Out comes the blanket, the tea, and the munchies...

[jjhunter]

Sunday, every Sunday, let's have a community picnic. It's probably been a long week, and it's lovely to have a few minutes to sit back and relax and enjoy some good conversation in a less formal space. Feel free to bring something for the Picnic Basket - a poem you liked this week, a thought you had or something you experienced, or even something completely unrelated to poetry whatsoever that you just feel like sharing. Just take a moment to say hello, and maybe have a bite to eat; no one is going anywhere fast, and the shade promises some relief from the everyday heat. Let’s get to know each other a bit better, here under the branches of the poet’s tree.

Comments

[untonuggan]

Found this poem this week and really enjoyed it. It was...timely, and reminded me of some family patterns in my own tree...

Patrimonial Recipe

I swore never to wear my father's mask.
Yet I meticulously peel and cut tomatoes.
Crush garlic. Pluck basil bent
low in observance. One
by one. Push them off the plank.
Into the fervid blonde of olive oil.
Salt. Pepper. Dash of sugar.
Then I sit down at the table.
Yell at my children for being children.
Ignore my wife--her voice:
the steam of boiling water.
And wait for the perfect consistency.
Al dente. The callous core that weeps
when overcooked.

- Daniele Pantano

From Poets Without Borders 2

[raze]

Ooh! I love this. Such vivid imagery, and do you feel like you can just SMELL this meal when you read it?

[untonuggan]

Totally!

[spiralsheep]

The use of one image expanded into a whole current scene and then past history works well (although my olive oil has always been green so that made me double-take "blonde" as an incongruity with my experience, heh). Thank you for sharing.

[untonuggan]

Thanks for appreciating. This poem makes me want tomato sauce, but also kind of dread it...

[ashestosnow]

Oh, this is a nice one. The blending of what we would ordinarily consider to be harmless, mundane actions with the undercurrent of violent imagery-- it's a potent technique, one I've used myself (with the text and subtext of gardening and war, respectively), and enjoyed when I did so.

Thank you for this.

[untonuggan]

Thanks for reading. ^_^ And mealtimes can so often turn violent, can't they?

[primeideal]

Wrote a poem about being in the wrong place at the wrong time--not posting it online though, a bit too RL-specific. The interesting thing, I realized a third of the way through, is that it borrows a lot of the same themes from another poem of mine, so clearly they're all jumbled together in my head some way.

Also, I'm living in a new town just for a month and a half this summer and I just discovered there's a weekly poetry group at this little bookstore I found, so I'm going to try dropping in on that and seeing what there is to see there!

[spiralsheep]

I love my local poetry group. I definitely write more and better poems with their encouragement. And I get to hear many excellent poems I might otherwise never encounter. I hope you are as lucky.

[raze]

I wrote this a little while back, but with all of the election-year politicizing of the working class poor and some of the ignorant BS I've heard spouted lately about people supported by social programs, I think it's worth sharing today. For context: I live in the rural south and work in an area sandwiched between pockets of rural and urban poverty.

Paper Applications
Every day at work, at least half a dozen people
with about as many teeth between them
ask:
"Are y'all hiring?
and
"Where they can I get an application?"
and
"Do y'all have any paper applications? I don't have a computer."

And I kick myself for having the effrontery to ever think,
"Man, I hate my job."

I thank God they don't have a computer
and I hope they don't have televisions either.
Can you imagine what it would be like for them
to know what people say:
"The poor are poor because they don't want to work?"

[spiralsheep]

That's very effectively constructed in those three stanzas: make the people real then ask for readers to understand them. Thank you for sharing.

[untonuggan]

That is a really good poem, and very well-constructed, and it's got punch. Kudos.

I'm usually too busy for t'interwebz on a Sunday....

[spiralsheep]

My beloved poetry group was cancelled this month due to flooding, which made me sad, but I'm writing plenty and have been to two readings (with five poets) recently so my current relationship with poetry is feeling positive.

I reviewed Sean O'Brien's book November at my journal. It's a mixed review of a complex collection but there is one short, funny, unrepresentative poem ostensibly about Marmite (link to wikipedia for non-Brits/South Africans/New Zealanders):

http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/395118.html

I hope you all have a good week.

Re: I'm usually too busy for t'interwebz on a Sunday....

[untonuggan]

Sorry your poetry group was cancelled but glad you've had a positive relationship with poetry!

Re: I'm usually too busy for t'interwebz on a Sunday....

[spiralsheep]

:-)