Do you know who your national poet laureate is?

•  If not, now’s your chance to meet Tracy K. Smith. She says in her interview with The Believer:

In the twenty-first century, when our lives are full of distractions and sales pitches, I think poetry is a vitally rehumanizing force, something that can pull our relationship with language away from the vocabulary of the commercial marketplace and back toward the realm of genuine thought and feeling.

My Name Is Not "Those People"

Amber Tamblyn, "Dark Sparkler"

being

{not spooky}

Our ancestors left their trace

in our blood, bones and DNA.

Essence is our true identity;

Being is born

in the octaves of creation.

You develop knowledge.

Being attracts

experiences you need.

When you awaken

through a succession of events,

you have the capacity of genuine doing.

With new knowledge of Being,

change is possible.

What a world we have imagined,

What illusions we create.

So remain humble.

(from Sleeps with Knives, c 2012)

How to Cook A Ghost!

How to Cook a Ghost (Glass Poetry Press, 2017)

Culinary School, the poem where I write “to cook a ghost, / all you need         is salt / and boiling water” was actually the last poem I drafted. The original idea was to have dinner with this ghost person, until I was like “hey what if I actually cooked the ghost instead?” so I drafted that & I knew that had to be the title.

Logan February is a happy-ish Nigerian owl who likes pizza & typewriters. He is Co-Editor-In-Chief of The Ellis Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tinderbox, Wildness, Glass, Bateau, and more. He is author of How to Cook a Ghost (Glass Poetry Press 2017) & Painted Blue with Saltwater (Indolent Books 2018). Say hello on Instagram & Twitter @loganfebruary.

self-care

Notes Toward a Poem on Self-Care...

Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). 

​start with decisions — take a break from mirrors… decide to stay in bed today and tomorrow… count time only through midnights… isn’t there some voodoo about being the middle child/ of a middle child?… you should Google that… start humming… to broken bones of electrical appliances… that old CD player? yep you can fix it… take on do-it- yourself projects — face cream, shelves, the perfect guacamole, and a Home Alone arsenal just in case a Joe Pesci-like villain tries to arrive… pretend the varnish brush is a stag horn… who needs an app for calm??… be greedy about breathing… be greedy about breathing… avoid phone conversations and relate only through yes and no texts or emails… hey baby, can I be your Melanin Maid Marion? yes … does _____ have a job? oh no girl… is your brother/ father/husband accounted for?… (silence)… yes… if voice is required, realize that he/she/they can’t be your Sun… trust what you can hold in the hand… when we talk the body vibrates… aim for a dinosaur roar when people least expect it… enjoy words like Kilimanjaro and origami… write odes to the Do-rag, … sonnets to the Soul Train line where you dance in military-choreographed precision… so fresh and so clean Outkast, take a look it’s in a book Reading Rainbow…  Jolly Ranchers, your mother’s kitchen table… at any altitude remember that ink can hold the right kind of memory…   VIA

Unknown. Hanging flower arrangement by a mirror, about 1865. Hand-colored albumen silver print. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

human interest

Rodeo Good Stuff
I’m following a truck with a gun rack
and the bumper sticker reads, Take the migrant
out of immigrant, and I think
I’m an immigrant. I think
of the time José forgot Shangxin’s name
and called him foreigner,
and I said, I’m a foreigner
then laughed on the inside, but José
laughed out loud bahaha
because he thought
I was in on his joke. Once,
a young woman on a bus
shot up the aisle
to get a better look at my face
before asking, What ethnicity are you?
But before I told her, I said
on the inside, I’m American.
I run red lights, tail old ladies,
honk at texters while texting.
I have four American flags on the roof of my car.
How many do you have?

from Human Interest by Valerie Bandura
here

my friends

You may order a copy of Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England (2014) directly from the University of Nebraska Press or through amazon.

Here is a complete table of contents. 

go back and read these

plans plans plans

Primary Source - Poet Jason Schneiderman

Dec 29, 2016

Some of your favorites (mine too)

Apprecation Friday: Poet Maurice Kenny: In Memoriam | Dawnland Voices

Monahsehtah
Evicted into the frozen teeth of winter
by the landlords of the plains;
cast into the bloody waters of the Washita
where your father’s corpse flowed in the stream . . .
his manhood stuffed into his mouth,
his scalp made guidon for Custer’s soldiers.
Torn from the band of helpless captive women,
a suckling child, mewing and puking in your arms;
driven by Long Hair to feel out the ashes of the village,
scout out the vital hearts of your people.
Did Sheridan’s eyes admire the loveliness
of your young Cheyenne cheeks?
Did Custer claim you like a trophy until
his civil wife pulled his sweaty thighs
from the Cheyenne Mystery of your life?!
You held your childish hands to your womb
and felt the kickings of a bird, the fledgling seed
planted like so much corn by Yellow-locked Long Hair!
Where did you find the love to mount his cot, knifeless,
or did he find your flesh upon his earthen floor?!
Custer strutted your grave to glory, foolish girl.
Now in the winds of the Washita Valley cottonwoods cry
for the slain Cheyenne. No winds moan in the leaves
for the head-strong girl, daughter of Little Rock,
who followed the pony soldiers.
 
Monahsetah’s Answer
How do I answer?
Do I call, hey you half breed, white man
with blue eyes, you half red man standing
within your breech clout?
You ask why
did I not take my knife and rush it
into his belly allowing his enemy blood
to river into my people's Oklahoma earth.
He called me to his bed.
His tent would be my sacrificial altar.
His body become my demise once my face
had been softly stroked by his hand . . . cold,
clammy; his body. I was his war treasure,
a hunk of gold, a pot of flesh. There was no escape.
In fact his man took my knife and slit an open
run of blood on my arm . . . just to warn
that I had better smile and be content.

Maurice Kenny: In Memoriam | Dawnland Voices

There are some people who I am glad came to this world and left us their words good words great words, words like this... LT

atwood: bored

In the December 1994 issue, for instance, Atwood described being “Bored” not so much as a mental state as a series of mundane physical tasks, sensations, and observations:

                                                                        

BORED

By Margaret Atwood


All those times I was bored
out of my mind. Holding the log
while he sawed it. Holding
the string while he measured, boards,
distances between things, or pounded
stakes into the ground for rows and rows
of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)
weeded. Or sat in the back
of the car, or sat still in boats,
sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel
he drove, steered, paddled. It
wasn't even boredom, it was looking,
looking hard and up close at the small
details. Myopia. The worn gunwales,
the intricate twill of the seat
cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular
pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans
of dry moss, the blackish and then the graying
bristles on the back of his neck.
Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes
I would. The boring rhythm of doing
things over and over, carrying
the wood, drying
the dishes. Such minutiae. It's what
the animals spend most of their time at,
ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels,
shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed
such things out, and I would look
at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under
the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier
all the time then, although it more often
rained, and more birdsong?
I could hardly wait to get
the hell out of there to
anywhere else. Perhaps though
boredom is happier. It is for dogs or
groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored.
Now I would know too much.
Now I would know.

---

Margaret Atwood is the author of numerous books, including The Robber Bride(1993). Her volume of new poems, Morning in the Burned House, will be published next year.

You can read the full poem here and find more pieces by Atwood in our archives.

Tracy K. Smith is the newest U.S. poet laureate

"If there’s anyone who can remind [us] of power of poetry to give people a more nuanced way of thinking & understanding" it's Tracy K. Smith https://t.co/OUctHRK1Wr

— Poets & Writers (@poetswritersinc) June 14, 2017




one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands
Even if it burns.

—Tracy K. Smith, Don't You Wonder, Sometimes?
[Life on Mars @GraywolfPress]

— Christine (@christinelcody) June 14, 2017

Equinox

Link to article and Interview
http://www.timothy-green.org/blog/joy-harjo/

Equinox

I must keep from breaking into the story by force
for if I do I will find myself with a war club in my hand
and the smoke of grief staggering toward the sun,
your nation dead beside you.
I keep walking away though it has been an eternity
and from each drop of blood
springs up sons and daughters, trees,
a mountain of sorrows, of songs.
I tell you this from the dusk of a small city in the north
not far from the birthplace of cars and industry.
Geese are returning to mate and crocuses have
broken through the frozen earth.
Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand
before the jury of destiny. Yes, I will answer in the clatter
of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war
and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead
and made songs of the blood, the marrow.
—from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (W. W. Norton, 2015)

Joy Harjo: Moving Forward https://t.co/pWQpJmQgii

— Terra Trevor (@terratrevor) May 10, 2017

AshiAkira's HAIKU POEMS

Poetry Review BY LT

Wise words are snapshots.  In three-sentence-structures with five-seven-five syllables, in snippets of one man’s movement across the cosmos, Japanese elder AshiAkira shares 496 of these precious moments in his new collection HAIKU POEMS [ISBN: 978-1-4834-6846-4].

As Ashi explains in his introduction, “By catching a glimpse of nature’s work, only a momentary spark, and jotting it down in words as a reflection of our mind, we may get closer to knowing it.” 

Out of thousands he’s done, his first collection of haiku-style was randomly chosen by the 79-year-old poet, and each is as joyful as it is sacred.

34

Wherever you are,

You are watching this same moon

Together with me.

65

Hear sparrows chirping.

I can tell what’s going on.

They can’t keep secrets.

85

Weather forecasters—

Basically honest people,

So I forgive you.

128

Clouds flowing away

Bring my words with you to her.

Stars twinkle like her eyes.

221

A crow on a branch

Watches other birds away

Like a lonely king.

283

Humming of mother

Long ago, but it still sounds

In my gray-haired head.

333

Dragonflies move fast.

They hover from time to time.

They see the world well.

377

Evening subway train,

Many people busy texting.

A child smiled at me.

414

The middle of August,

Anniversary of war’s end.

Hunger remembered.

466

Crows on a tree branch

In black robes like Buddhist monks

In meditation.

He writes:
Since the haiku poems must be squeezed into such a small number of syllables, we need a special poetic license to write them: the license to kill, to kill the grammar. And, for now:

Whatever language

Say it in five-seven-five rhythm

My heart will follow

AshiAkira’s new book is a beauty, a ravishing art, pleasing and easy on the eyes, and lovely to the heart.

Visit Ashi and his writing at his blog: https://ashiakira.wordpress.com/

Birches

Birches:

From our August 1915 issue, Robert Frost’s “BIRCHES"

I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.

I want you to know I'm not back yet but read this poem

i agree

“Writing poetry is a state of free float.” —Margaret Atwood https://t.co/M5FLeTHuhN

— The Paris Review (@parisreview) April 20, 2017

“Reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” —Annie Proulx https://t.co/zRfMzZMQb5

— The Paris Review (@parisreview) April 20, 2017

poetry is everywhere, even in photos

ask me bout my poetry: Going Crazy in New York and San Francisco: An Interview with Poet Julien Poirier

 

Reading these and the other poems that make up Out of Print what struck me was less the ostensive morbidity of Poirier’s images than the searing honesty underlying them.

READ

 

"Should I listen to this ox?"

Poet Leonard Cohen

We're very inspired by Folkways Records’ 1957 collection Six Montreal Poets, an album whose collectibility has grown over the years... along with Canadian Leonard Cohen’s fame. 
As poet, novelist and most influentially as a late-starting singer-songwriter, Montreal’s most celebrated son left an indelible mark on the past five-plus decades. 

Rest in Peace, dear soul... OBIT

relatively speaking

Relatively Speaking.

I 'm related to the amoeba,
I'm even related to all plants,
I have DNA in common
With the bees and with the ants,
I share a common ancestor
With snails and slugs and the worm
With the squid and the octopus,
And myriads of other things that squirm.
I'm related to all the fish
That swim under the sea,
And all the whales and dolphins
Are cousins of you and me.
I'm related to the platypus,
The elephant and the frog,
The tiger and the pussycat,
The wolf and the lapdog,
The mouse, the rat, the squirrels,
The monkey in the tree
And the great ape who waves and smiles
Then throws his shit at me.
I'm related to flightless birds
And those who soar in the sky,
All of them share genes with us
They're all related to you and I.
I'm related to all humans
On planet Earth today
But I never cease to question
Will there ever be a way
For us to live together
In peace and harmony
Or will some of us just keep on hating
Until all of us cease to be?

Tom Higgins 08/05/2015

Mitakuye Oyasin - we are all relatives.. and related... BOOM!