Poetry and Poetics

VII Beneath the black jungle palms, monkeys. They remind me of me, my tools, my cartoon heart that’s shaped like a heart. Other better animals are pronounced as being heavenly, in this native island tongue. I’m not true and I’m not free, I know I should go somewhere official, somewhere right, like make my way [...]

Extract from My Ragged Company, #19 I asked Alice to ask me to marry her. She asked if I wanted to lick the painting on the hotel wall. That’s a poster, I said. Just a paper Hopper: a sad woman in a red teddy sat on a hotel bed reading a yellow letter: He’s not [...]

A selection from Upriver It was a struggle switching over to a citrus flavored toothpaste, but Roosevelt loved her. The more nights he spent at Linda’s place, the less sense it made to keep brushing with just water. She never offered outright, but he used her toothbrush that already tasted mostly like oranges anyway. “We [...]

Just before puberty struck with the force of the furies and made me a moody kid, prone to sudden bouts of gloom and equally sudden bouts of elation, it was discovered that I had a gift for music. The mode of discovery was a cheap 20 dollar Magnus chord organ purchased for my sister at [...]

I think of all the human emotions that call for the gravitas of form, loss, grief, and outrage need it most. In the case of Paul Celan, the complete break down of syntax and logical priority in his poetry was, chiefly, a formal necessity rooted in the murder of his people. He was writing in [...]

I hate when poets are called brave. Gets on my nerves. Fearless is another term I find dubious. Poets win grants. They are professionals. Most poetry festivals are lamer and more sedate than Star Trek conventions. If I pick up a poetry book and see the words “brave” or “fearless” in any of the blurbs, [...]

Etheridge Knight wrote some of the only haiku I can stand in the American idiom. In addition to that, his ear was impeccable, and he was liable to go just about anywhere in a poem so that he invigorates the tradition of the conversational lyric and does so by using mixed registers of speech while [...]