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| from the lovely Moonrise Kingdom, a love letter to letters and lists! |
I’ve been thinking a lot about list poems lately. These poems might be explicit lists (and perhaps their title addresses this) of things, actions, or people. But I’m also including in this definition poems that want to gather, to present some kind of collection. These poems might read as an inventory, or a recipe, or instructions.
This Saturday, I’m so excited to lead a workshop on this topic at the Columbus State Writers Conference. I’ll share some list-ish poems with the writers in my workshop, and then we’ll write our own versions. Fun, right?
The pieces I’m considering using (although I won’t use all of them):
-“What the Gravedigger Needs,” Rachel Loden
-“Full of Knives,” Zachary Schomburg
-“Poem Without an End,” by Yehuda Amichai (translated by Chana Bloch)
-“The Car,” by Raymond Carver
-"How to Make a Crab Cake,” January Gill O’Neil
-“Inventory,” Gunter Eich (translated by Joshua Mehigan)
-“Stamp Collecting,” Kathy Song
-“Nine Days,” Suzanne LaFetra (not a poem, but an excellent piece!)
-Google Poetics
So now I ask you, oh readerly and writerly friends—do you have any favorite list poems or pieces to share/recommend?
