Friday, May 25, 2007

Splash du Jour: Friday

I write quickly -- I can finish a poem in forty-five minutes, sometimes less. Then you go back to make it dance a little better.
Eighty percent of revision is rhythmical – making changes to make the right music.
Eventually, I go to the computer – you can look and see the lines that don’t work. You move furniture.

-- Billy Collins –

Have a great Friday!

1 comment:

Merisi said...

Billy Collins has made so many of my days brighter (encountering himself during his two tenures as US Poet Laureate the highlights).
Here his

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

-

Makes my smile.
(Cip, please erase this comment, if you feel uncomfortable about having a poem here. Thanks.)