Friday, August 20, 2010

Giving & Receiving & Where it can take me ...

You know I mentioned Swapbot and how I'd been trading there recently? Well, sometimes a project will lead me into new, strange corners of information ...

Exhibit A: "The Discover a New Poet" swap
... what I sent: a postcard with Mervyn Peake's poem "Conceit", it's lines of text cut into strips and remade into the branches of a tree, surrounding the a single black and white line drawing of a bird. The poem (in case you're not familiar with it):

Conceit

I heard a winter tree in song,
Its leaves were birds, a hundred strong,
When all at once it ceased to sing,
For every leaf had taken wing.

... What I received: Poems by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, a poet I've never heard of, including 2 poems from her collection "The Gospel of Barbecue". And though my mailing partner mentioned that Ms. Jeffers had an excellent blog, she didn't give me a link, so I went off in search of it, and found this in the process. And after you've listened to a three-year-old reciting Billy Collins' poem "Litany", you might want to go here and listen to the man himself. Poetry lives!

1 comment:

Gwen said...

Great post, I have seen that video on FB and it blew me away. Not just the amazing little boy reciting the poem, but the poem itself!

I liked the other poets you linked to also.