{"id":2156,"date":"2013-11-06T07:01:45","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T15:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/?p=2156"},"modified":"2013-11-03T08:02:09","modified_gmt":"2013-11-03T16:02:09","slug":"steve-potter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/?p=2156","title":{"rendered":"Steve Potter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cForcing twentieth-century America into a sonnet — gosh, how I hate sonnets — is like putting a crab into a square box. You\u2019ve got to cut his legs off to make him fit. When you get through, you don\u2019t have a crab any more.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>–William Carlos Williams<\/em><\/p>\n

Boxed Crab<\/p>\n

Dear Doctor Williams, with all due respect
\nFor worlds of pleasure I\u2019ve found in your verse,
\nOn this account I feel I must defect.
\nI love your offhand lines — \u201cso much for the hearse\u201d
\nFrom \u201cTract\u201d for one — and how you defied the norm,
\nFilled your poems with ordinary speech
\nAnd escaped the strictures of long-standing form
\nExtending by great lengths the poet\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n

But, gosh, <\/em>the twentieth-century whole?
\nA crab so large should be delegged, declawed!
\nWho, dredging such a creature from the shoal,
\nWould not pull back in horror overawed?
\nA crab of such size must be cut to fit
\nBoiled, dipped in butter, eaten bit by bit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Boxed Crab” is reprinted from Able Muse.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Steve Potter<\/a> was active in Seattle’s literary scene as board member and frequent emcee for Red Sky Poetry Theater<\/a> in the ’90s. He performed at events such as Seattle Poetry Festival, Subtext, Rendezvous Reading Series and Cheap Wine & Poetry sometimes accompanied by guitarist Bill Horist or the sitar\/tablas duo Bakshish. He edited an eclectic but short-lived literary magazine called The Wandering Hermit Review.<\/em><\/a> While he keeps a lower profile these days, Potter is writing as much as ever. His work has appeared in journals such as; Able Muse,<\/a> Blazevox, Drunken Boat,<\/a> Galatea Resurrects,<\/a> Knock, Marginalia, Raven Chronicles <\/em>and Stringtown<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cForcing twentieth-century America into a sonnet — gosh, how I hate sonnets — is like putting a crab into a square box. You\u2019ve got to cut his legs off to make him fit. When you get through, you don\u2019t have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[188,101,666,8,138,1],"tags":[742,741],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2156"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2180,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions\/2180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kathleenflenniken.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}