Contemporary Poetry

Jorie Graham's on my nighttable, oddly.

Lynda Hull
Anthony Hecht
Donald Justice

john yau - hawaiian cowboys
michael philips - riding out the dumb silence

dean young

also might add that Crush by RIchard Siken is probably one of the best books I've read in the past year. It is a bit old (99 i think), but...

"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it."

i cannot even approximate proper lines as they appear on the page. Sorry.

Dean Young is fuckin awesome, my friend Marisa gave me a book of his.

from 'atlas' by stephen hines:

Paris isn't all it's cracked up to be and
her geography was tapemeasure endless but he
nodded just the same and to pass the time he
imagined her
spread like a map.

so lately i've been reading poetry. I have a theory abt it. its sort of like abstract painting, there's very little that can be said that will really teach you how to understand it, you just have to see lots of it and start to untangle it all in your head. I always liked things a lot that we did in school, derek mahon, sylvia plath, emily dickinson. I had a couple of books i just reread a lot, frank o'hara, raymond carver. lately i've been buying those little books that are published by carcanet @ the 2nd hand shop near where i work. i read them on my break. My favourites are "the hardness scale" by joyce peseroff and in cinnamon shade by dom moraes. I think maybe i'm prolly drawn to the equivalent of stuff i like abt abstract painting too, symbolism masquerading as formalism, frame-fucking stuff, irony that turns out to be sincerity as well as a kind of lush minimalism. i think i would like susan howe.

susan howe is very brilliant but i am basically a massive dilettante when it comes to this stuff. a friend of mine keeps telling me to read stephen rodefer, so that's possibly my next task. justin katko is good and he is also nice to talk to.

when it comes to 'symbolism masquerading as formalism' then i am not sure how much i can help you. i wish i could.

rae armantrout is the bomb

If yer in London, Simon Armitage is doing a reading from Gawain this evening at the Swedenborg society in Bloomsbury - cheap as well (£3 conc £6 normal I think). I was going to go, but I've been called in to work at short notice, which is exceptionally annoying.

rae armantrout is thePulitzer-winningbomb

i dont know if anne carson's nox is really moving or if i just like things too much

table has a pretty good list in the op

I don't really know too many contemporary poets I just read the denver quarterly every once in a while

I love chelsey minnis though she's not for everybody

i dont know anything about poetry either thats why i was asking. there is a copy sitting on my coffee table, at home, next to a playstation controller & i keep thinking abt pale fire when i ride my bike (xp)

the older I get the more I find myself edging towards the poetry side of the poetry vs. fiction t/s

I wrote a poem for someone and they put it one their fridge and their cat keeps jumping at it and ripping it off their fridge and shoving it under the couch. There's a bunch of shit on the fridge that the cat doesn't fuck with so I don't know why it won't let my poem be.

does everybody have a wave poetry subscription? because if you are into contemp poetry, you really, really should

the poem is pretty bad though it's about a dream I had

anne carson is fuckin ill

really? I hope she'll recover.

self-improvement

whang editorial policy

the poem is pretty bad though it's about a dream I had

i wrote a poem for that ilx thread called epitaph on a pelican wish i had i cat to feed it too

max have u seen "nox"? im not super familiar with her other stuff but its str8 incredible imo - as a classics nerd (iirc?) think ud be really into it

the lover

need to read anne carson; most recent collections I read were mick imlah's the lost leader, matthea harvey's modern life and paul farley's tramp in flames

yo cozen your second link takes me to an epidemiology paper?

ctrl+f

I wrote a poem for someone and they put it one their fridge and their cat keeps jumping at it and ripping it off their fridge and shoving it under the couch. There's a bunch of shit on the fridge that the cat doesn't fuck with so I don't know why it won't let my poem be.

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, April 28, 2010 12:04 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

critic cat is watching you poetastate

Hey, FYI, I wrote something about book design and poetry.

Nice one Eazy!!

The Monster Hour by Zachary Schomburg

On the Monster Hour, there was this monster that used to come out and try to kill everyone in the audience. No one would expect it, not even the producers who were told by the monster he would play a few blues tunes on the piano. The monster would apologize after each show and ask for another chance. I’m planning on telling a few jokes this time he would say, but time after time he’d break his word and try to kill everyone. They finally replaced him with a gorilla dressed up in people clothes that would come out and play the marimba, but they never changed the name of the show. It was always the Monster Hour. I don’t think anybody understood then what a monster really was.

Based on a few poems, I think I like Paisley Rekdal. I definitely like that she's named Paisley Rekdal. I also like that she likes to play.

Self-Portrait as Mae West One-Liner

I'm no moaning bluet, mountable
linnet, mumbling nun. I'm
tangible, I'm gin. Able to molt
in toto, to limn. I'm blame and angle, I'm
lumbago, an oblate mug gone notable,
not glum. I'm a tabu tuba mogul, I'm motile,
I'm nimble. No gab ennui, no bagel bun-boat: I'm one
big mega-ton bolt able to bail
men out. Gluten iamb. Male bong unit.
I'm a genial bum, mental obi, genital
montage. I'm Agent Limbo, my blunt bio
an amulet, an enigma. Omit elan. Omit bingo.
Alien mangle, I'm glib lingo. Untangle me,
tangelo. But I'm no angel.

-- Paisley Rekdal

I like that too! Who is she?

Fun poem, but also a bit paint-by-numbers.

R.I.P Russell Edson

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200403/?read=article_manguso

The Taxi
by Russell Edson

One night in the dark I phone for a taxi. Immediately a taxi crashes through the wall; never mind that my room is on the third floor, or that the yellow driver is really a cluster of canaries arranged in the shape of a driver, who flutters apart, streaming from the windows of the taxi in yellow fountains…
Realizing that I am in the midst of something splendid I reach for the phone and cancel the taxi: All the canaries flow back into the taxi and assemble themselves into a cluster shaped like a man. The taxi backs through the wall, and the wall repairs…
But I cannot stop what is happening, I am already reaching for the phone to call a taxi, which is already beginning to crash through the wall with its yellow driver already beginning to flutter apart

Ape And Coffee

Some coffee had gotten on a man's ape. The man said,
animal did you get on my coffee?

No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me.

You're sure you didn't spill on my coffee? said the man.

Do I look like a liquid? peeped the ape.

Well you sure don't look human, said the man.

But that doesn't make me a fluid, twittered the ape.

Well I don' know what the hell you are, so just stop it,
cried the man.

I was just sitting here reading the newspaper when you
splashed coffee all over me, piped the ape.

I don't care if you are a liquid, you just better stop
splashing on things, cried the man.

Do I look fluid to you? Take a good look, hooted the ape.

If you don't stop I'll put you in a cup, screamed the man.

I'm not a fluid, screeched the ape.

Stop it, stop it, screamed the man, you are frightening me.

A Stone Is Nobody's

A man ambushed a stone. Caught it. Made it a prisoner.
Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the
rest of his life.

His mother asked why.

He said, because it's held captive, because it is
captured.

Look, the stone is asleep, she said, it does not know
whether it's in a garden or not. Eternity and the stone
are mother and daughter; it is you who are getting old.
The stone is only sleeping.

But I caught it, mother, it is mine by conquest, he said.

A stone is nobody's, not even its own. It is you who are
conquered; you are minding the prisoner, which is yourself,
because you are afraid to go out, she said.

Yes yes, I am afraid, because you have never loved me,
he said.

Which is true, because you have always been to me as
the stone is to you, she said.

Derek Mahon dead, RIP.

At the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis in Ireland, Derek Mahon's poem 'Everything Is Going To Be Alright' struck a chord with people. Here is a recording of the late poet reading it | https://t.co/W8qNRoYiee pic.twitter.com/ewbx9xRa1e

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) October 2, 2020

RIP aye