tagged w/ Emily Dickinson
-
Emily Dickinson wrote in 1861: I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - Too?
Then their's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'ld advertise - you know!
How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring bog!
I related to this poem very much. The sense of being nobody because you aren't famous or rich. Not able to even add your voice to the
others crying out for justice, equality and the ecology. All the protests, petitions, lobbying for peace, the movements were all
in the bigger more educated cities. D.C., New York, Seatle, L.A. I would hear about it years later in books, I missed history in the making.
The occasional petition would show up in the mail or park. Usually regarding local issues only, recycle programs, getting a third
party on the ballot. With the advent of the internet and cable t.v. there are more petitions, opinions, arguements. We are awash with
agenda, propaganda, ideas, facts and fact checking. I couldn't keep up before because I missed it and now there is so much happening
if you pay attention it speeds by at the speed of pixelated l.e.d. light. I sign on-line petitions, get emails from all over the world. Read and read and read on-line and even more books than before. And still I am nobody.
When Jess Jackson did his free form poem on Sesame Street " I am Somebody" it became what we call a "meme"? now. I AM SOMEBODY. I AM SOMEBODY. echos with little childrens voices from the seventies. I may be old. I may be female. I'm Nobody. I AM SOMEBODY.
Then ANONYMOUS. I love anonymous. Even though it is rooted in religious fanaticsim of Guy Fawkes, in the modern film sci fi noire of Vendenta, it has grown into an antithesis to the big brother spy net work of military terror observation. Enemies lurking in parks beating drums, women in black protesting wars on library steps, the banning of face scarves and video taping the police. Me in my car running a yellow light. Face recognition at Wal-Mart. Scanners and tracking consumers via our jones soda purchase and car tags. ANONYMOUS echoes "we are ants to them" by Assange and Wikileaks reversing the spying in a funny way remenisent of Mad magazine. We are legion, billions of us, rebelling in our own way against a corporate machine that hides behind small business. A religiously run military industrial complex hiding behind the Bible and the end times. Tea partie members crying out against all taxes backed by men who don't pay taxes to speak of and hate government, as they desire to be the only governing body called free market.
I'm nobody. Percipi224 comes from Percipi Es Ist; I am percieved. I am Bearofverylittlebrain. I am somebody. Caught forever in the www, with bad photos and poorly written opinions, hoorahs for those of like mind and butting heads with trolls. The internet full of mythical references, blogs and bogging down in swamps of misinformation, persuing the heroe's journey anywhere in the world from Egypt to Somalia, eclipses in Sweden, tsunamis live in Japan. I'm nobody, who wishes she were somebody who could make a difference. But the legions of witnesses to Wisconsin, benevolent witness to spraying of young women just because he was more scared of them, than they were of him. I am a witness. I am paying attention. I care.Emily Dickinson wrote in 1861: I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody -... more
-
-
If you follow contemporary poetry but you haven't been following "Project Runway," the popular cable TV show now in its sixth season, you might be surprised to hear that the show holds lessons for poetry critics. To learn them, you first have to know how the TV show works: aspiring fashion designers compete for a chance to show their work in New York's Bryant Park alongside couture's big names, among other prizes. Each week contestants design clothes to meet a challenge: successful designers and guest judges rate the results. The lowest scoring contestant gets eliminated. The highest scorer usually gets immunity (he or she can't be knocked out next week) along with kudos from the viewers and from Tim Gunn, the dapper adviser. In one recent challenge, contestants made dresses, tops, jackets or skirts out of newspaper. The winner, Irina Shabayeva, came up with a coat whose thick cuffs looked like curly meringue; one runner-up, Christopher Straub of Shakopee, Minnesota, made an ankle-length skirt like the tail of a tropical bird.
Many poets, like many designers, love technical challenges; some poets have organized books (Robyn Schiff's baroque "Worth," Angie Estes's nimble "Chez Nous") around haute couture. No wonder, then, that "Project Runway" counts poets among its fans. Ron Silliman has examined the show at length more than once on his popular blog: "Project Runway," he says, "does a better job of showing creative people being creative than any television show ever." Another poetry blogger, Tim Jones of New Zealand, proposes a show, "Poetry Runway," involving made-to-order verse
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=238166If you follow contemporary poetry but you haven't been following "Project... more
-
-
The new website PoetrySpeaks is aiming to serve as a social networking hub and online marketplace for poets. Visitors are greeted with a sleek, jukebox-style display of poet portraiture and an unpretentious atmosphere. And it's immediately clear that PoetrySpeaks casts a wide net: among the home page's collage of clickable poet heads, spoken word poet Kevin Coval appears next to William Butler Yeats.
Click on your poet of choice, be it a hipster or an Irishman, and you'll be taken to a web page that includes a list of audio (and maybe even video) recordings. And here's where things get interesting. As with iTunes, you can preview each recorded poem then decide if you want to spend 99 cents to download it ($1.99 for a video version). The site is, quite literally, banking on your interest in poetry.
Here are a couple of the poems for sale: "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe and "Wild Nights, Wild Nights" by Emily Dickinson.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lundberg/new-website-aims-to-be-an_b_348741.htmlThe new website PoetrySpeaks is aiming to serve as a social networking hub and online... more
-
