Wednesday, April 30, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 30
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 29
Monday, April 28, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 28
Sunday, April 27, 2014
THREE from THE OLD POET SAYS
“You say
you're a poet.
I say
show me.”
*
“Stressed. Un-
stressed. The
beat counts
two.”
*
“All these words -
the sound of
nothing is
nothing.”
Saturday, April 26, 2014
THREE from THE OLD POET SAYS
“You'll know it's a
real poem when it
kicks you in the teeth.”
*
“Who speaks?
Sometimes
you know.
Sometimes
you don't.”
*
“Life's a cheap
wager for greatness.”
Friday, April 25, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 25
Thursday, April 24, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 24
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
IN THIS PLACE: SELECTED POEMS 1982-2013
GOES TO BOOK DESIGNER THIS WEEK
I have been working at it for more than a year now, In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. Well, the manuscript goes to the book designer this week. It hasn't been easy, working that initial fourteen inch stack of poem-crammed pages down to 392 book pages, to preserve the best of what I produced between 1982 and mid-2013. I had to kill a lot of my lovelies.
I'm proud of what remains. Some of them you may have seen in these pages over the years (and a lot of those you've seen here will be missing from the Selected). I am expecting the cover of this book to echo the cover of Middle Ground, which by default has served as my early selected poems.
What will be missing from In This Place are any of the poems from The Big Book of Ben Zen, which was published in 2003, and any from The Old Poet Says, which I will be putting together over the next year. In addition, only a small selection of poems from my Plain Days project will be included here, with the idea that maybe I'll get back to that neglected work and see it to completion.
I expect to have finished copies in my hands by August, perhaps. If any of you out there, friends or devoted readers, would like to have a copy of In This Place when it comes out, please send me your mailing address, either by e-mail (tmmontag AT centurylink.net) or by snail-mail and I'll get a copy off to you when books arrive. If you have suggestions for places I might send review copies, please get me that information as well.
We push on!
I'm proud of what remains. Some of them you may have seen in these pages over the years (and a lot of those you've seen here will be missing from the Selected). I am expecting the cover of this book to echo the cover of Middle Ground, which by default has served as my early selected poems.
What will be missing from In This Place are any of the poems from The Big Book of Ben Zen, which was published in 2003, and any from The Old Poet Says, which I will be putting together over the next year. In addition, only a small selection of poems from my Plain Days project will be included here, with the idea that maybe I'll get back to that neglected work and see it to completion.
I expect to have finished copies in my hands by August, perhaps. If any of you out there, friends or devoted readers, would like to have a copy of In This Place when it comes out, please send me your mailing address, either by e-mail (tmmontag AT centurylink.net) or by snail-mail and I'll get a copy off to you when books arrive. If you have suggestions for places I might send review copies, please get me that information as well.
We push on!
LINES FOR APRIL 23
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 22
Monday, April 21, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 21
Sunday, April 20, 2014
THREE from THE OLD POET SAYS
“Bring to
the poem
as much as
you ask
of it.”
*
“Beat the
beat – oh,
I mean
pound it.”
*
“Unfounded
hope eats
cold stone
soup.”
Saturday, April 19, 2014
THREE from THE OLD POET SAYS
“Making poems is
no stranger than
combing your hair
with ice cream.”
*
“Again
and again
there is
only
one poem.”
*
“No, you can't
stop just cuz
it's getting
ugly.”
Friday, April 18, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 18
Thursday, April 17, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 17
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 16
How to
speak of such
houses, there
and not there,
their semblance
and absence,
their memory
of wind,
the wind's
memory
of them.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 15
Monday, April 14, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 14
Sunday, April 13, 2014
from THE OLD POET SAYS
“Ah, poet,
pilgrim, friend,
you are alone in
a lonely land.
*
“The odd bone,
a verse
from a larger
poem.”
*
“Oh, Basho,
I wish that
poetry
did make us
beggars.”
Saturday, April 12, 2014
from THE OLD POET SAYS
“If you would learn
what a poem means,
think 'emptiness'.”
*
“The profit
in poetry
is loss.”
*
“The language
of poetry
is like yours,
if only
you could speak
so well.”
Friday, April 11, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 11
Trees clinging
to roadside cut.
Crows scavenging
what they can.
A watchful hawk.
The frightened vole.
Ferocious life
holds them all.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 10
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 9
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 8
Monday, April 07, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 7
Sunday, April 06, 2014
from THE OLD POET SAYS
“When they ask you
to teach,
if you do, then
they will ask you
to leave.”
*
“If I could sing
what then would be
the use of poetry?”
*
“I would
teach
poetry, if
poetry
needed
teaching.”
Saturday, April 05, 2014
from THE OLD POET SAYS
“I would walk
as the poem walks
if the poem would
walk with me.”
*
“Let go
your angel -
the devil
flies away.”
*
“That which
we hold
holds us.”
Friday, April 04, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 4
Thursday, April 03, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 3
Wednesday, April 02, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 2
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
LINES FOR APRIL 1
