[New-Poetry] Head scratch

[Skip Fox]

If one hath thirst for more of this, water is beyond imagining.

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of David Graham
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 11:50 AM
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu & Views
Subject: [New-Poetry] Head scratch

 

Sometimes I just scratch my head at the Academy of American Poets.  Today's
daily poem offering, from Richard Kenney, strikes me as a most clunky bit of
doggerel.

 

It's titled "A Pot of Tea."  Here's are 2 stanzas; see what you think:

 

Ginseng or the scent of lymph

Or consequences queasing

Into wide awareness, whence,

Like an engine seizing

 

Society remits a shudder

Showing it has feeling,

And the divers all have shaving cuts

And the future’s in Darjeeling—

 

And here's the whole thing, if you're thirsty for more:

 

 

http://www.poets.org/sponsor-book-profile.php/prmBookID/512/prmSponsorID/167
?utm_source=poemaday_040908
<http://www.poets.org/sponsor-book-profile.php/prmBookID/512/prmSponsorID/16
7?utm_source=poemaday_040908&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=content_link
&utm_term=conent_sponsorbook>
&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=content_link&utm_term=conent_sponsorbook

 

You certainly won't want to miss the rhyme of "earring" with "Hermann
Göring," in any case.  Yes, I know that this is probably intended to be
gloriously Byronic and breezy, but my ears catch mostly the huffing of
someone who's trying too hard.

 

*This* is the long-awaited book from Kenney--winner of both the Yale Younger
& a MacArthur?  This is the best Knopf can find to publish these days, and
the Academy to spotlight?  Kenney's written some very fine verse, and I hope
the rest of his new book contains nothing but.  But. . . . 

 

 

 

========================================

David Graham

grahamd at ripon.edu

 

Home Page:

http://web.mac.com/drjazz

 

Poetry Library:

http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html

==========================================

 





 

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