Recent content by murff

In the world of poetry, content and form are considered inseperable. I once attended a lecture by the former Poet Laureat of Canada, George Bowering, who published something like 120 books in his life. He talked about "serving the form" and how it can liberate the imagiation. This might be...

Poe may be America's favoutite poet but I suspect that's because he's the only poet most Americans can think of when asked who their favorite poet is. I like Nick Flynn. He has a sense of humour and a taste for tragedy. I don't know if that is beauty or not but he writes great poetry. I also...

You should write more poetry. Personification is a great avenue.

I suggest that people write some of the worst poems while trying to write good ones, and inadvertently write good poems while trying to write bad ones. What is good or bad is entirely subjective.

I don't know but studies show that among heavy drinkers, those who drink the most coffee have the least liver damage. So drink both.

"Actually, I'm a drinker with a writing problem." - Brendan Behan I know I ski better when I'm stoned.

Some algorithm, I guess. I googled it. So who knows? The two poems you mention were # 2 & #3. I consider the "Star Spangled Banner" a song.

I like to record my poems and then listen to them. I usually hear something that I want to change that isn't so obvious just reading it on the page. I have set some poems to music but I don't think of them as songs. The music is more of a soundscape. For some reason, I can't sing the poems...

That's a good question. It seems that every culture has a myth about the Great Flood. Diaz writes many poems about her brothers and this brother in particular who struggled with addiction and died of an overdose. I take the poem to be a kind of premonition on her part about trying to save him...

Two favourite poems by Natalie Diaz from her book "Post Colonial Love Poem" which won the 2021 Pulirzer Prize for Poetry: Catching Copper" by Natalie Diaz My brothers have a bullet. They keep their bullet on a leash shiny as a whip of blood. My brothers walk their bullet with a limp—a...

The Raven is the most popular American poem ever written. It was written 180 years ago. It is also, third most popular English poem of all time after Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? by William Shakespeare, 1609 and Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818

I take humor seriously, as in, I'm serious about humor. Up here, we spell it humour. Don’t forget that.

Please define "positive comment".

What you are calling Vogon Poetry is not a new idea. It’s basically absurdist poetry that has a history in the postmodern movement if you can call postmodernism a movement. But it is in my opinion a reaction against the mid 20th century Modernist movement that carried a particulaly...

I avoid the word "soul" in poetry because no one really knows what it means. It's an abstraction and, frankly, a short cut for something more specific that would likely make a far better poem if it was articulated or even aluded to through concrete imagery.