Poetry on my mind

Happy March One

The first day of the month of spring is coming in a bit on the warm and damp side here. The temperature here is already just a degree below 70 and the day hasn't even said hello to the sun yet...The weather prognosticators are mentioning a cool front moving our way this morning with some "much dryer air". The view out the kitchen windows is definitely taking on a spring green coloration. Even the oak that run late in it's leafing out each year is showing a lot of green already. So, looks to me like spring has sprung even if no one quite believes it.

Everyday when I check my sitemeter I see where someone has again searched for "My Methodist Grandmother" on Google. I'll admit even I am still checking out Mary Mackey's poetry and now I'll probably try to pick up one of her novels on my next trip to the B&N. That Mary Mackey post had me wandering thru some more of her words on the internet. I stopped in on her Home Page and this poem caught in my minds eye...

in the great invisible electronic
library of the world
the real thing is nothing
image is all

bleary with coffee
and grief for a friend
who died the day before
I find myself staring at the screen and wondering
how many pixels it takes
to make a wood duck
or an island of black frigate birds
mating in the mangroves
their globed orange throat pouches
pulsing with birdly lust

in front of me
in a space no larger than two hands spanned
I can watch flocks of pink flamingos
migrating
stick-legged, silly-beaked
bits of egg-laying confetti
left over from the big party
of creation

(continued on her site)

Later I came across a interview on "The WELL" where, in describing the difference between her fiction and her poetry, she says...

Poetry, in contrast, is more of an explosion in my brain. It comes as a
great wave of image and emotion which I translate into words. I revise each
poem again and again, looking for the perfect combination of word and rhythm
and ambiguity. I'm constantly surprised. I never know where I'm going.

That imagery is quite striking.

My wife is always asking me what I find so interesting on the computer. The chance discovery of Mary Mackey is one of the things that keeps me trolling the internet. My wife once grew used to my nose being buried in a book or magazine. That was where it was for the first couple of decades of our marriage. The books were never a threat but the laptop appears to be. She doesn't see it as a virtual library where you can stumble across words and images that you wouldn't chance across in even the largest of brick and mortar libraries. Whenever I come across a site that really punches me in the gut, I'll try and share with her. She seems to enjoy the passages I read so maybe she will come around to my virtual library yet...

Running late this morning so I better get a move on...Stay dry, stay cool.