Tag: metaphor
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smoking with george oppen
Some poems are capable of tapping into the connotations or “languages” around a word and making them meet. This week’s poem, “If It All Went Up in Smoke” by George Oppen, for example, does a great job of taking the languages of the word “smoke” and blurring them to create a visceral metaphor. First, there…
José Angel Araguz
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* moebius stripping with michael ondaatje
This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. – Alan Watts I like this quote because of the shift in gears it implies about life and how we approach it. I…
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* stepping into the river with mark strand
When I read poetry, I want to feel myself suddenly larger … in touch with—or at least close to—what I deem magical, astonishing. I want to experience a kind of wonderment. And when you report back to your own daily world after experiencing the strangeness of a world sort of recombined and reordered in the…
José Angel Araguz
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* youthful counting with W.S. Merwin
I remember when I came across this week’s poem in 2008. I was living another life on a street called Olive. The newsprint of the journal I was subscribed to at the time was never more precious, seemingly perishable, as when I read and later copied out this lyric by hand. I knew then the…
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* some words from Ram Dass & the friday influence
This week on the Influence: some words from world renown American spiritual teacher Ram Dass! But first, a confession: there isn’t much that I read – be it novels, essays, cereal boxes, texts, etc. – that doesn’t get filtered through my how-does-can-this-relate-to-poetry filter. I read everything with eyes looking for a symbol, a metaphor, or simply…
José Angel Araguz
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* William Meredith on the friday influence
This week’s poem is The Illiterate by William Meredith. This one is a favorite. I memorized it years ago and come back to it often. The simplicity of both the subject matter and form is deceptive. It is a sonnet but note how the rhymes work, how they envelope around the last syllables – man, hand,…
José Angel Araguz
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* Rilke, winter & the friday influence
I am almost done with The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke. Fascinating stuff. Rilke wrote something like 400 poems in French towards the end of his life. Basically a whole Collected Works in another language. He approached his poems in French in the spirit of starting over in a way that he couldn’t…
José Angel Araguz
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* w. s. merwin & the friday influence
Dusk in Winter – W. S. Merwin The sun sets in the cold without friends Without reproaches after all it has done for us It goes down believing in nothing When it has gone I hear the stream running after it It has brought its flute it is a long way *** This week on…
José Angel Araguz
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* out to sea on the friday influence
Sea-weed – D.H. Lawrence Sea-weed sways and sways and swirls as if swaying were its form of stillness; and if it flushes against fierce rock it slips over it as shadows do, without hurting itself. *** This week on the Influence: an explanation! This past few days have been kind of rough in my world.…
José Angel Araguz
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* the Borges/Araguz haiku challenge & the friday influence
3 Haiku – Jorge Luis Borges * They have said something to me, the afternoon and the mountain. Already, it is lost. ** The antique sword dreams of its battles. Another is my dream. ** Is it an empire that light dying down or a firefly? ** This week on the Influence – Jorge Luis…
José Angel Araguz
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The Friday Influence 