Daydreaming is one thing I do really well. And penmanship. I have pretty nice penmanship. In my head I'm ducking attention, dozing in airports between getaways, and rocking a six pack under my hoodie. Somewhere there must be room for my daydreams to breathe; my head is really getting crammed here. That's when I read [...]
Tag: poetry
So there. I think.
Q: What do you think of National Poetry Month? A: I don’t like it. And the reasons are myriad. It describes itself as being a celebration of poetry, but really it is a kind of hawking and forcing of an art, as though without that push from publicity, the art would not survive. So it [...]
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Found
Browsing literary journals is a good way to keep close to the craft and its trends, sometimes dangerous 'cause you can get caught up in them. Found this a while back while browsing Spinning Jenny, a literary journal: Moby Toby Matthew Lippman I can hear the ocean in my empty Pelligrino bottle. I put it [...]
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Regular
(Daddy, The Twin, The Twin's Husband, and me) Daddy calls himself a “regular” man. I’ve probably always searched for what that self-identification entails or denies him in one way or another from who and how I date to what and why I write. My influences and affectations certainly owe something to him and his “regular-ness [...]
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Metaphors: Mask or Vessel?
Essex Hemphill is a homosexual black man who died of AIDS related complications. That is the quick version of what mattered about his poem (not the one that follows actually) when I assigned it in a course for 18-19 years olds, lots of alpha males in one of the sections and all largely traditional and [...]
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The Missing Piece
The Missing Piece Shel Silverstein (1932-1999)
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Don’t never forget the bridge you crossed over on.
Carolyn Rodgers, one of the greatest poets of the Black Arts Movement, transitioned at the beginning of this month. As usual, I missed it until a writer-friend emailed me about her passing this week. I've already fessed up to being a poor excuse for a poet in my quite fickle love of poets and poetry. [...]
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Shit is complicated and I don’t know what to think…
Yet when the words come (and they do, just like prodigal children) you hope they come out with the kind of resonance that's relevant even outside the specifics. Kind of like this. First Writing Since Suheir Hammad (1973 -) 1. there have been no words. i have not written one word. no poetry in the [...]
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Two Poems by Li-Young Lee
My friend Robin (hey Robin!) introduced me to Li-Young Lee. Check him out: Braiding Li-Young Lee (1957- ) 1. We two sit on our bed, you between my legs, your back to me, your head slightly bowed, that I may brush and braid your hair. My father did this for my mother, just as I [...]
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Red Crayon in a Box of Red Crayons
William Thomas Caine, Getty Images (2003) When we were growing up, my mother never let us identify people by race or class. In conversation with her, the "white girl" in my class had to become the girl who sat in the left corner, carried the green backpack; the "poor" kid became the kid who lived [...]
darlene anita scott 