[New-Poetry] Backwards poetry

[Anny Ballardini]

Very nice, and great is Hal's.

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 5:22 PM, David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:

>  Oh, we all get involved in backwardness sometimes, Hal!
>
> Thanks, everyone, for the backwards suggestions.  Marvelous stuff, Tad &
> Hal.  Also Rodney. . . .
>
> If anyone can think of any more such poems, I'm all ears.  It's strange,
> when I cooked up this exercise I assumed I'd be able to think of dozens of
> contemporary poems that pull this little trick.  Couldn't.
>
> Here's one of mine, though, an old one.
>
> Maharg Divad
>
>
>
> *Boys Backward And Forward
> *
>      "You take the language, I'll keep the fur"
>                 --from a dream
>
> Let's roll this whole movie backwards
> and see swimmers sucked along feet first
> by their thrashing wakes, silly grins vanishing
> under inverted splashes, then feet and legs
> arcing up softly to the quivering board
> where they'll bounce a bit, then retreat, retreat.
> Where do they go, those glistening selves
> tanned and dripping with their yawning summers?
> Why are they climbing into cutoffs and T-shirts
> with such eager faces?  Why would they scatter
> backwards down the driveway on wobbly bikes?
>
> Already the June leafage is draining away
> into paler shades of May and April.
> The last freak snowfall mushrooms over brown grass
> before fluttering upward.  Soon we will reappear
> clumsy-legged among snowbanks, catching snowballs
> and disassembling them carefully back to our feet.
> We'll be just faces now, peering out
> from the hoods of our fur-lined parkas,
> and everyone will be busy swallowing
> cloud after cloud of indigestible words.
>
> --David Graham.  *Stutter Monk.*  Flume Press, 1986.
>
>
>
>
> On 9/24/08 9:59 AM, "Halvard Johnson" <halvard at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Well, this one involves *some* backwardsness:
>
> THE GRASSY KNOLL
>
>
> --HJ
>
> fr. *Guide to the Tokyo Subway
> *
>
>
>
>
> ====================================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> Home Page:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html
>
> Poetry Library:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
> ====================================================
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>


-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20080924/7c72050b/attachment.html