Thursday, October 3, 2013

Valentines & Vitriol



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:

Claudia said...

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

Mary said...

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.'

brudberg said...

You really have a very interesting library,.. and all are titles (amazing) how many books did it take?

Claudia said...

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...

Glenn Buttkus said...

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.

Brian Miller said...

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....

Gabriella said...

What a lot of great titles Glenn! I enjoyed the references to Sherman Alexie.

Sherry Blue Sky said...

Ho! You have done wonders with so many titles. I admire how you managed a wild west theme with so many of them. Cool!

Beachanny said...

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!

Unknown said...

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.

Grace said...

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 ~

Mystic_Mom said...

Wow...I thought I recognized some of the titles not shown. Great piece Glenn!

Susan said...

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.

Laurie Kolp said...

I thought for sure we'd finally get a short poem out of you... =)

Jeff said...

This is a great collection--the arrangement gets the mental juices flowing a many directions, all of them good!

Shaista said...

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...

seasideauthor said...

Western style. Good expansion, great idea.

Anonymous said...

Glenn - a triumph of a spine poem - unbelieveable and absolutely wonderful - K

Semaphore said...

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!

Anonymous said...

Nice compilation! Got a nice shelve sir!!

Anonymous said...

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.