Maurice, Fred and I

I submitted the poem below to Performance Today and they liked it enough that Fred Child is going to read it on the show this Friday, the 13th! I am most honored. I love Performance Today, it is a great show.

Will post a link when it becomes available.

Taking Up the Challenge

If you are interested in poetry and live in the States, you know by now that the Poetry Foundation is throwing money at Public Broadcasting to get them to talk about and promote poetry.

One of the newest attempts can found here at Poetry Challenge to C.K. Williams.

I decided I was going to try my hand at this before I realized that they are actually asking for submissions…

Little do they know, poor fools with their ears full of beautiful music what they are getting themselves into.

As of this writing the piece that Mr. Williams will be tasked to write about has not been chosen, so I just picked the one I liked best for this project today and wrote…

After Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major - 2nd Movement

Any Given Moment

The work prepares you for it.
Ink stick and grinding stone,
brush—wolf hair, big cloud,
gut strings and fish bones.

Plucked. The dappled corridor,
breezeway, a girl in brocade,
letter drops, she turns into a half
swooping swoon, made, then gathers,

a swoosh. High melancholy calls,
tiptoes—celestial Spanish oak.
A clock ticks, a teapot sits,
the room's been abandoned.

Swallows weave an intricate form.
A child laughing pretends she is a cat.