elegantly dressed <i>Poetry</i>

Yes! It is a dress made from copies of Poetry magazine.  What else would it be? And charmingly in keeping with this blog’s little running Marie Antoinette thing. As a more alert wag than I said, Let them eat Koch.

Since I last wrote, I have solved some of my most pressing filing conundrums – and have indeed done some, though not all, of the filing – with the help of the extremely friendly and assiduous staff at Muji. (Nod here to the kind person who suggested I go there in the first place.) I have found out that to cook Pastourma sausage and then add a tin of broad beans is a very good thing. I have rewritten my CV. I’ve extended my LinkedIn network, fleshed out my LinkedIn profile, and uploaded the CV onto LinkedIn. I’ve spoken to a few people about poetry things and made a couple of promises, but nothing I can’t keep. And I’ve twisted my ankle on the stirs in the pub where we were having my post-leaving drinks from work last night, and it is proper twisted, too: swellings and ice. Not very nice however Marie Antoinettish my velvet foot-cushion may be. So I’m drinking coffee, because the milk’s off, and I have my coffee black.

So here’s some Kenneth Koch for you:

From Bel Canto

And yet—    The moor is dark beneath the moon.

The porcupine turns over on its belly

And new conceptions rap at the cocoon.

Civilization, dealing with us fairly,

For once, releases its Erectheion

Of understanding, which consoles us, nearly.

Later we study certain characteristics

That may give us a better chance with the statistics.

How much I’d like to live the whole thing over,

But making some corrections as I go!

To be a better husband and a father,

Be with my babies on a sled in snow.

By twenty I’d have understood my mother

And by compassion found a way to know

What separates the what-I-started-out-as

From what-I-sometimes-wished-I-was-when-in-the-mountains.

Read the rest! It’s very beautiful.

This post has been brought to you as an special Friday production of Elegantly Dressed Wednesdays.

Advertisement