Poetry Blog of the Week (13 September 2010) - Poetical Bits

By Larry Patterson

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public — that's what the poet does.”—Allen Ginsberg

The quote above can be found as a front piece of the blog Poetical Bits. Ginsberg, being one of Philip’s poet heroes, the quote sits quite comfortably for the world to see.


Philip Thrift, is a blogging poet offering much on his blog, and has been a blogger since 2008. With an uncluttered and simple design, the reader can truly focus on his works and more importantly, his words. Philip tackles a wide variety of topics in his poetry, from philosophy to technology, an endless list featuring a wide variety of styles and structures to his work. The best way to get a sense of his writing is to view Ominous Obituaries, talking about the deaths of certain things, with the rise of others.

In his introduction, Philip states that he started his blog after stumbling, “across a replay of Robert Pinsky's ninety minute talk about poetry on C-SPAN.” He offers a little information on himself. “I am finding a newly focused appreciation for poems: their patterns of sound and of shape and of sense.” A mathematician in college, not really thinking of poetry, and now, instead of writing “theorems and programs” he writes poetry.

Upon the discovery of his blog, and being captivated by the variety of posts, I came upon Death In A Bookstore .  A poem on a New York Times Article detailing a Barnes N Noble closing down. Philip intermingles funeral rituals and music into the everyday buying of books, creating a stunning look at the possible death of a bookstore chain. I know with one trip to Poetical Bits, you find yourself returning quite often!

(This poem was selected by Larry Patterson.  He is currently one of our contributors and poets found here at Poets United.  If you would like to learn more about Larry (aka Weasel) or read some of his poetry you can  visit his blog "Systematic Weasel".  Larry has been an awesome and constant supporter of Poets United since the begining.  We would like to thank him for all of his hard work.)