A New Bookmash, from Sentence First

I don't know if Stan Carey came up with the idea of the "bookmash," but I picked it up from him, and think it's a pretty great source of accidental or chance poetry.  Of course, the accidental/chance nature of stuff like this "poetry" (not always so great for its actual artistic value) must be taken with a grain of salt, because, indeed, it's pretty friggin' easy for the discoverer (or, as it were, author/poet) to arrange the titles or labels in whatever way works best--or least badly.  What I think is truly great about this kind of art, however, is first that the photographer (an attribution more appropriate, perhaps, than artist or poet) has to make do with the phrases available to him, and better, second, that there is, to those familiar with the source materials, immediately implicated meaning and connotation built into the poem by the authors of the works whose titles form the lines of the poem.  Cool!

Anyway, Mr. Carey posted a new one on his blog, "Sentence First," today, and I think it's my new favorite:

-- and arranged by Mr. Carey thusly:

Black Hole, the long falling

Darkness peering, portable darkness --

Tidal dreams, grotesque dreams,

The holy door on Green Dolphin street.

I teach English, and, really, I'm not even all that good at it!

The more you know, the more you know how little you know.

In the following two areas, I fail about 75% of the time
(to say nothing of all the other areas):

ONE:  While not a constant problem, using literally figuratively still catches me out probably half the time.  (I've been a proponent of Sentence First by Stan Carey since starting this blog.  While his is not the first I've seen discussing this issue, it is excellent and thorough.)  Of course, that half comes generally, though unfortunately not exclusively, from my total English usage, most of which is casual speech, during which times my grammarian self, weak as he is, is less vigilant.  Though figurative literals is not an issue of which I haven't before been aware, seeing it spelled out so precisely and exhaustively fascinates my inner and pathetically dominant nerd.

TWO:  This issue is brand new to me, and I am a little bit embarrassing to admit that, despite its glaring obviousness, I screw this up, as far as I can tell, 100% of the time.  *groan*  Regardless of my pride, however, it's exciting--and by this I mean, I love--to learn this crap, even, or especially, so late as my tenth year teaching.  This is not the first English usage item I've learned via another's blog that will change the way I speak and write ("MISS NOT," at the ever-brilliant Language Log), and certainly, especially considering my general and ever-growing lack (a self-awareness issue, I know) of expertise in my professed area of expertness, will not be the last.

Cheers to learning.