Poetry Fix by Mary Karr and Christopher Robinson -- "Digging" by Seamus Heaney -- Episode 9

Author and poet Mary Karr (Liars Club, Cherry, Lit #14 on NYTimes Best Seller list this week) gives a brief video analysis of Seamus Heaney's classic poem "Digging". Accompanied by Christopher Robinson, the two present numerous ever-thoughtful analytical angles to the meanings, tone and of course, the feelings that they get from Heaney's poem.

Episode 9 of a series called "Poetry Fix", this thought-provoking video carries on the tradition of previous episodes which offer no-nonsense study (spiced with quirky personality) on poems from classic modern poets like Robert Hass, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and others.

Enjoy!



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Mary Karr's Poetry Fix - a "YouTube Series" which is catching on...

For all of you Poetry fans, and avid readers -- Author Mary Karr (Liars Club, Cherry, Sinners Welcome, and now Lit - on the NY Times bestsellers list) has been posting a bi-weekly 3 to 6 minute reading of famous Modern poetry and offering a critique - on her YouTube channel.

Since most of my followers are avid poetry fans - "C'mon you guys, you have to check this out!"

The readings are performed eloquently and sincerely, and the critiques and discussions that follow with Chris Robinson are delightful and enlightening. Subscribe to it!!!

Poetry Fix Episode 7

POEM OF THE DAY "Walking Around" by Pablo Neruda

11/6/11 -- We've re-posted this piece as part of our Twitter-Based 100 or so Greatest Poems of All Time series. The reasons are obvious, this poem is one of the great Neruda's most highly acclaimed and recongnized poems. It's refreshing to read it again.

Walking Around

By Pablo Neruda (English Translation of Walking Around by Robert Bly)

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

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