Your cart is currently empty!
Do-Lit-Yourself: Poetry Picnic Baskets
Venturing out into the great outdoors? Why not make your sojourn a little poetic? We’ve rounded up five poetry collections – Subduction Zone, Summer Sport: Poems, The Collected Poems of William Hawkins, Kingdom, and Short Talks – and hosted five picnics to go along with them. In other words, anyone who tells you working in the book biz is hard work is lying to you (but not really). We’ve paired our spreads with a little excerpt from each featured collection: something for your mind to snack on when you need a break from actual picnic planning.
Enviro-picnic
“Fourth Law of Ecology”
from Subduction Zone
The sun doesn’t lift the yellow hand
it has laid on your back. Summer heat
rises from the blonde sweep of grass
to a hawk drawing circles on the liquid sky.
Sporty Picnic
“Umpire Love Poem”
from Summer Sport: Poems
Even if you find
fault with me, let me climb your
ivory tower.
Music Picnic
“Simple Song”
doddle doddle dum
but modal (changes) have not modality.
Music & language cannot contain one another.
I am learning, am beginning to learn,
to be monotonously modal
as I ride out in Notaman Town.
(Black sheep at a) Family Picnic
“Dear Diary: June 10, 1995”
from Kingdom
Linoleum, his mom’s kitchen,
she was grocery shopping.
He didn’t know what to do
so I lay down and showed him.
Beach Picnic
“Short Talk on the Sensation of Aeroplane Takeoff”
from Short Talks
Well you know I wonder, it could be love
running towards my life with its arms up
yelling let’s buy it what a bargain!
***Let us know what you’d take on your own literary picnic – and what you’re reading this summer, besides.