Chiff & Fipple Textbook

Poststructural Pub
1

Just as our Undisputed King of Internet Tinwhistle Journalism Dale has seen one of his poems added to a schoolbook, I thought it would be good if this thread can be the textbook for the rest of us.

Time to post your poems for the youth of tomorrow here!

2

Do you mean our own compositions, Walden, or anything we think should be included?

3

I’ve spent the last 8 months of my life choosing selections for the anthology Dale’s poem appears in, but despite that, I would really like teachers to respect the “Reader’s Bill of Rights.” So somewhere in our C&F textbook I would like the youth of tomorrow to be able to read that…

Readers have:

  1. The right to not read.
  2. The right to skip pages.
  3. The right to not finish.
  4. The right to reread.
  5. The right to read anything.
  6. The right to escapism.
  7. The right to read anywhere.
  8. The right to browse.
  9. The right to read out loud.
  10. The right not to defend your tastes.

—Pennac, Daniel, Better Than Life, Coach House Press, 1996.

4

Well, now that you mention it, I just had a little something published in Eclectica. I urge you to check out the link and read some of the fine stuff there.

http://www.eclectica.org/v12n1/toc.html

Tidal Pool

Waist deep, and I don’t know if it’s
falling or rising, whether to hold
my breath or cry, whether the next
step is rock or abyss, or if I’m even
in time to care. In my head I have
pictures of cotton-sheer
birds fluttering on summer breezes,
the sound of a marimba tinkling
softly in the distance. Nearby,
you sit on a rock and hum
songs from our courtship.

There was a wolf, his name
was mine, who
once came here before
I sold him for his pelt, using the money
for refrigerator poetry
magnets bearing every word
you ever spoke to me, so I
might arrange them as I chose.

Inspiration is everything. If you sing
sweetly, I will compose them to flatter
you, though I’m not sure it will be
enough to repel the tide.

5

Hear, hear.

6

I guess they could be anything that should be included… y’know… if you have the rights to it and it’s not already in a textbook.

7

Maybe we could ask to use this:

Constantly Risking Absurdity
– Lawrence Ferlinghetti


Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he’s the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence