The formatting of Larry Eigner’s poems—his use of the page as canvas and typewriter as brush—is important enough that I don’t want to try to fake it with plain text. If you have problems viewing today’s work, here’s a direct image link. I love Eigner’s comment about the meaning of this poem:
“Well I forget what I meant and … disappointed, I guess. You know my mother said to me to communicate you must speak clear … first of all … though I soon realized that immediacy and force take priority.”
WORK
—Larry Eigner
—from Collected Poems: II
WORD(S)
panicle /PAN-uh-kul/. noun. A loosely branching cluster of flowers on a stem, as in oats and crabgrass. From the Latin panicula, literally “thread wound on a bobbin.”
“The slender, hairy flower scape … has at the top a loose panicle of many small flowers, each on a long, slender stem…” (Chester Reed)
“That day, in the cool room, long panicles of Odontoglossums, yellow, rose, white with spots, crowded the aisle on both sides.” (Rex Stout)
“of these shops sprouted
every leaf-shine and shade
of panicle: smoke, plum, lavender” (Mark Doty)“at taps / art twilit lilac panicle / fathering rafter” (Ronald Johnson)
WEB
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Part 1: excerpts from Elizabeth Bishop’s letters to Marianne Moore, Robert Lowell and May Swenson. Part 2: excerpts from Bishop’s letters to Robert Lowell, her therapist and various amateur biographers after her lover’s suicide.
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An accurate, readable article about a commonplace linguistic mystery: “The Secret Rules of Adjective Order”.
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Dennis Wojtkiewicz’s hyper-realistic paintings of fruit and flowers.
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Today in 1927, poet Larry Eigner was born. Much has been made of Eigner’s cerebral palsy and the fact that he had to type with one finger and one thumb, but to play that aspect up is often to diminish Eigner’s importance as a poet, which had nothing to do with his physical limitations. You can hear Larry read today’s poem (plus many others) and listen to interviews with him at PennSound.
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
- Expanding the discussion: “Nothing Is at Stake: On Shakespeare, Lana Del Rey, and the Relatable”
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