Showing posts with label Sylvia Plath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sylvia Plath. Show all posts

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Today’s misread haiku

So it was the mush-
room’s black underpants that made
me smile and write this.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
Sometimes misreading something results in something more interesting than the intended word. Anyway, what I was supposed to read was “of the mushroom’s black underpleats” in Amy Newman’s poem Sylvia Plath Is in Paris with a Balloon on a Long String. That’s rather stating the obvious. We all know that mushrooms tend to be dark on the underside, even though it might not occur to just anyone to call that “black underpleats”. But a mushroom with black underpants – now that’s something that makes a leap as prescribed for poetry by Robert Bly.