What Book Am I?

You're Prufrock and Other Observations!

by T.S. Eliot

Though you are very short and often overshadowed, your voice is poetic and lyrical. Dark and brooding, you see the world as a hopeless effort of people trying to impress other people. Though you make reference to almost everything, you've really heard enough about Michelangelo. You measure out your life with coffee spoons.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Actually, my friend Ashley often teases me because of my esoteric allusions (which no one but myself ever understands). I should have been a pair of ragged claws. Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . .

Quiz found via Vasilly.

This is just to say

From flagpole, an Athens weekly paper:

Park Hall Poesy: An Errant Red Hand Truck Achieves Immortality Through Poetry, Sort Of

When Mike Hendrick, the longtime, soon-to-retire (again) Assistant Head of the UGA English department needed Park Hall’s red hand truck, he couldn’t find it. Naturally, he put out an alert on the Park Hall listserv. Probably, his use of the word “errant” triggered the response, started by Lisa Reeves’ reply, which led to a flood of poetic knockoffs. Flagpole could not resist reprinting this corpus of mock homage to a variety of well known poets and to the now immortal red hand truck. Can you name all the poems spoofed here?

Here's my favorite:

This Is Just to Say

I have pinched
the hand truck
that I happened to run across in
a convenient location

and which
you were probably
saving
for your own future toils

Forgive me
it was so “dependable”
so red
and so obviously up for grabs

—Carl Rapp

Related: Mistakes Were Made, a This American Life episode in which regular contributors (including Sarah Vowell, whom I adore) created their own spoofs of William Carlos Williams. Good stuff.

24 Hour Read-A-Thon Hour 13 Mini-Challenge

I'm a cheerleader for the 24 Hour Read-a-thon this year, and I wasn't going to post anything (I'm dead tired from working all day and going to an A1A concert with my mom tonight), but I checked my Google Reader "one last time" before bed and saw this challenge from Vasillis and said to myself, "Well, one little post can't hurt." See that really long sentence? That's the sleepy talking. Anyway, here's my poem:

"La Reina" - Pablo Neruda

Yo te he nombrando reina.
Hay más altas que tú, más altas.
Hay más puras que tú, más puras.
Hay más bellas que tú, hay más bellas.

Ero tú eres la reina

Cuando vas por las calles
nadie te reconoce.
Nadie ve tú corona de cristal, nadie mira
la alfombra de oro rojo
que pisas cuando pasas,
la alfrombra que no existe.

Y cuando asomas
suenan todos los ríos
en mi cuerpo, sacuden
el cielo las campanas,
y un himno llena el mundo

Sóló tú y yo,
sóló tú y yo, amor mío,
lo escuchamos.

And in English:

"The Queen" - trans. Donald D. Walsh

I have named you queen
There are taller ones than you, taller.
There are purer ones than you, purer.
There are lovelier ones than you, lovelier.

But you are the queen.

When you go through the streets
no one recognizes you.
No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks
at the carpet of red gold
that you tread as you pass,
the nonexistent carpet

And when you appear
all the rivers sound
in my body, bells
shake the sky,
and a hymn fills the world.

Only you and I,
only you and I, my love,
listen to it.

Happy reading! I'll see y'all in about 6 hours for my mini-challenge. :)