Poetry Challenge - NEWER VERSION POSTED JUNE 2 Link to it below

Link to Summer Poetry Challenge Rules by clicking here.



I would like to propose a summer reading challenge. It's easy in one way - the reading assignments can be quite short, it might be challenging in others.

This occurred to me today as I was posting a comment to Daniel in response to her reading of The Good Soldier at her great blog A Work in Progress. Poems do things with words that prose does not - that might seem obvious - but we pretty much all use words everyday and have a certain expectation of how they're meant to be used - we're supposed to explain our point clearly and, generally, economically, if possible. But poems use words purely for the sake of structure, texture, sound, how they look on the page, their aim may not be clarity but instead obscurity, poking fun, doing what we're not supposed to do, or expressing private matters in a secret code. We pretty much accept that paint and clay can be used non-representationally, we know that space can curve, that light can be conceived of as both a particle and a wave, but when words challenge our expectations...

See the rules by clicking on the above link and, meanwhile, here's one I enjoy:

The Wrong Way Home
- James Tate

All night long a door floated down the river.
It tried to remember little incidents of pleasure
from its former life, like the time the lovers
leaned against it kissing for hours
and whispering those famous words.
Later, there were harsh words and a shoe
was thrown and the door was slammed.
Comings and goings by the thousands,
the early mornings and late nights, years, years.
O they've got big plans, they'll make a bundle.
The door was an island that swayed in its sleep.
the moon turned the doorknob just slightly,
burned its fingers and ran,
and still the door said nothing and slept.
At least that's what they like to say,
the little fishes and so on.
Far away, a bell rang, and then a shot was fired.