Chicken Spaghetti

Books, Books, Books

recent posts

about

Category: Poetry

  • “After the Winter,” Claude McKay

    Thank you to Claude McKay (1889-1948) for the following and its title, both of which remind me that one day we'll be done with this interminable winter season. There will be an "after." Bring on the droning bees and the ferns! (See also  Yeats's "Lake Isle of Innisfree" for more bees.) I found the McKay…

  • A Poem by Patricia Spears Jones

    Here is a poem by Patricia Spears Jones, whose work I have admired ever since reading her piece in the 1994 anthology Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café. This one is called "Comedy with Flutes," and it was first published in 2023. The Poetry Foundation link includes audio. Do take a listen! I'm adding…

  • A Jane Hirshfield Poem

    No doubt someone has shared this poem on Poetry Friday before; it's such a good one. I'm still working on my own poems, made of words from headlines in the New York Times. Right now they are coming out really angry, and whether that speaks to the zeitgeist, my own frame of mind, or both,…

  • Cat Haiku

    All purrs, she joins meOn the couch for a minuteSpreading her good vibes.   This is Kimchi, one of my resident muses. She's a small cat and a big character. The Poetry Friday roundup is at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

  • Nightmare

    Nightmare Tiny burning embersBlazesFire weatherWarnings/increasedForced evacuationsLA girdsLocation, size, containment, and more Monster winds Fire’s massive scaleWhat do you pack?     Source: The Los Angeles Times, accessed 9 January 2025 ***** I made this found poem from words and phrases in headlines and subheadings in the LA Times. I wanted to keep it brief. I'm…

  • Rumors and Lies

      Using ideas from last week, I created another new poem using headlines from the Sunday New York Times. I'll let it speak for itself. Again I thank the late Lorraine O'Grady for the inspiration. For 2025 I am fortifying myself with, among other things, Year of Wonder: Classical Music to Enjoy Day by Day,…

  • Lorraine O’Grady

    Here's a short feature in the Yale Review from a few years back. It concerns the work of the conceptual artist/critic/essayist Lorraine O'Grady, who died last week at the age of 90. Eugenia Bell writes, "Her 1977 work, Cutting Out the New York Times, consists of twenty-six poems made from cut up Sunday editions of…

  • The Familiar Angels of Handel’s ‘Messiah’

    Messiah (Christmas Portions)   by Mark Doty   A little heat caught in gleaming rags, in shrouds of veil,    torn and sun-shot swaddlings:      over the Methodist roof, two clouds propose a Zion of their own, blazing    (colors of tarnish on copper)   Read the rest at the Poetry Foundation.   **** Here is…

  • Seasonal Verse

      http://tanitasdavis.com/wp/​ I loved this poem when it popped up on Instagram the other day. There are so many footsteps I'd love to hear again, even the early-morning clomps of my mom's Dr. Scholl's sandals as I tried to sleep late way back when. Or the squeaks of our sneakers as my friends and I…

  • Poetry Friday and “Lunch with Laura”

    The Poetry Friday roundup is here. Welcome! Please add your links to the Mr. Linky after David Moody's "Lunch with Laura." David's poem first appeared on Chicken Spaghetti in 2006. He was a Cataloging Librarian at the University of Detroit Mercy, and although I did not know him well, I always appreciated his humorous contributions…