Jan 1, 2010

Business Guide to Hot Poetry

L.L. here, taking a poetic cue from the world of business.

In his post The Spiritually-Astute Business Leaders Guide to What's Hot in 2010, Bradley J Moore says that collaborative capitalism is in and competitive capitalism is out.

To explain collaborative capitalism, Bradley quotes Green, who makes his point through through poetry...

Way back in 2002—a couple recessions or so ago—I wrote a little article called The Death of Corporations. It basically said companies who competed against each other were, to use Robert Frost’s metaphor, disappearing not with a bang, but a whimper, as commerce gradually begins to operate across and through companies, rather than in the form of mega-goliath companies clumsily “competing” against each other, spouting their platitudes.

If capitalism can get collaborative and take wisdom from a poet's metaphor, then maybe poetry can, in turn, learn from business. After all, the world of poetry has too often been broken and competitive. Some have even declared poetry "dead", much the way Green discusses the death of corporations.

Maybe the solution is to get collaborative. (We at @tspoetry certainly believe that's the case.)

So this week, in a spirit of collaboration, I'm taking the liberty of culling lines from five of you and fashioning them into something new. For New Year's...

"At the Edge"

I remove the last card
from the closet door,
White Christmas is
washing away,

what part of yesterday
do I discard
to begin again;

I smudge

my finger along
new year,
want to join time,
a countdown of my own,

brave the wind,
walk unshivering
into new.

Taken (and sometimes slightly altered), respectively, from Erin's Begin, Laura’s To Begin the Begin, Maureen’s Making New Year’s Resolutions, A Simple Country Girl’s Once Was Smooth, Monica’s Countdown, Joanne’s The Brave New

All RAP Participants
LL's The Weather at Christmas
Glynn's Begins
Linda's Dream
Melissa's hushed
Mom2Six's Quietly Slips In
Sarah's Trying to Start
Maureen's Making New Year's Resolutions
A Simple Country Girl's Once Was Smooth
Monica’s Countdown
Joanne's The Brave New
Claire's Could I Bloom
nancy's december
Louise's Time Passing
Karen's Taste
Diane's Our New Year's Baby
Erica's Dandelion
Erin's Begin
Laura’s To Begin the Begin
Kim's The Backward Glance
Eric's To Begin