Saturday, February 11, 2006

Snowy Bits and Frozen Pieces

If you're reading this from somewhere on the east coast of the US, you're probably doing so to avoid dragging yourself into the driveway to start the chore of digging and salting your way to the street. So in the spirit of friendship, I offer the following useful distractions to proliferate your procrastinative efforts:

Jody Porter dropped me a note last week about Zafusy, an experimental poetry zine with links to blogs and and journals friendly to that poetic persuasion and not all well-known. I found it very different from my usual suspects, and anyplace you can find a poem inspired by a quark is OK with me. I recommend a visit.

Practicing a rather different poetics is Lily Literary Review, a newish zine more frequently published but in the same vein as Branches, with visual and literary artwork selected to be in each other's presence on the (web) page.

Are you watching the Olympics? The winter games holds less of interest to me than the summer games; I think Olympic track and field and gymnastics present the best individual sports efforts that don't involve steroids or a players' union. But there are still sports worth watching - luge and downhill skiing for fans of speed, figure skating for fans of grace, and more. Give NBC's coverage a chance.

And I wanted to close tonight with something snowy. Frost seemed too obvious; this does too, frankly, so I'm off now to find a suitably underpublicized poem with snow as its central image to post tomorrow. Any suggestions?

from Snow Day by Billy Collins

In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.

No comments: