OF WALKING AND

POETRY

Giacometti's "Walking Man"...

Robert W. Greene (From The Ways of Walking)

If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking.
Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.
- Raymond Inmon

THE WALKING MAN OF RODIN

(Carl Sandburg)

LEGS hold a torso away from the earth.
And a regular high poem of legs is here.
Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs
Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear
And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run motors.
You make us
Proud of our legs, old man.

And you left off the head here,
The skull found always crumbling neighbor of the ankles.

From Walking Home

Monica Ferrell

A cold yellow light on the cobblestones, you
Stumble from the bar like a wayward star
Fallen off its chart. October, the darkness
Takes your temperature, pressing a cool moon
Sliver to your fevering brow. You speak the moon,
Hieroglyphs of jade dropping from your stone lips.

Night rises out of the river like a bad Aphrodite:
Jet, burnished as a rococo tomb.
She walks you home, coyly taking an arm,
Dripping her curled locks over your shoulders
As if tonight all your kisses were hers.

...

Walking on Words by Matt Hughes

A poet named Randall Byrd writes verses with thick felt-tip pens and black lumber crayons on sidewalks in his neighborhood, thinking of the sidewalk panels as pages, and cherishing their durability, along with their inescapable visibility, for pedestrians cannot ignore such poems and their progress is like the compulsive turning of leaves in a book.

Although possessed of a poet’s sensitivity, and living a rather lonely existence, Randall is a healthy, husky young man, a weightlifter, who earns his living as a bouncer in a nightclub called “Walt’s Hollow.”

One of his reasons for writing sidewalk poems is the promise it gives of an expanded audience. There are many more people who are unable to resist reading sidewalk poems than will ever actually choose to read poems printed in books or magazines.

From: I'M WALKING BACKWARDS FOR CHRISTMAS

Spike Milligan

I'm walking backwards for Christmas,
Across the Irish Sea,
I'm walking backwards for Christmas,
It's the only thing for me.

I've tried walking sideways,
And walking to the front,
But people just look at me,
And say it's a publicity stunt.

I'm walking backwards for Christmas,
To prove that I love you.

My father considered a walk among the mountains
as the equivalent of churchgoing.
- Aldous Huxley

Dr. Hugo's Walking poems (animation)– Click here