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Laura, Toucan Editrice

Friday, December 14, 2012

Poem of the Week: Measuring Time These Days, Nina Bennett

We communicate in song lyrics, seek
safe harbor in words of others. You sing
on my voice mail, I cut and paste
confessions into e-mail. "These days
I sit on corner stones
and count the time in quarter tones to ten"
we dole out desire in snippets.

When you sigh, roll over,
disentangle yourself from the sheets,
I swallow my words, silently
plea please don’t go, let tonight
be the night you choose me.

4 comments:

  1. Beautiful. And what a great ending!

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  2. I was surprised to see a line from one of my favorite songs quoted in a way that doesn't acknowledge its source. "These days I sit on corner stones and count the time n quarter tones to ten" lifted entirely from "These Days" by Jackson Brown, recorded by Nico and others. I get that "We communicate in song lyrics" is a set-up, but perhaps italics or quotes would indicate this is not original language.
    Is the whole poem a cut-up of other sources? I suppose I could google the second strophe, but the author or host should make that effort to clarify.

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  3. I love it! Bill, I think it's clear from the first line that the poet is quoting song lyrics, and I think her use of short phrases qualifies as fair use.

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  4. Bill, the line was italicized and set off with hyphens when the poem was submitted. It is the only direct quote.

    Nina

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