poll poems tag archives

What are the crows really up to?

August 31, 2009


Subscribers must click through to see the poll.

Posted in Poems & poem-like things | Also tagged 6 Comments

Surveying the crowd

July 17, 2009


Feed/email subscribers must click through to the post, or go directly to the poll here.

[Aftrthought] If you select Other, please put your suggestions in the comments — PollDaddy doesn’t display them, unfortunately.

Posted in Personal/Political, Poems & poem-like things | Also tagged 6 Comments

Next time, the resolution will not be televised

December 31, 2008


Feed/email subscribers must click through to the post, or go directly to the poll here.

You can vote for as many resolutions as you like, but you can only vote once from any given computer.

Posted in Personal/Political, Riffs | Also tagged 7 Comments

Inaugural poet try-outs

November 11, 2008

UPDATE: I’ll continue to count votes up through midnight tonight, Nov. 12, EST. If you have alternate quotes to suggest, you’re free to use the comments, but they won’t be included in the vote tally unless you use the “Other” option in the poll, because I’m way too lazy to figure percentages myself. And of course if you’ve already voted and are curious to see how your choices are faring, click on “View Results” at the bottom of the poll. You may have to refresh the page first.

The blogosphere is abuzz with ideas about which poet Obama should invite to read at the inauguration. He is, however, a rare example of a politician who actually reads poetry for pleasure, so I imagine he doesn’t really need any help from us. But I thought it might be fun to hold some try-outs in any case. The following poll (which subscribers can only see by clicking through to the post, or by going to the page on PollDaddy) consists of randomly ordered pieces of advice from 20 different, living American poets. (At least, I think they’re all living. If not, we may have to summon Nancy Reagan.) You can vote for more than one quote, but please select only your favorites. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll count up the votes and reveal the authors.

Posted in Personal/Political, Poets and poetry | Also tagged , 10 Comments

Echolalia

October 23, 2008

Poll link for those reading via the feed.

All news items gleaned from the web. Thanks to Ernesto Priego for the idea to use PollDaddy and ReadWritePoem for the prompt.

Posted in Epigrams and Conundrums, Greatest Hits, Personal/Political, Poems & poem-like things | Also tagged , 12 Comments
Page 1 of 11

  • Smorgasblog

    • Metaphors for the Moon
      Early marriage is a wetland, a marsh
      of co-mingling reeds, breeding birds.

    • Cleaning My Attic
      Cast-iron Royal, weighty and not regal at all but seriously proletarian, ostensibly portable in your anonymous black case: my secret unmusical instrument, which I lugged to cafes before they were wireless or even wired...

    • Clumps and Voids
      The program description, however, devolves into the fey. "The lingam (or linga) is a cylindrical votary object that represents the Hindu god Shiva, and a dispute about its meaning has been going on for many centuries." When a phallus is tagged with the museum label of "cylindrical votary object," I lose hope that the speaker will be introduced as Professor Wendy Doniger: don of dongs.

    • botanizing
      On calm days, the soil swirls and rises in isolated twisters. On a windy day when the wheat is being harvested — a day like today — the soil lifts like a yellow curtain, obliterating the sky.

    • The Twitching Line
      My uncle, gutting a fish:
      removing the fins from either side,
      tipping the knife below

      the little anus, pointing the tail-
      end away, slitting it to the gills,
      then plunging in a hand

      to scoop the organs out, soft
      and scarlet as a litter of kittens.

    • The Ordinary and the Wild
      I had a dream the other night about a tall machine, like a crane or an android giraffe, lanky with angles of metal that reach up to the sky when they should somehow be digging. When I woke I felt taller for a moment, and also deeper, as if the soles of my feet had met up with some spilled honey or errant tar while I walked in my sleep.

    • Busily Seeking... Continual Change
      So the mountain was steep? I threw a couple of windbreakers, yogurts and miscellaneous snacks (really, whatever I could lay my hands on at the last minute), wallet, phone, bottles of water--yes, just the things I thought to grab into a new REI bright yellow daypack--and off we went. That was it. Toss things in a bag and go.

    • Chatoyance
      And on the other side, what I
      set in motion: the open field, the low hill,
      a crease scored in bent blades of grass
      where I forgot the wall stood,
      my footsteps blurring as the
      grass unbends.

    • Velveteen Rabbi
      There are trade-offs: in the womb we knew perfect intimacy, but couldn't meet. Now we are separate, which is at once the source of loneliness (especially for him, I'm guessing) and the source of our ability to connect.

    • Will Buckingham
      My small guide and I then did our double-act of worshipping at the shrine, at which point the monk then declared that, once again, I was not doing it right. There followed another twenty minute lesson in proper bowing -- different from the previous lesson, in fact -- and if I have retained anything it is that one’s feet must be aligned like the lines in the number 8 -- an auspicious number in China.

  • Read more (Archives)

    Subscribe to Smorgasblog

  • "On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects."
    — Sei Shonagon, 994 A.D.