You entered the light
Unknowing yet unafraid
You will leave light blessed
Best American Poetry- McClure Kick Blues [by Vincent Katz]Tomorrow, at the California Shakespeare Theater, in Orinda, California, there will be a memorial to poet, playwright and thinker Michael McClure, who passed away in May of 2020. Along with Diane di Prima, of all the great poets we have lost in the past few years, Michael for me defines an era. It’s funny to think of it now, but it’s McClure and di Prima who […]
- The Layers of “To Be” [by Lera Auerbach]Labyrinth - Ink on Handmade Paper by Lera Auerbach The verb “to be” is very short, yet it contains layers of existence. It is possible to hide in these folds – that’s the secret of survival. You share hiding spaces with ghosts, and ghosts become you. You speak for them because, generally speaking, ghosts cannot speak. But you can. Words flood your mind, and […]
- Relevant Nature [by Vincent Katz]In 1928, André Breton published the novel Nadja, loosely based on a brief affair. Text from the back cover the Grove Press edition, translation by Richard Howard, calls the novel “the story of an obsessional presence haunting his life” and goes on to state, “The first person narrative is supplemented by forty-four photographs which form an integral part of t […]
- Sway with Me (Michael Buble) / Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps & Do Do Do (Doris Day)Related StoriesAmiri Baraka Catching Up With Himself [by Vincent Katz]
- McClure Kick Blues [by Vincent Katz]
- World Literature Today
- The Mothers, by Arao AmenyBlack Voices Photo by Mulyadi / Unsplash Series editor’s note: The poem this week, “The Mothers,” by Arao Ameny, is less of a poem and more of an offering, a wanting; here is a space where the speaker has aptly placed two separate groups of mothers—those who have lost sons and daughters due to police brutality, and those whose children are the same police of […]
- On Poetry, Buddhism, and Gardening toward Enlightenment: A Conversation with Chase Twichell, by Chard deNiordInterviews As a longtime admirer of Chase Twichell’s powerfully spare poetry that combines the wisdom of her Zen practice with her sharp perspicacity for ordinary things, I have wanted to engage in a conversation with her for years about the seamless connections she makes between her insights and her memorable expression, between her focus on immense particu […]
- When the Levees Break, by Edwin OkoloFiction Drawing inspiration from the writing of Lesley Nneka Arimah, Edwin Okolo creates a world of birth factories, colossal levees, secret labs, and New Biafra, where we find Ameli, Lotanna’s wife—because he chose her. Those colossal levees, rising from the banks of the Benue, were the features she’d grown to love best in New Biafra. Unlike the obsolete le […]
- Persephone, by Hasan AlizadehPoetry Photo by valkrye131 / Flickr I kiss her & death is the shadow of that loving bird shaking on the pool yet when she turns to look it has flown. * She’s gone, sleepwalking with her kisses cold. * Only a trace of her voice is left —those red pomegranate seeds— on the snow. Translation from the Persian […]
- The Mothers, by Arao Ameny
