I’ve taken the poetry dare twice—once with Nancy Franson and once with Laura Lynn Brown. Now, I’m sort of hooked. I can’t start my day without it.
My next dare, though, is with myself.
Hello, Megan. Care to join me in going through L.L. Barkat’s collection, “Love, Etc.”?
Love to.
As I’ve done in my previous dares, I’ll write about what strikes me. This first section is from the poem “Bird on the Mountain.”
3
If you would lower
your standards,
eat fragments of Psalms,
not require the aperitif,
the blackberry on the ridge
of a pastry,
pork pulled in trails
across plates.
If you could
be content with knowing
that an empty glass
is an invitation,
you could stop refusing
your fortune.
L.L. Barkat
I know the opening lines came from a workshop she and I did with Julia Kasdorf. L.L.’s talked about the “lower your standards” thing since. Also, the next line of the poem is about eating fragments of Psalms, which was what Julia had us do—she handed out scraps of Psalms and asked us to write from them. I still have the poem I started from that.
I just put the first two and the last two lines of this section at the top of my book document. Right now, my standards are too high. I want it to be amazing. If I would lower my standards to, oh, really good, then I could stop refusing my fortune.
