Poetry Call

I think the silent poetry reading is a wonderful idea.

I adore TS Eliot. Especially The Love Song Of Alfred J Prufrock.

When I was in college, rap was still very, very old school and the Beastie Boys were a little known NYC band (this was about the time that they sang the rap song about Carvel Ice Cream). I was in a band (horrible but fun) and we did a rap version of Love Song. It was pretty funny at the time.

One of my favorite stanzas:

For I have known them all already, known them all
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And another:

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.