kottke.org

...is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998 (archives). You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you've got questions, concerns, or interesting links, send them along.

21 kottke.org posts about poetry

 

Levi's (sponsored by America)

This is a 36-second wax cylinder recording of Walt Whitman reading a few lines from his poem, America. You may recognize the recording from its use in Levi's new ad campaign:

I thought for sure that Ryan McGinley had directed this and the O Pioneers! commercial but it turns out he just (just!) did the photos for the print campaign. (via slate)

Update: The audio clip used in that commercial might not be Whitman after all. From the inbox:

The Walt Whitman recording that is being used by the Levi's commercial that you posted on the 28th is actually not Whitman, and is now considered by most audio archivists to be a hoax.

More information about this most interesting recording can be found in Vol. X, No. 3 of Allen Koenigsberg's Antique Phonograph Monthly magazine from 1992, pages 9-11.

Among things pointed out, one is that the speech on the soundtrack ends with the quote, "Freedom Law and Love," whereas the original printed version of the poem ends with "Chair'd in the adamant of Time."

Koenigsberg also points out that Whitman's last years were chronicled on a daily basis by his personal secretary, and being wheelchair-bound, such a visit for Whitman would have been difficult, unprecedented, and undoubtedly noted.

(thx, jack)

Flarf

Flarf is a form of poetry made by combining together phrases from random web searches. Here's an early example:

"Yeah, mm-hmm, it's true
big birds make
big doo! I got fire inside
my 'huppa'-chimp(TM)
gonna be agreessive, greasy aw yeah god
wanna DOOT! DOOT!
Pffffffffffffffffffffffffft! hey!"

Flarf started off as a joke but then these joke poems that people were coming up with "evolved from 'bad' to 'sort of great'".

Edge Books publisher Rod Smith, a poet himself, says he feels the [Flarf] collective is prompting a bit of anarchy in the poetry world by widening the vocabulary of what is permissible. "Aesthetic judgments about what's bad in a very hierarchal society are usually serving upper-class people with a certain amount of privilege," he says. "So for a bunch of poets who are very well schooled in a variety of traditions of American poetry to take what's considered bad and throw that at people is a very interesting maneuver. It's not simply bad poetry; it's quote-unquote bad poetry written by people who know how to write poetry."

By Jason Kottke    Jul 29, 2009    flarf   poetry

A dogcow makes a moof

Hackers Can Sidejack Cookies, a poem by Heather McHugh.

Designs succumbing
to creeping featuritis
are banana problems.
("I know how to spell banana,
but I don't know when to stop.")

Famous poet zombies

I can't decide if this is creepy or cool: a bunch of videos of dead poets reading their poems. The effect is achieved by warping photos to make it look like their mouths are moving. Here's Poe reading The Raven and Robert Frost doing The Road Not Taken.

By Jason Kottke    Jan 9, 2009    poetry   video

Williams Poems

Inspired by Emmett Williams, a practitioner of concrete poetry, Rob Giampietro has written three poems: Wastebasket, Snowflakes, and Spraypaint.

Spraypaint poem

Giampietro has put out a call for someone to develop a Williams Word Generator. Drop him a line if you can help out...shouldn't be too much different than the many "words within words" generators scattered around the web.

Love is a ballfield

A poem in which each instance of the word "love" is replaced by "Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Catcher Carlton Fisk".

"And know you not," says Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame Catcher Carlton Fisk, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."

(via hodgman)

Newspaper blackout poems

Austin Kleon makes Newspaper Blackout Poems by blacking out all but a few choice words of newspaper articles.

A Woman's bust is the host of Romance, so Don't deplore my fondness for It

By Jason Kottke    May 2, 2008    austinkleon   poetry   remix

The One Day Poem Pavilion uses the

The One Day Poem Pavilion uses the sun to display a poem one line at a time over the course of an entire day. (via stingy kids)

By Jason Kottke    Apr 25, 2008    art   poetry   Sun   time

The Virginia Quarterly Review analyzed their poetry

The Virginia Quarterly Review analyzed their poetry submissions for use of poetic cliches and found that the cliches do get published more often than not. Also of note is that "darkness" is an undervalued poetic cliche...it was in only 4% of submitted poems but in 17% of published poems. Poets, "darkness" is your way into VQR.

"I Was Walkin' Along The Street"

I've gotten totally re-obsessed with Kathy Acker, the East Village writer who died in 1997. It started with this recording of Acker reading a poem [Warning: audio, 2 minutes, 28 seconds, and not really safe for work!] that was released in 1980 on the LP "Sugar, Alcohol & Meat" by Giorno Poetry Systems and recently digitized by UbuWeb. Her New York accent is one that has largely disappeared since; she sounds amazing. Then I found this, which is an incredibly long mp3, the first 3/4s of which is a Michael Brownstein reading. The end, though, is a monologue which then becomes a stageplay by Acker about a woman, her suicide, her grandmother, and her psychiatrist. It is absolutely not safe for work, what with its endless use of a certain word for ladyparts that goes over well in Scotland but not at all (yet!) in the U.S.

By Choire Sicha    Jan 14, 2008    audio   feminism   kathyacker   poetry   readings

Winners of the Helvetica haiku contest I

Winners of the Helvetica haiku contest I pointed to a couple of weeks ago. My favorite of all the ones listed: "i shot the serif / left him there full of leading / yearning for kerning". Close second: "She misunderstood / When I said she was 'Grotesque' / Akzidenz happen". I am a sucker for puns.

By Jason Kottke    Apr 3, 2007    fonts   haiku   Helvetica   poetry   typography

Enter this font haiku contest to win

Enter this font haiku contest to win a limited-edition poster from the Helvetica documentary.

Robert Birnbaum interviews Donald Hall, who was

Robert Birnbaum interviews Donald Hall, who was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the United States (PLOTUS).

Update: Newsweek's Brian Braiker talked with Hall shortly after his appointment (by fax!) in June.

What would happen if poets and playwrights

What would happen if poets and playwrights wrote works whose titles were anagrams of their names? Here's one by Basho called Has B.O: "Swamp mist, eyes water- / Why is that monk still wearing / Winter robes in June?"

By Jason Kottke    Dec 18, 2006    basho   books   parody   poetry

From a blog critical of typographic faux

From a blog critical of typographic faux pas comes this handy rhyme for remembering the difference between apostrophes/quotation marks and foot/inch marks: "Straight up and down you're in foot mark town! / A contraction you say? Use apostrophes every day! / You want to say 'Hi!' to a chum or a neighbour? / Use inch marks and everyone will think you're an idiot!" Guilty as charged.

By Jason Kottke    Nov 9, 2006    poetry   typography

"It is with mounting nausea that we

"It is with mounting nausea that we watch poets race to cast their liberal votes for candidates more conservative than the Republicans they found beyond revulsion twenty years ago -- and indeed not just to feed at this trough but serve the slop."

By Jason Kottke    Nov 7, 2006    poetry   politics

Friends and Family 2.0, a poem

I'm so glad I'm friends with you
I can see your Flickr pix
and your Vox posts too

By Jason Kottke    Jul 26, 2006    Flickr   poetry   social software   vox   Web 2.0

Joan Murray poem: We Old Dudes. (via 3qd)

Joan Murray poem: We Old Dudes. (via 3qd)

By Jason Kottke    Jul 11, 2006    poetry

Book blog starts Fibonacci poem fad, i.

Book blog starts Fibonacci poem fad, i.e. the writing of poems where the number of syllables in each line is dictated by the Fibonacci sequence. "Poets are very, very hungry for constraint right now."

The Guardian on spam poetry. I featured

The Guardian on spam poetry. I featured the work of noted spam poet Gary Milano (webm@yahoo.com) a couple of years ago. See also Outside the Inbox, a compilation of songs inspired by spam subject lines.

Update: And The Words of Albert Spamus.

By Jason Kottke    Mar 8, 2006    music   poetry   spam

Poetry takes more brain power to read than prose

Poetry takes more brain power to read than prose. "Subjects were found to read poems slowly, concentrating and re-reading individual lines more than they did with prose."

By Jason Kottke    Apr 7, 2005    brain   neuroscience   poetry   reading   science

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