from KING OF THE FOREST from City of Moths My friend thinks that poetry has nothing to do with words. Poetry she says, is a mountain. An actual mountain. A thing that fools climb simply “because it’s there.” Poetry is there, but why do we constantly feel the need to prove it exists? To point to it? Like a mountain appearing in the distance. “Be an uncarved block of wood” is what the Sarah Lawrence kids, who hadn’t slept in 40-some hours, still high off ecstasy and acid, sitting Indian-style on the rock, otherwise-silent, would shout at me during tennis matches. They were right. What lies in the uncarved block of wood. Whorls and grains, stories and held smoke. Surrounded by. My block of wood, another person’s mountain. The sound of a finger pointing to some unseen thing. To be reckoned with, or perhaps, reckoned by. Something to draw a [...]
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
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
Sarah Schweig, neighbor to airfields, estrangement, mythology, imagination, opens up about how she came to be a poet of departures. Pardon my inability to pronounce Catullus. Sarah Schweig, Part 1 Sarah Schweig, Part 2
He’s just a west-coast boy, living in New York City, he took the express train to where good poems reside. I must be tired or going insane, but Josh Bettinger is without a doubt on his game in these five poems—five because he claimed they were all shorties, but it’s not long into the interview that we see how stocky these poems are—look at these guys the wrong way and they’ll tear your face off. Josh mentions this movie trailer several times in part 2, he insists you watch it: . Josh Bettinger, Part 1 Josh Bettinger, Part 2
Of course, the first guest on the show to grow up in one of the largest wilderness preserves in the United States, Yosemite National Park, provides me with a photo of herself taken indoors. Dawn Marie Knopf’s poetry feeds off a particularly American mythos: old wives’ tales, Farmer’s Almanacs, the revered stories of American pop heroes before they made it big. Playing both sides of the coin, Knopf enjoys both the extension of these fables to a magical extreme and the reduction of them to a sorry tall tale. Does the ball ultimately land in- or out-of-bounds? Listen to the interview to find out. Dawn Marie Knopf, Part 1 Dawn Marie Knopf, Part 2
I’ve never seen Evan Hansen wear a cowboy hat, but his pensive look in this picture displays the same concern he shows in his poetry for people and the tremendous, unspeakable burdens they carry on a daily basis. While the characters in these poems at times find solace, it is by no means permanent, and Hansen makes us wonder if a lifetime of momentary relief might be the best we can hope for. With that in mind, here’s to the upcoming long weekend providing us all with a little more time to relax our way into the summer. Evan Hansen, Part 1 Evan Hansen, Part 2
The Scattered Rhymes podcast was making itself a home at THEthe. In anticipation of the coming podcast, we are reposting the old episodes from the . Today we’re reposting . Part 1 Part 2