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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Monday, April 12, 2010

thom gunn cats

This weekend I took part in the Seattle Edible Book Festival, as I do most every year. This time my chosen book was Thom Gunn's Collected Poems and I attempted to do justice to "The Nature of an Action": "Here is a room with heavy-footed chairs, / A glass bell loaded with wax grapes and pears. . ." A simple, lovely fruit arrangement, right? Do you know how hard it is to get grapes to behave? (The pears were much more tractable.) Sigh.

Anyway I'm a Gunn convert, you've gathered, a deep fan of his elegant, sensual and immediate voice. I want to send you to his poem "Cat Island." Since it is still in copyright I cannot post it here, but poemhunter.com could.

Cats met us at
the landing-place
reclining in the sun
to check us in
with a momentary glance
... (more)

There really is a Cat Island in the Bahamas.

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