David Cherry's blog

On Odes, OCDs, and a Cat Named Jeoffry

Submitted by David Cherry on Thu, 11/26/2009 - 10:23am

It is an unfortunate reality of collective memory that Christopher Smart is remembered less for his poetry than for hisCat Jump 1 by Robbie Sproule cat, the admirable Jeoffry, and his habit (Smart’s, not Jeoffry’s) of throwing himself down to pray whenever and wherever he felt called to do so, including, according to Old Sam Johnson, the sewage and offal-strewn streets of London.

Notes on Notes from Underground, Punk and Russian Poetry

Submitted by David Cherry on Sat, 11/21/2009 - 11:28am

Photo Credit: Klaviatura by khanele / Hannah Born We all come out of Gogol's overcoat. 
                      --Fyodor Dostoevsky
When I read Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground for the first time, it screwed me to my chair for about a week. I was paralysed with a not completely unpleasant terror that when or if I finally pried myself loose, the world would no longer be the brick-and-mortar, what-you-see-is-what-you-get place I had always thought it was. And I was right; when I eventually stepped out into the sunshine, I saw cracks and seams everywhere. I knew for the first time that if I had the right kind of crowbar, I could finally get a good look at the springs and sprockets that made things go.

Elegies

Submitted by David Cherry on Thu, 11/12/2009 - 11:15am

Sometimes there are no words. 
But time, because it cannot know how fragile we are, will keep flowing.
We will eventually step back into its current. There will be solace.

"And Death Shall Have No Dominion" in The Collected Poems: 1934-1952 / Dylan Thomas
The Book of Psalms 
Elegy: Poems / Mary Jo Bang
"Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" / Thomas Gray
The Duino Elegies / Rainer Maria Rilke
"Kaddish" in The Collected Poems: 1947-1980 / Allen Ginsberg
"The Rain" in The Collected Poems 1956-1998 / Zbigniew Herbert

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