Friday, April 29, 2011

Audio: Better Feed the Ghost

Happy almost-May and Multimedia Friday! How was your week?

This week, I wanted to choose a poem from last year (just because I couldn't remember what I was working on then). I landed on "Better Feed the Ghost," from last August, mostly because I like imagining myself plating a beautiful meal for a ghost, as if for a pet (much like a Fancy Feast commercial). You can listen to the poem here.

The artwork is from William Christenberry--I was very inspired by his portraits of buildings and houses that are weathered and somewhat decrepit. What I liked so much about these photos was that the even though the structures were old and sometimes falling apart, there is the heartening sense that these places are hanging on, persisting.

4 comments

  1. This is actually good timing, since it reminds me of Passover and when we leave a little something for Elijah. It's just about the only story I bought into as a child. The screen door of the Bernstein apartment would wiggle gently from the evening breeze, and we'd all look at each other and know what we were thinking at that moment. It's the only time the entire Seder contingent was on the same page.

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  2. I love the idea of ghosts as pets, "bestowed up us."

    Lovely reading, as usual.

    Happy weekend!

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  3. Very nice reading, Hannah.

    I've had the pleasure of meeting Christenberry; he's something of an institution in the D.C. area. He makes a point of photographing those structures at least once a year, always the same ones; he's been doing so for decades. His non-photographic work - paintings and sculpture - is also wonderful. He did an amazing installation the KKK.

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  4. Listening to you read your poem, I get the feeling that what we "plate" our ghosts (I love the term, plate, in this sense), is the attention we pay them, and as you say in the poem, how much we plate them is directly related to their weight.

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