9 may 2011

John Ashbery Poems or Kentucky Derby Horses?

Animal Kingdom
The Skaters
William Byrd
Comma to the Top
Decisive Moment
Girls on the Run
Dialed In
Midnight Interlude
Ice Cream in America
Nehro
A Waltz Dream
Santiva
Shackleford
Weather and Turtles
Toby's Corner
Twice the Appeal
Uncle Mo
About to Move

6 comentarios:

Andrew Shields dijo...

It does read like a great table of contents!

Vance Maverick dijo...

Naming things really is like writing poetry. Take the choice of a Chinese given name -- in the West we have traditional names, and a narrower set of saints or Old Testament figures depending on religious tradition (or, as in my case, the secondary tradition of last name as first name), but in Chinese the choice is wider, constrained by taste and associations.

Another thing that's like writing poetry is coining ad slogans. They're like evil little poems, small machines made out of words for a toxic purpose. I've been marvelling lately (with a certain repugnance) at "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas", which has penetrated the language within (if memory serves) about 5 years.

Vance Maverick dijo...

(Pedantic update: that originated eight years ago, and the phrase has been improved since then, apparently by a collective process.)

Jonathan dijo...

That an ad slogan can become a proverb, enconsed in the language, is amazing. The Vegas one you mention and the "Just do it" of Nike.

Vance Maverick dijo...

Can't remember if I mentioned this before, but I once was introduced to Jeff Goodby, perpetrator of "Got milk?", at a Tom Raworth reading.

Jonathan dijo...

That one is immensely productive. "Got prose?" I was tempted to use that as the title of one of my blogs.