"Story over," a dog-eared poem created by Google's scan of Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, Sept. 1892.

"A poet's work . . . to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep."
—Salman Rushdie

"The poetic art is no more and no less than the repayment of old debts to life and to the mystery of life."
—Vítězslav Nezval, in his foreword to Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

"At times I had thought of writing poetry myself but getting words to rhyme with each other is difficult, like trying to drive a herd of turkeys and kangaroos down a crowded thoroughfare and keep them neatly together without looking in shop windows.  There are so many words, and they all mean something."
—Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

A hand without fingerprints
still leaves a smudge
—Geof Huth

For an acquaintance who dreams of lazy afternoons in a hammock but whose backyard sports just a single tree, here's a spoof of a poem by dear cousin Emily:

To make a hammock
It takes some netting and one tree.
Netting and a tree
And reverie.
The reverie alone will do
If trees are few.

Here's our translation of the Xs and Os of this book cover, using The X-O-Skeleton Story Generator.  As we don't know the order of play, we read the letters row by row, left to right:

From our Magic Words outpost at Blogger:

"[John Milton's] poetry acts like an incantation.  Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power, and there would seem at first to be no more in his words than in other words.  But they are words of enchantment.  No sooner are they pronounced than the past is present and the distant near.  New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead."
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, Essay on Milton

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

A whimsical bit of misinformation from DR. BOLI’S ANIMAL ALPHABET:

Also don't miss Dr. Boli's explanation of a unicorn's chief source of income.

The Serif of Nottingblog offers today's Tic Tac Toe-generated poem.

Tauba Auerbach's "Listen/Silent" anagram reminds me of a poem by Thomas Moore:

I like the idea of teardrops being a magical potion, glistening with enchantment of a shadowy (mirthless) yet sacred nature.

You're (Literally) the Top
(inspired by Cole Porter, of course)

You're the top;
you're the peak of Dante;
You're the top—
blue-chip picante.
You're the jewel in the crown of a dinner gown by Klein.
You're Dorsey's trombone,
you're Kheops' capstone,
you're altar wine.
You're the top—
as in "hat," on Fred's head.
You're the quip
dear old Oscar Wilde said.
I'm an inarticulate voiceless glottal stop.
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!

You're the top;
you're the head of Acme
(placed there
by imperial decree).
You're the high point of a fairy tale by Grimm.
You're lemon zest,
you're Arthur's crest,
you're the Battle Hymn.
You're the top—
you're the Everest summit.
You ascend
where others plummet.
Compared to me John Falstaff is a fop.
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!

The Presence of Absence

Rich Haswell poses an intriguing question:

--an excerpt from "Chance Abbreviation" by Ken Clinger.  Based in Pennsylvania, Ken is a prolific, visionary recording artist known as one of the "godfathers" of the underground home taping genre.

Split Personalities:


so much depends
upon
a course in
miracles

—William Carlos Williamson, author of
"The Red Wheelbarrow" and A Return to Love.

Speaking of semicolons, I stumbled upon the most marvelous poem by Matt "World's Best Writer Ever" Getty, entitled "Inside the Semicolon (Draft)."  Here's the first stanza:


To read more (you'll be glad you did), see the poetry section of Matt's website.