from THE NOTEBOOK
REVENGE OF ALL THAT IS CAPABLE OF BEING REVENGED
Reach into the cloud
architecture, almost to the stars.
I lived where they are made
growing up as a kid.
I just wonder what people
are thinking sometimes,
or what happens to ideas
too un evil to endure.
Out there near the edge
the ferocactus has begun to bloom.
I heard once some skaters
were murdered there.
Today I would only
take advice from an angel.
She says soon you will grow
into a beautiful girl.
Soon you will become a planet,
moons and everything.
Sometimes I feel so happy
I forget I’m going to die,
then I go to the desert
with just my sticks
and wait for the shaman.
He always comes.
And raises a temple up
from the dirt, to give to my life
a gleam of delirium, that I may
accept the final results with grace.
Cardinality 1. The shotgun shines ___radiant history across the mantle. 2. The wind rips through a rolodex of the names of the dead. ___It could be a litany, almost ______like the registers of Audubon societies ___and the Who’s Who of West Virginia 1974 ______begging for a trumpet in morning, a waltz and then a nap ___in the hush of a million miraculously lit libraries. 3. And in waking, ___a waking more this time than a polite not yet to the idea of death, the atom of speech. ___Not like an old man mumbling to himself in baseball metaphor, ______but like a drop of rain in the palm, ___reminding that above there are stars in the continual ricochet of triangulation, ______bodies positioning themselves _________in relation to a reference for which ______we have no analog. But one can take comfort in the miscalculation of the heights of see-saw fulcrums, ___a child running [...]
some of Ken Chen’s poems and find links to items mentioned in the podcast.
some of the poems Colin reads in the podcast and find links to items discussed during the interview.
the poems Solmaz Sharif reads in the interview and find links to some items discussed during the interview.
some of Deborah’s poems here and find links to some of the things Ben and Deborah talk about in the interview.
to see some of the poems Ben Mirov reads and find some other links to items from the interview. Ben Mirov, Part 1 Ben Mirov, Part 2
Mary Karr and Christopher Robinson discuss Weldon Kees’s poem “1926.”
Anthropology, publishing houses in elementary school, estrangement, ants conferencing over Frank Zappa. Morgan Parker describes herself as equipped with the eyes of a surrealist, ears of an ethnographer, tongue of a cynical comedian, and heart of a brooding sixteen-year old. _ _ _ Morgan Parker, Part 1 Morgan Parker, Part 2
Epithalamium with Rust I remember the dream of rust on its own vague terms: dredging the canal as though it were oneself, hoping for trinkets that fix life to a landscape of flowers and trash, and settling for bothering the levee with a stick, notching my time card in the holy city. In the margins of sky and dust––distance specific to the dream of distance–– the thought of water comes on like vanity. It is error, as are the certainties of children, to make much of the dumb bend of sun on copper, to heed what God writes in the sand with his pretty little feet. Crows flood from the factory shell and out over trump ground, into the easy marriage of actuality and nothingness that is the long patina of days, drunk on lawn seed and disquiet. I remember it again, but differently. Archipelagos of debris and glow, stars [...]
Episode 8 of Poetry Fix now available. Related posts: Poetry Fix Episode 3: Pablo Neruda Poetry Fix Episode 1: Robert Hass. Poetry Fix Episode 5: Louise Gluck Poetry Fix Episode 6: Miroslav Holub Poetry Fix Episode 7: Robert Frost
Episode 7 of Poetry Fix: Robert Frosts’s “Once by the Pacific.” Poetry Fix Episode 8: Nicanor Parra Poetry Fix Episode 6: Miroslav Holub Poetry Fix Episode 9: Seamus Heaney Poetry Fix Episode 5: Louise Gluck tagged as Chrs Robinson, Episode 7, Mary Karr, Once by the Pacific, Poetry Fix, Robert Frost, YouTube
of Poetry Fix. Miroslav Holub’s “Ode to Joy.” Poetry Fix Episode 7: Robert Frost Poetry Fix Episode 5: Louise Gluck Poetry Fix Episode 4: Wallace Stevens Celebrating Sylvia tagged as Chris Robinson, Episode 6, Mary Karr, Miroslav Holub, Ode to Joy, YouTube