This Week’s Top Ten Poetic Picks

 The best in poetry (and poetic things), this week with Seth Haines.

1 Art

As a kid, I was always a sucker for a scratch-off card–you know, the little cards with silver coating that you’d scrape off to reveal ten percent off of your next Big Gulp at the local Come & Go. I’d nearly beg, borrow, or steal for a good scratch off card, which is why this particular article at the New York Times might win my vote for best article of the year.

Allow me to explain.

At first, this appears to be a mild mannered piece regarding the way in which Picasso reused old canvases in an effort to pinch a penny or two. That’s right, underneath “Woman Ironing, ” is evidently the sketch of a man standing. Need proof? Scratch the surface! Visit the New York Times for this interactive and educational piece.

2 News

This week, the Northeast hunkered down as hurricane Sandy came barreling in off the Atlantic. Tweetspeak’s own L.L. Barkat weathered that storm, and she’ll tell you first hand–it was as terribly tumultuous as predicted.

Sasha Weiss wrote of the gale, how it reminded her of a poem by Wislawa Szymborska entitled, “Into the Ark.” The poem, in part, reads:

For the sake of the children
that we still are,
fairy tales have happy endings.
That’s the only finale that will do here, too.
The rain will stop,
the waves will subside,
the clouds will part
in the cleared up sky,
and they’ll be once more
what clouds ought to be:
lofty and rather lighthearted

If you dive into one poem this week, make sure it’s this Szymborksa piece, the full test of which is found in Weiss’, “A Poem for the Sandy Aftermath.”

3 Publishing

QR codes are everywhere. Everywhere I say. What are QR codes? Have you seen those little squares that look like this:

Download a free app on your smart phone, scan the QR code and, viola, you are taken to an internet link containing product specific information. (Try it with the code above. Go on. I dare you…)

According to Galleycat, publisher Red Hen Press is making interesting use of QR codes in the forthcoming book of poems by Eloise Klein Healy, A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordings. Evidently, the book will contain a code that allows the reader a sort of multimedia experience.

Now, if I could just figure out why some people are using QR coded bumper stickers.

4 Poetry at Work

We’ve been talking about poetry at work here at Tweetspeak. Do you carry poetry with you to the office? Currently, I have Wendell Berry’s Collected Poems 1957-1982, in my briefcase. I’ll pull it out from time to time and read a stanza like

All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little….

(Wendell Berry’s “The Want of Peace.”) The sneaking of good words feeds me a bit, makes me a more productive worker, I think. This article by Carolyn Ziel confirms it.  “[I]t’s always beneficial to make time to connect with your own heart. Bringing soul into to the forefront of our lives in all areas will reignite the fire in your heart, ” she writes.

How’s your fire at the office? Use poetry to bring your “soul to the forefront” of your life at the office, and see what sparks.

5 Creativity

Field trips–who didn’t love them? In the sixth grade, my classmates and I took a field trip to the state capitol building in Little Rock. I remember very little about the trip, other than the fact that I snaked a seat next to Ginger Russell and at some point, we shared McDonald’s french fries.

This week, over one thousand middle school children are headed to the Joslyn Art Museum for the mother of all creativity field trips. “Celebrate Creativity, ”  is a four-day event organized by the Omaha Symphony wherein they will attend art classes, creative workshops, and music lessons.  What do the students like most about it? “Overall, just being able to be spontaneous, ” one student said. Sure. That, and sharing french fries with that special someone.

Omaha’s Public Radio Newsroom reports on this wonderful creative event.

6 Write-It

I’ve enjoyed Luke Neff’s writing prompts for some time. Who else prompts you to write a first person narrative of a cat stuck on a trampoline, an account from the perspective of Halloween candy, or otherwise asks you what you’d do with a unicorn head mask? I’m not sure where he comes up with this stuff, but it’s always unexpected and a great deal of fun. Now… go write it!

7 Poems

Do you subscribe to Every Day Poems? You should. This week, we featured Tony Hoagland’s poem “Don’t Tell Anyone, ” a poem about self-reflection and the psychology of man. He writes:

We had been married for six or
seven years
when my wife, standing in the kitchen one
afternoon, told me
that she screams underwater when she
swims—

Do you scream underwater? I might. In any event, you can read this poem in its entirety here (and you really should). And while you are at it, don’t forget to subscribe to Every Day Poems.