|||AS/IS²|||

Questions 

What do you think about "difficult" poetry? What makes a poem difficult? Does difficulty add value?

Is there anything that you think a poem must do? Is there anything that you think a poem should never do?

This Week in Blogland 

• Tom Beckett conducts a convo in hay(na)ku form with Crag Hill
  
• William Agrezza is in the Spring issue of Eratio
  
• Michael Bogue instructs people on the finer points of door-to-door canvassing
  
• Josh Corey offers some excerpts from Thoreau
  
• Ron Silliman on "Involuntary Visions: After Kurosawa's Dreams"
  
• Clayton Couch continues to offer up his dada-blast for the eye poems
  
• Elaine on Orgies
• Eeksy-Peeksy takes a walk
  
• Vincent on existentialism
• Monica has a run in with someone who thinks that poverty doesn't suck (The other day I had a run in with someone when I was canvassing - when I asked why he was unable to help us out today - the standard question - he said "poverty" - this AFTER getting out of a van that uses more money on gas in a week than I make - I burst out laughing)
  
• Rachael on men - well, one man actually - remember you shouldn't use the term "men" - you should say "discourses"
  
• Brennen Lukas aka "Dead Sexy" wants to make sure you have his name spelled right
  
• Tim Yu is in the new issue of Shampoo - that is just way too much rhyme!
  
• Nils gets an email from his sister
  
• Sawako fries an umbrella
  
• Mark Young on how to build an audience with yr poetry
  
• Brook has a premise
  
• Nick: "Energy is a kind of /"
  
• Bill Ryan lists (?)
  
• Benedict takes a day off
  
• Harry goes to Little Tokyo & all I get is this lousy t-shirt
  
• Jean needs a real job - that oh so elusive beast

givin it a whril 

*
asking little

I see the strange beauty more clearly
With it’s hardness and meanness
(and the delicacy too)

but it’s the streaks that fascinate me
the brilliant brittle streaks of tenderness in the flinty rock
life asking little

So what are you afraid of?
hide behind that smoke of your own making
like that will keep you free from risk

remain untouched, unmoved
but life is changing more than you know
sooner than you know

approaching something larger
witnessing something
stay back along the edges though

things develop in the edge
The edges that peel back, blister up, fragile
The edges that overlap

Just the edges
Life around the edges
The overlap