They have comfortable chairs in Barnes and Noble.

George Bowering is Canada's first poet laureate and the author of over 80 books. A native of British Columbia, he has worked as a professor, editor and writer. Bowering is a member of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor. - Reuters/Corbis

His Web-Page - http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/bowering/index.htm

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in his poem "Nature," compares the old to a child who must "leave his broken playthings on the floor" and go to bed:

So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.

An 80-Year-Old Poet for the MTV Generation

"It is John Ashbery, the prolific 80-year-old poet and frequent award winner known for his dense, postmodern style and playful language. One of the most celebrated living poets, Mr. Ashbery has won MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.”

more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/books/27laur.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bu&oref=slogin

My Philosophy of Life, by John Ashbery: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15460

Bumping Poets Corner!

Nice move cricket!

I

Just a line or few
not looking for perfection -
something to do
a jackson polloc abstraction
maybe

II

an event of intro - spection
a roarrrrsach
for de - tection
a splotch
of rhymes

III

automatic writing poetic
resounding chimes
noetic
maybe at times
revealing

IV

whats in the soul
sounding
making whole -
untangling -
what-knot

V

who knows? there's hope!
haven't got
nuthin yet nope -
now -
the line is tugging tight

VI

Wow
reel it in
feel the swerve
and thrash left n' right
ooups.

VII

lost it.

- dAb

New Poet Laureate: Kay Ryan

"On July 17, Kay Ryan was appointed the 16th Poet Laureate of the United States. About her work, J. D. McClatchy has said: "She is an anomaly in today's literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost." A chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ryan will be featured in the upcoming Poets Forum in November." -Poets.org.

Death by Fruit

Kay Ryan

Only the crudest
of the vanitas set
ever thought you had to get
a skull into the picture
whether you needed
its tallowy color
near the grapes or not.
Others, stopping to consider
shapes and textures,
often discovered that
eggs or aubergines
went better, or leeks,
or a plate of string beans.
A skull is so dominant.
It takes so much
bunched up drapery,
such a ponderous
display of ornate cutlery,
just to make it less prominent.
The greatest masters
preferred the subtlest vanitas,
modestly trusting to fruit baskets
to whisper ashes to ashes,
relying on the poignant exactness
of oranges to release
like a citrus mist
the always fresh fact
of how hard we resist
how briefly we’re pleased.

-Partisan Review, PR 3/2000, Volume LXVII Number 3