AUDIO: International Poetry Forum begins 2008-2009 season
This quick audio podcast is about the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh. The Forum’s 2008-2009 season began last night. Just plug in your headphones or turn on your speakers, and hit the AUDIO MP3 button. You can also download the update.
2 minutes
Apropos of recent difficulties of someone who shall remain nameless, here’s a favorite poem:
Hope
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.
Lisel Mueller
LASTRA POETRY READING
Pedro Lastra, a professor emeritus in the SUNY at Stony Brook’s Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature, will deliver a poetry reading at 2 p.m., Oct. 24, 208B Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Ave., Oakland, Pittsburgh. This event is sponsored by Pitt’s Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures and Center for Latin American Studies. For more information, contact Connie Tomko at connie@pitt.edu.
ODD
Burger King of Canada has launched MeatHaiku.com where eaters can write haiku about their affection for meat.
