image by glenn buttkus
Valentines & Vitriol
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be,
you can get there from here.
Hollywood is a four-letter town,
stranger music, the road,
they still love me in Altoona.
Loser take all, a dreadful man--
it’s only a movie,
it’s always something;
climbing the mountain,
frozen in time,
killing Jesus
and the mountains echoed,
life after life; change lobsters
and dance, war dances;
where God put the West,
last of the breed,
the toughest Indian in the world,
part-time Indian, Lone Ranger
& Tonto fistfight in heaven,
Indian killer, reservation blues,
no country for old men,
sombrero fallout, the longest ride,
all the pretty horses.
Here, bullet, why stop?
Journey of souls,
the guns at last light
between man and beast.
Mockingbird, wish me luck,
joyland, doctor sleep, flight,
stiff, big bad love;
the cat in the hat,
the girl who kicked the hornet’s nest.
Cinderella liberty,
the favorite game--
Ulysses, the understudy,
the hawkline monster,
the fault in our stars.
Glenn Buttkus
October 2013
Posted over at dVerse Poets FFA
Today we are challenged to write Spine Poetry, looking at your own library and
using the book titles to create poetics; quite the prompt. My title is by Rex Reed;
other authors include Leonard Cohen, Woody Allen, Charles Bukowski, Louis
Lamour, Cormac McCarthy, Richard Brautigan, Shirley MacLaine, Sherman
Alexie, Lili Palmer, Daryl Ponicson, Simone Signoret, Brain Aherne, George
Burns, Alfred Hitchcock, Gilda Radner, Kirk Douglas, James Joyce, Larry
Brown, Steig Larrson, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, Brian Turner, and Nicholas
Sparks.
Would you like to hear the author read this Spine Poetry to you?
21 comments:
ha - now you're cheating...smiles... you used the spines as a skeleton...smiles.. either way...well done sir...ha..yes..mockingbird wish me luck... did you read the hunger games...? excellent... good to see you sir - and thanks for the power tweeting...smiles
Ah you have really outdone yourself here, Glenn. Ha, even in your spine poem you invoke the wild west. I especially like the line "it's only a movie, it's always something." I bet you go to a lot of them. I had been tempted to see the Lone Ranger, but from what I heard it seemed to have been a disappointment. Perhaps it is because of 'the fault in our stars.'
You really have a very interesting library,.. and all are titles (amazing) how many books did it take?
so those are really all titles..? wow... then you're surely not cheating but have outdone yourself..ha...can't believe it... wow glenn... kudos...
Yeah, I just counted them up, there were 51 of them, many by the same author. I just ran hogpoet-wild with this one, folks.
nice...i was making the same assumption as claudia as first...it was buk's mockingbird book that made me realize what you did...wow g...you nailed this one....above and beyond....
What a lot of great titles Glenn! I enjoyed the references to Sherman Alexie.
Ho! You have done wonders with so many titles. I admire how you managed a wild west theme with so many of them. Cool!
Clearly you have the BIGGEST one!! (Library that is). This was brilliant - truly DADA. I wish I'd had all this for my DADa poem - it works triple duty here: a flash through our lifetime, a cento (found), a DADA not quite surreal. Brilliant!
I know some of those books well. It is a very impressive apine which you've joined together well. Glad you didn't try to stack them or we might have lost you for the afternoon.
Well I am clearly impressed that you used the titles~ I didn't have the energy to open all our books in the boxes last night ~ Good one Glenn ~
Wow...I thought I recognized some of the titles not shown. Great piece Glenn!
I'm afraid I stopped looking for meaning out of sheer awe of the titles--so many! I've read several, including The Road, the classics, children's and teen literature. Amazing mix.
I thought for sure we'd finally get a short poem out of you... =)
This is a great collection--the arrangement gets the mental juices flowing a many directions, all of them good!
Well, it's one way of sharing our libraries with each other :)
I am just reading The Fault in Our Stars... and am entranced by it, so loved seeing it here as your last line...
Western style. Good expansion, great idea.
Glenn - a triumph of a spine poem - unbelieveable and absolutely wonderful - K
Using the book titles literally as the spine, the basic skeleton of the poem, and then building an entire living, breathing organism around that framework - that is a remarkable variation on the theme. You have outdone yourself on this one. Bravo!
Nice compilation! Got a nice shelve sir!!
That's some library you have there, Glenn - and you've put it to good use in this poem. For my first try at this I used five books - and I had to borrow one of those ... smiles.
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