Friday

from Packet One -- 1st Hybrid Poetry Class, Poetry Project.

Bernadette Mayer from Midwinter Day.

"The Three Little Pigs ... Two of them got eaten by the wolf because they built their houses out of flimsy materials. The third pig who has a brick house which he got by posing as a cripple, winds up boiling the wolf alive and eating him. Admiral Byrd was the first person to spend the winter alone at the South Pole. For a while he did well and wrote a lot of speculations on the nature of the universe, then the stove in his hut began to poison him with fumes."

Rumi, A. J Arberry Trans.

"And even if you turn your back to the water, the water runs hurrying before you. How shall the shadow save its soul from the sun, seeing that its soul is in the hand of the sun? If the shadow stretches forth it's neck, the sun's face that instant is shrouded. Brave Sun, in which this sun in heaven quivers with fear like quicksilver!"

Charles Reznikoff, Testimony

The man at the wheel turned. / with his flashlight: / everybody was turning and pushing against each other; / those near the window / were trying to break them, / in spite of the wire mesh."

New York Times Nightly Television Schedule listings:

"Fire In the Sky (1993) Arizona lumberjack abducted by aliens. Polite to the point of boredom."

"Convoy (1978) Truckers in trouble. Churning but vapid."