Friday, March 26, 2010

resists an osier's stiff assaults (Friday's Sunday's Poem/ Hot Actress 47)



A list of some observation...
by Joseph Brodsky

A list of some observation. In a corner, it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than its skeleton.
A nowhere winter evening with wine. A black
porch resists an osier's stiff assaults.
Fixed on an elbow, the body bulks
like a glacier's debris, a moraine of sorts.
A millennium hence, they'll no doubt expose
a fossil bivalve propped behind this gauze
cloth, with the print of lips under the print of fringe, mumbling "Good night" to a window hinge.

____________________________________________________________

About the poem: If you're like me, then you began today by thinking "I'm no longer going to print poems that don't rhyme, because that's what separates a poem from prose, right? The rhyming?" Then you searched for poems that rhyme, only to realize that your favorite poet, e e cummings, wrote poems that don't rhyme, and you like those, and also Bukowski wrote poems that don't rhyme and you like some of those, too, so you decided to table the discussion of whether it's a poem if it doesn't rhyme, and take that up another day.

Then, you found this poem and decided you liked it, too, even though it doesn't rhyme, further loosening your previous resolve to only list poems that rhyme, and you read this poem, and you read it again, and then you wondered:

What's an osier?

Then you looked that up and found out it's a willow like tree whose rodlike twigs are frequently used in basketry.

And then you had to go meet with a client.

(That's all if you're like me.)

About today's hot actress: Lynda Carter, suggested by Petri Dish, who says "She's still hot enough to star in the Wonder Woman remake...and I love her in lifetimes movies."


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