Joanne Merriam » Vary the Line

oranges ar actually a discouraging off color

joannemerriam — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:56:39 +0000

altho yu have 5 or 6
billyun peopul walking around beleeving

that tomatoez ar red they ar
actually blu nd ar sprayd
red

- from “th tomato conspiracy aint worth a whol pome” by bill bissett, which Brianna Brash-Nyberg reminded me of in her Vary the Line post about language poetry.

coorooktoo spiralling into rafters

joannemerriam — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:26:49 +0000

Alba has just published my short poem “Homing Instincts.”

ETA: I’ve posted an update to Vary the Line on ballads, Canadians naming Canadians and the dead brought to life.

None of the muppets were good at what they wanted to be.

joannemerriam — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:05:48 +0000

Reindeer on our neighbour's lawn, December 2008.

New post up at Vary the Line about using traditional songs and verses in your poetry. I started thinking about it because “Angels We Have Heard On High,” a poem about my niece’s reaction to Christmas, was published today.

In other news, it is snowing here in Tennessee. Surely the end times are upon us. It’s actually incredibly frustrating driving here when it snows, because (1) there’s no infrastructure in place to do anything sensible like plow or salt or sand the roads and (2) everybody freaks out because it’s the end of the world and we’re all going to die and (3) nobody knows how to drive in it. I’m convinced that I’m in more danger driving in the 2 inches of snowfall we probably got here than I would be in a blizzard in Canada.

Finally, the muppets were a sublime commentary on the human condition.