Day Doubling as a Creeley Kind of Day
Thanks to Lars Palm for yesterday’s challenge (in the comments below). The real story of the fish on a bicycle is an adaptation from Irina Dunn by Gloria Steinem. This poem after Creeley’s “Old Story” incredibly just came to me, which makes me happy since I usually spend awhile working for a first draft. I hope to see more Creeley tributes and I hope you enjoy!
Her Story
from The Diary of a Bathroom Door
One razorfish and fishing bowl don’t agree.
So they dipped the hook in hole, hell,
with a here and now not every
now and then, see. Me, I bent
a hand whenever it swam
but I was sliced, sliced, sliced.
You got a fin, girl, wing it.
You got a fish, girl, bike it.
___________________________________________
P.S.!! Check this out: I feel extremely honored here. Grace Cavalieri (click & scroll to the bottom for her info) included my book, Antidotes for an Alibi, among her “Best Picks Poetry Books of 2005″ at The Montserrat Review. My book is very happy to be in such excellent company!
3 Responses to “Day Doubling as a Creeley Kind of Day”
AMY KING View All →
Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Award. Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She co-edited with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She also co-edits the anthology series, Bettering American Poetry, and is a professor of creative writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.
AMY KING 
December 3rd, 2005 at 1:36 pm eCongratulations on someone else’s recognizing the virtues of your first book! Occasionally there are wide-awake readers — quite reassuring.
On poetic theft: I think of the classical idea of variations on someone else’s theme, where the first version sits happily in the center and other artists create theirs in concentric circles. It’s not parody, although it has some of that impulse; it’s more affectionate tribute where the original is half-incorporated to build something half-new, entirely friendly. Mozart and Beethoven did it, and (guess what?) almost all jazz improvisation has this as its firm chocolaty center. Louis to Lester to Bird and on and on. And it fits here, however loosely, because the Creeley tributes all seem to be based on Creeley’s inherent conversational swing: the new versions start from his rhythms and go on from there. But I agree: the dog epitomizes coolness: if he could write a Creeley poem, he would: it’s all in that affectionate gaze. Someone needs to write a Creeley poem from HIS point of view. Takers, anyone?
December 3rd, 2005 at 11:24 pm eI first heard of someone needing something like a fish needs a bike in some swedish context I can’t quite remember at the moment, about two years ago. I immediately made the expression mine. It’s great to at least get an idea of where the expression came from. & that painting is brilliant
December 5th, 2005 at 3:39 pm eCongrats!!
And Wow! Extremely agile verbiage here:
So they dipped the hook in hole, hell,
with a here and now not every
now and then, see
Right on, Amy.