By Jeff Breshlin, this was a winner of the Washington Post Style Invitational.
Video uploaded to YouTube by timhawkinscomedy
That’s Gallagher, American comedian and prop comic. Thanks to clever John of Johnbalaya for this. He’s written an essay to go with the video. Check it out HERE. And, the five funny figures of speech (Malapropism, Spoonerism, Paraprosdokain, Tom Swifty, and Wellersim) are explained by Mark Nichol on Daily Writing Tips HERE. Thanks to Laurel D. for that one.
“I is for immortality, which for some poets is a necessary compensation. Presumably miserable in this life, they will be remembered when the rest of us are long forgotten. None of them asks about the quality of that remembrance–what it will be like to crouch in the dim hallways of somebody’s mind until the moment of recollection occurs, or to be lifted off suddenly and forever into the pastures of obscurity.
“Most poets know better than to concern themselves with such things. They know the chances are better than good that their poems will die when they do and never be heard of again, that they’ll be replaced by poems sporting a new look in a language more current. They also know that even if individual poems die, though in some cases slowly, poetry will continue: that its subjects, it constant themes, are less liable to change than fashions in language, and that this is where an alternate, less lustrous immortality might be.
“We all know that a poem can influence other poems, remain alive in them, just as previous poems are alive in it. Could we not say, therefore, that individual poems succeed most by encouraging revisions of themselves and inducing their own erasure? Yes, but is this immortality, or simply a purposeful way of being dead?” The Weather of Words: Poetic Inventions by Mark Strand (b. 1934, Canada), American poet and essayist, Poet Laureate Consult in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1990-1991), Pulitzer Prize (1999) for Blizzard of One, Gold Medal in Poetry (2009), American Academy of Arts and Letters.
A little something provocative this Sunday.
. . . and thus we begin another week . . .
Photo credit ~ SlowKing via Wikipedia and under the CC BY-NC
one day, you’ll see, i’ll come back to hobnob
with ravens, to fly with the crows at the moment
of apple blossoms and the scent of magnolia ~
look for me winging among the white geese
in their practical formation, migrating to be here,
to keep house for you by the river …
i’ll be home in time for the bees in their slow heavy
search for nectar, when the grass unfurls, nib tipped ~
you’ll sense me as soft and fresh as a rose,
as gentle as a breeze of butterfly wings . . .
i’ll return to honor daisies in the depths of innocence,
i’ll be the raindrops rising dew-like on your brow ~
you’ll see me sliding happy down a comely jacaranda,
as feral as the wind circling the crape myrtle, you’ll
find me waiting, a small gray dove in the dovecot,
loving you, one lifetime after another.
© 2013, poem , Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved, Licensing for online publications is nonnegotiable and requires permission, attribution, link to this site, my copyright, no modification, noncommercial only and does not imply permission to include the work in the site’s printed collections or anthologies.
Illustration by Gretchen Del Rio © 2010, All rights reserved, used here with Gretchen’s permission
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 
