The Week We Got Rained On

Verily, we experienced some particularly foul weather this week en route from Harriet’s corporate HQ to our neighborhood huevos rancheros connection. But poets don’t limit themselves to the literal, and neither do we. Figurative-language buffs have long known that precipitation can serve as a flexible metaphor, invoking joy, sorrow, frogs, members of a particular gender, even currency in large denominations. (Save your pocket change – no one respects a gentleman for “making it hail.”) So how’s the weather here, really?

It rained “stuff.” HuffPo contributor John Lundsberg argues that, aside from possibly inspiring the iPod Nano, drugs can be good food for poets.

It rained MFA angst, as HTMLGIANT contributor Lily Hoang and a host of commenters wondered if creative writing can be “taught,” after all.

It rained indignation. Since Shakespeare isn’t around to loathe all things “Hollywood,” the NYT’s James Shapiro takes a few potshots on the Bard’s behalf. And! Can you guess how Hank Bukowski felt about censorship? (Note: Stick around for his uncharacteristically uplifting sign-off.) Related! Now that Buk has found rest, this dude carries on his proudest tradition.

It rained hard rock truth. Echoing Woody Allen’s contrarian swipe at Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman” in Annie Hall, scrawny sex symbol and Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker turned in an entertainingly bitchy screed on the limitations of rock lyrics as poetry. This, from the man behind ”I don’t care if you screw him / As long as you save a piece for me.” Artists are so hard on themselves.

It rained 140 characters or fewer. Birds LLC and Summer Browning hit us with “Tweet week.” And a dude with a Twitter account has nominated himself for “baseball’s poet laureate,” perhaps in a well-intentioned attempt to fill the Ozzie Guillen-shaped hole in Harriet’s heart.

It rained cake. Or someone left one in the rain, or something. We copped Emily Dickinson’s stash of cake recipes - we haven’t tried any of them yet, but we have attempted singing them to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Also, we celebrated birthdays. Any birthdays that popped up. One of which once belonged to Anne Sexton, who, for all of her virtues, didn’t fire on eight cylinders.

It stopped raining books on Appalachian inmates. But you can help make it rain again.