I spent World Poetry Day this year with two excellent, German-language collections: Grenzwerte by Max Czollek and Mein Name ist Ausländer by Semra Ertan.
Tag Archives: poetry
February Books: Black History Month
A belated recap of what I read last month: Farbe bekennen, edited by May Ayim, Katharina Oguntoye, Dagmar Schultz; Freedom’s Soldiers edited by Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, 1919 by Eve Ewing
Citizen: An American Lyric
“because white men can’t police their imaginationblack men are dying” I reread Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric recently. Published in 2014, this poetic, artistic snapshot of Black life in the US is stunning in its impact and intellectual heft. The book is decidedly not written for white men like me, and can, maybe should make …
Lindau in November 2020
I need a break from the real worldI will live in social media nowUntil I am a word of myself!Away you fly from such a brow! People are just as badThey’ve known the world along that wayBut rent is cheaperSince your own life is a day. A poem inspired byEmily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Sara …
Kaveh Akbar on Poetry
We have to say it in a way that will delight the ear or the tongue or the mind of a reader who will never know us. It’s the only way in. And to do that, we have to be capable of imagining that reader, imagining them wholly, gassy and distracted by their phone and …
the eyes are not reliable. not windows. not mirrors. my ears have eroded, leaving two broken telephones. “what i told the doctor” Sabrina Benaim, from her new book Depression & Other Magic Tricks
“Their language bellows need.”
A sentence like a punch.From Sheryl Lunas “Neighbors Smoke on an Apartment Porch Owned by a Mental Health Agency” Poetry Magazine, January 2018
what if there were a room. or if there weren’t. where violence, historyand euphoria met within and preceded a body.“Room for a Counter Interior”Read the poem by Saretta Morgan in full at Lit Hub.
It’s all about balance. Without my writing, I would feel very isolated. The world is such a beautiful and complex place, and science only has limited access to its wonders. Science is dominated by strict rules which preclude emotions, and I would never allow my emotions to influence my research. So, to balance out my …
What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?The world would split open. —Muriel Rukeyser
