Florid ideas, once up sun a pine...

reading for comp exams, i'm struck by how many poets have been inspired by the lush of the land we call Florida--our imaginations now to be glopped and lopped with loss.

here's one i happen to be reading right now by louise gluck, the tone of which seems right...

TO FLORIDA

Southward floated over
The vicious little houses, down
The land. Past Carolina, where
The bloom began
Beneath their throbbing clouds, they fed us
Coldcuts, free. We had our choice.
Below, the seasons twist; years
Roll backward toward the can
Like film, and the mistake appears,
To scale, soundlessly. The signs
Light up. Across the aisle
An old man twitches in his sleep. His mind
Will firm in time. His health
Will meet him at the terminal.

The O sheens

One reader of Poets for Living Waters asked: What is a ‘poetry action’? Or a ‘reading action’? He went on to suggest that poetry is a failure to act. Many folks may be wondering the same thing, so I thought I'd post a reply...

The phrases ‘reading action’ and ‘poetry action’ have been specifically created to point awareness toward the fact that self expression, listening, and independently distributing ideas are all indeed actions. One typically may not think of them as such because they are quite miniature in scale. Any type of ‘poetry action’ is profoundly nonheroic. By asserting ‘reading actions’ and ‘poetry actions’ we are enacting a value-system of the nonheroic and instead promoting a value system foregrounding the systemic, the relational.

A poem is more like a plankton than like a vigilante. Whoever thinks of plankton as particularly active? But did you know that within the plankton are the seeds of the clouds?

Poets are cultivating new climates for change.