35 minutes
basement
outside temp: 28 degrees
Decided to bike in the basement and read an e-book (The Kind Worth Killing). Wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it with my bad vision, but I managed to read for 20 minutes. Then I watched some YouTube and tried to find something on Netflix, but couldn’t. Is that why I stopped at 35 minutes? Probably. Also, I remember feeling a twinge in my left knee.
Discovered a wonderful poem by one of my favorite poets, Rita Dove. Was able to listen to her read it. Wow — she’s good. I’d like to check out one of her audio books so I can listen to her read more. Unfortunately, my local library doesn’t have one. Bummer.
Here’s the last part:
excerpt from Prose in a Small Space/ Rita Dove
Then is it poetry if it’s confined? Trembling along its axis, a flagpole come alive in high wind, flapping its radiant sleeve for attention — Over here! It’s me! — while the white spaces (air, field, early morning silence before the school bell) shape themselves around that one bright seizure . . . and if that’s so what do we have here, a dream or three paragraphs? We have white space too; is this music? As for all the words left out, banging at the gates . . . we could let them in, but where would we go with our orders, our stuttering pride?
I like her “About this Poem” description. Especially this line:
What began as a continuation of our good-natured ripostes went from anti-ars poetica to lyric reverie to—surprise—a praise song to the prose poem!
Should I try writing a praise song to the gorge or to writing while running and running while writing or to my strange vision or to poetry?
That line about the one bright seizure made me think of poetry as an explosion of the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary, or of the Stutter, or a pause, or an interruption.