I have been struggling to find all of Robin Morgan’s poem “Monster” since I read an excerpt of it on Feminist SF - The Blog.

It’s an angry poem and I adore it. I would love to quote you the entirety of the piece, all 6 pages of its glory, but I would also like to respect Morgan’s creative ownership of the piece.

I admire its bravery, I admire the descent to violence but not the submission to violence. I need it because it reminds me that there are ways of writing that align with my ways of being and that most of the written word and the spoken word are not written and spoken in those ways. It reminds me that there is nothing wrong or despicable about who I am.

Here is an excerpt:

And you, men. Lovers, brothers, fathers, sons.
I have loved you and love you still, if for no other reason
than that you came wailing from the monster
while the monster hunched in pain to give you the power
to break her spell.
Well, we must break it ourselves, at last.
And I will speak less and less and less to you
and more and more in crazy gibberish you cannot understand:
witches’ incantations, poetry, old women’s mutterings,
schizophrenic code, accents, keening, firebombs,
poison, knives, bullets, and whatever else will invent
this freedom.

This is adult, end-of-the-day Poetry Friday.

I wonder if any of our t’ousands and t’ousands of readers live in Alabama? I’m going to be there on March 6th, reading from my work and participating in a panel discussion on submission etiquette, as part of 2010: A Space Oddity (more info here).

Since I’m going to be there, I thought I’d use the opportunity to motivate myself to bring out another chapbook. I’m calling it Edgewise, and selling it for US$5 (postage included for pre-orders). Details here.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to little movies of poems lately, inspired by the many Billy Collins ones which I think I’ve linked to before, and some stop motion movies I was watching. I’m thinking it would be interesting to do stop motion movies of some of my own poems, just for fun.

• Alba has just published my short poem “Homing Instincts.”
• I have completely overhauled the site design of my website so that I post news and blog items.
• Videographer Jim Clark uses photographs and paintings to create kind of creepy videos of celebrated poets posthumously reading their work (via).
• Canadians have trouble naming Canadian authors.
• Poster poems: Ballads: Some information about the tradition behind ballads, with reader-submitted ballads in the comments. Of these, I was taken with “The Ballad of a Thinning Moustache” and “The Ballad Of Kevin Bacon’s Relatives.”

In a conversation on the Poets & Writers Speakeasy forum, poet Wendy Babiak mentioned videos of poetry animations and short films, citing as a favourite “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins (animation by Julian Grey of Head Gear).

That’s one of eleven animations of his poetry commissioned by the Sundance Channel’s Action Poetry Series, which includes: “The Best Cigarette” (David Vaio/Will Hyde/FAD); “Budapest” (Julian Grey/Head Gear); “The Country” (Brady Baltezor/Radium); “The Dead” (Juan Delcan/Spontaneous); “Hunger” (Samuel Christopher/FAD); “No Time” (Jeff Scher); “Now and Then” (Eun-Ha Paek/Milky Elephant); “Some Days” (Julian Grey/Head Gear); and “Today” (Little Fluffy Clouds/Curious), which is my favourite animation, although I think “Walking Across the Atlantic” (Mike Stolz/Manic) is my favourite of these poems.

SamuelChristopher also animated “Angel,” which is from Hashisheen by Bill Laswell and read by Nicole Blackman, who I recognize from The Golden Palominos’ album Dead Inside.

Here’s are some other animations and short films based on poems:

• British Council/Bloodaxe Books has a series of animated poems; my favourite is Selma Hill’s “My Sister’s Poodle is Accused of Eating the Housekeeping Money.”
• “Flash Cards” by Rita Dove (animation by Arthur Greenwald Productions) - the simplicity of the drawing reminds me of the old school Sesame Street a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter.
• “Lullaby” by Anne Sexton (short film by Jeff Doud/RIOT).
• “Monologue At 3 AM” by Sylvia Plath (animation by Catherine Davenport)
• “Once Upon a Time” by Vishwajyoti Ghosh (animation by Nilratan Mazumdar)
• Somebody has done a series of videos with a hand puppet reading Charles Bukowski (it’s actually the author’s voice): “Grammar of Life,” “The Light of Jesus” and “Photo.” I can’t decide if these are dumb or funny.
• “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” animation by Edward Picot, from the poem by Wallace Stevens. If you only look at one of his visualizations, go for either #1 (Among twenty snowy mountains) or #12 (The river is moving).

Finally, the Poetry Foundation, in association with docUWM at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has a Poetry Everywhere series, which includes: “I started early…” by Emily Dickinson (Maria Vasilkovsky); “The Language” by Robert Creeley (Chad Edwards); “Mulberry Fields” by Lucille Clifton (Jason Walczyk); “Paradoxes and Oxymorons” by John Ashbery (Kate Raney); “Snowmen” by Agha Shahid Ali (Kyle Jenkins); “Some Words Inside of Words” by Richard Wilbur (Anna Wilson); “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden (Allison Alexander Westbrook IV); and “Tornado Child” by Kwame Dawes (Nicole Garrison).