn.

Anyway, I came across these fun dinner conversation cards in a store the other day and I'll throw one out there:

What's the habit you're proudest of breaking?

For me, off the top of my head, it's finally making flossing a habit. To me, that proves you CAN make things that are good for you but perhaps you don't like at first (jogging, going to bed early, reading The Economist, etc.) a genuine habit. But I guess I didn't really answer the question. Because it's about breaking habits...maybe I've never broken a habit???