Poetry Friday--Bookstock Literary Festival

Back in July I traveled to Vermont for the Bookstock Literary Festival held in Woodstock. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and perhaps my favorite session was the appearance of Charles Simic. His was the only one in which I took notes. If you get the opportunity to hear him speak, take it! Here are some of my scribblings. I hope I have quoted him correctly:

"It's nice to be quoted, especially things you don't remember saying."

"Somebody annoyed me. Somebody asked me, Why do you have so many dogs in your poems? It's like asking Robert Frost, Mr. Frost, why do have so many trees?"

On love poems: "Everything you come up with is a cliché."

"I write short poems, but some of them are ridiculously short."

On the poem, "1938": "The first poem I wrote with the help of Google."

This video is Simic reading "1938" in 2010:



Here's a Simic love poem that is short, but not ridiculously so, and is definitely not a cliché:

Love Flea

He took a flea
From her armpit
To keep

And cherish
In a matchbox,
Even pricking his finger

From time to time
To feed it
Drops of blood.

From A Wedding in Hell [1994] and New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012 [2013].

I received an email notification from the Bookstock Literary Festival about two weeks ago. It had a link to videos of many of the poets and writers who read and spoke. I really appreciated receiving the link because there were some tough choices made about which workshops I would attend. You know how it goes, there are almost always two things you want to go to that are scheduled at the exact same time. One poet I missed was Martin Espada. I had seen him at the Dodge Festival a few years ago, and wanted to hear him again, so I'm happy the video is available.

[If you're in a book discussion group, you may have come across the novels of Roland Merullo such as Breakfast With Buddha or The Talk-Funny Girl. If so, I'd highly recommend watching his presentation; I was a fan before the festival--I'm an even bigger one now!]

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