Sunday Afternoon by Robert Bly

Robert Bly read this poem at the reading at Plymouth Congregational Church in May of 2011 pictured above.

Surely there are other poems that mention the Super Bowl, but this is the only one I know. I recall reading this poem in The New Yorker in January of 2010, when there was quite a bit of snow on the ground.

There are a couple of people named Longinus in history, but I grasp Bly is referring to the writer of the treatise "On the Sublime," who lived in either the 1st or 3rd century.

By reading Longinus when the Super Bowl is on, is he just being the poet he's been all his life, or is he being a stuck-up sticky beak who isn't getting with the quintessentially American program of vicarious violence which is the Super Bowl? Your call.

The snow is falling, and the world is calm.
The flakes are light, but they cool the world
As they fall, and add to the calm of the house.
It’s Sunday afternoon. I am reading
Longinus while the Super Bowl is on.
The snow is falling, and the world is calm.



I am also experimenting with using the "noise removal" effect of Audacity to compensate for using the cheap internal laptop microphone.

This poem can be found in the book "Talking into the Ear of the Donkey