Letter to Charles Bukowski No I don’t want to be a goddamn writer for the most part I wish I were a carpenter or a mechanic I wish I had a skill that folks could use I wish I had a job … [Read more...]
5 Poems by Gloria Avner
YOKO AND THE NAKED BOTTOMS I was recruited by a friend in London 1967 a publisher of first edition American poetry a friend of Tony’s her husband (before John) to be in Yoko Ono’s movie … [Read more...]
All the Notes of the World Symphony by Serkan Engin
I am a red Laz boat cruising on the mountains of Kurdistan where my Kurd and Turk brothers are burning by falling on the ground syllable by syllable None of the requiems is able to express … [Read more...]
What to Wake Up For, by Todd Clouser
It lifts me from sleep, from hot wind dream A mute sun in the never winter morning A thought - someone anywhere, you, may read this … [Read more...]
What the Lower Mind Discerns
Computer music from within ...matched in its expressive rhythm by the rattling tin! One of the coolest days in July helps the feelings on toward Autumn's endless sky and leaf and breeze come … [Read more...]
Pagan Days
Prayers are face down and descend in stoic gloom ...what goes up is methane and all of the other various fume and gas which punctuate a tired pain made of a planets sheer exhaust while … [Read more...]
Imagist Socialist Poetry and Objective Reality
[Editor's note: Serkan Engin is a socialist Laz poet-author from Turkey. He aims to launch a new movement in Turkish poetry and to that end has published numerous articles about literary theory, … [Read more...]
elegy by bruno neiva
elegy (in memory of victor esteban celeiro) noir coffee spilled over the newspaper we talked for hours, jobless hours about borders, coups and the icelandic landscape jef costello was … [Read more...]
Two poems: “Ed Dorn Beside the Cloud of Unknowing” and “Fantasia”
Ed Dorn Beside the Cloud of Unknowing His Collected Poems on my nightstand, so thick that there’s room on the spine for his portrait, his face, sardonic behind cheap sunglasses, his life’s work … [Read more...]
Histories of a Small Southern Town / What Happens With Our Greed
HISTORIES OF A SMALL SOUTHERN TOWN Like those young and ardent tragedies which surround ...summer will come and burn with its fury about this small city built on a swamp. It will come and the … [Read more...]
Was Roosevelt Reciting Poetry?: The Need for a New Prosody
In the last ten years, Charles Simic, Mark Strand, James Tate, Stephen Dunn, Franz Wright and Naomi Shihab Nye have published books of prose poetry. Before them, Rilke, Baudelaire, Poe, Whitman, … [Read more...]
At the Carnival of Drunken Poets
I ran into Kerouac at the carnival where those just dead meet those about to be reborn. He and I have wandered through the zodiac again and again, like prodigal suns. Both of us enter this … [Read more...]
The Muse is on the loose
The Muse is on the loose and wastes herself away on some cretin. A severe goer through everyday scandals. It is well worth risking a damnation or two. Almost anything stumbles upon its … [Read more...]
Summer’s Onslaught Edging Into May
Summer's onslaught edging into May bakes this swampy yard. Iced coffee levels out the day outside and the guest room has a bed and fan cool as petals on the water ...the mind is groggy … [Read more...]
Aural Dialectics: On Allen Ginsberg’s Musical Rendition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789) is a collection of illuminated poems separated into two groupings, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, that engage with their … [Read more...]
On Leaving Peru: 5 poems by Todd Clouser
Even the Crows are Colored Here Even the crows are colored here Water in the Sky foots prints to forever rivers While the woman of Betania makes lunch for the hurried thinkers, I am Even the … [Read more...]
The Insides of Argentina
The Humor is Heroic We have just played a concert in a small town in the flat part of Argentina Desert most of the time, moon up by string, half at full scream, other in dust left by a murder … [Read more...]
5 Poems by Sam Silva
A STORY OF GLACIAL WATERS You are a little older than me in years if not in heart. And if you, in the final cup you drink cause the trees and the clouds and the sun to sink I will know again … [Read more...]
Michael McClure at the Walker Art Center, May 1, 2014
MICHAEL McCLURE: FREE VERSE IF YOU'RE IN MINNEAPOLIS ON MAY DAY, JOIN US AT THE WALKER ART CENTER! May 1, 2014, 7pm Walker Art Center Walker Cinema Free tickets available at the … [Read more...]
Keeping the Darkness Out
How fast the sun arrives And disappears, its arc Belongs to yesterday As whiskey and cigarettes Future forward. The night turns to lust To keep the darkness out. We are addicted … [Read more...]