A poem for April

I imagine my love
breathing with the lungs of all things
and it reaches me
as poetry
of roses or dust

speaks softly to everything
and whispers its news to the universe
the way the wind and sun do
when they split nature’s breast
or pour the ink of day
on the earth’s book

Adonis from Beginnings of the Body, Ends of the Sea (translated by Khaled Mattawa)

Erased words

Just erase: words, commas, sentences to reveal the true emotion and find poetry. Newspaper Blackout, a Tumblr blog of Austin-based artist and writer Austin Kleon (included in TIME magazine’s list of the  30 Must-See Tumblr Blogs) creates”blackout poetry” just by blacking out unwanted text with a permanent marker and revealing new and shorter versions of poetic expression.

See more after the jump

A definition of love

Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun comes out. It’s just a little while, and then it burns away… Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.

A definition of love by Charles Bukowski.

via Brain Pickings

See also:

• Poetry after the beep
• In their own words
• The Man in the Black Coat
• Lolita butterflies

The sky turned blood red

“I was walking along a path with two friends / the sun was setting / suddenly the sky turned blood red / I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence / there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city / my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety / and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”
Edvard Munch, 1893

Not only poems can be animated, as we have seen in our previous post, but paintings as well. Edvard Munch’s The Scream gets a life of its own in this amazing video, created by animation director and graphic artist Sebastian Cosor.

See also:

• There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
• Guernica comes to life
• Ceci n’est pas une post

There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out

To visualise a poem’s world : what a challenge.

Designer Monika Umba attempts a magical immersion to Bukowski’s world with her mesmerizing animation video of Charles Bukowski’s poem “The Bluebird,” originally published in his 1992 anthology.

The Bluebird

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

via Brainpickings

See also:

• The Man in the Black Coat
• Things deteriorate
• Art above time

Poetry is on the streets

Poetry can be found everywhere. On small pieces of paper and tiny notebooks, or even in big large billboards and back-lit bus stops. Robert Montgomery shares some of his thought in the most prominent spots of the city.

See more after the jump

I shall not live in vain

Poetry poster created by H-​​57 and First Floor Under.

via Bloodyloud

See also:

• In literature / hidden haikus I have found / unexpectedly
• In their own words
• The Man in the Black Coat
• Poetry after the beep
• Lolita butterflies

The Man in the Black Coat

If this is not a brilliant example of visual poetry, what will ever be?

“Yellow Star” a poem by Kate Ruse
Music: “Interval One” from “The Quiet Lamb” by Her Name is Calla, 2010
Spoken by Kate Ruse

via Society 6

See also:

• Poetry after the beep
• Art above time
• Beauty in motion
• In literature / hidden haikus I have found / unexpectedly

Poetry after the beep

We talked about the meme and the meme  meme, time to hear now the first ever poetry meme, as, at least, described by the Goudal site, where they asked people to read their favorite short poems into their answering machine for a project entitled Verse By Voice.

Listen to  Zadie Smith (White Teeth, On Beauty) reading Frank O’Hara’s Animals here.

In literature / hidden haikus I have found / unexpectedly

Haiku finder is a simple yet impressive little web app that discovers hidden haiku patterns in any text you paste into its search box. I discovered it on BuzzFeed and I was soon copy-pasting a great part of Project Gutenberg on that clever little page. Here are some of my finds (granted, most of them are translations in english, but still):

Kafka’s Metamorphosis:

“Gregor!” shouted his
sister, glowering at him
and shaking her fist.

Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment:

Something was happening
to him entirely new,
sudden and unknown

Checkov’s Uncle Vanya:

I can still feel his
voice vibrating in the air;
it caresses me.

Shakespeare’s Alls Well That Ends Well:

The web of our life
is of a mingled yarn, good
and ill together.

Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:

If your feelings are
still what they were last April,
tell me so at once

Dickens’ Great Expectations:

“You ridiculous
boy,” said Estella, “will you
never take warning?”

cummings’ The Enormous Room:

It was a fine place,
a large city to be sure.
But always changing.

What’s impressive is how well these little haikus really summarize the whole essence of the works they were inconspicuously hiding in. What else is impressive is how haikus seem inherent in the rhythm of some authors’ writing: Austen and e.e.cummings yield up large numbers of haikus. Other authors have scarce or no haikus at all.

I’ll now go and search for haikus in the new iTunes terms and conditions.

“Dear boarding passes, thanks for making such fine book marks…

I love finding you between the pages, years later, when I pull something off the self. Much love, Leah”

Leah Dieterich’s mother always told her to write thank you notes. So she does. To everything. Everyday.  Little thank you notes on post it notes, that she posts on her blog: thxthxthx.

Celebrating everyday trivialities, these thank you notes scratch the surface of our realities and reveal a microcosmos of emotions and nuances.

See more brilliant thank you notes after the jump