The online version of Verse, edited by Brian Henry, continues to amaze. We are particular thankful to Henry for introducing us to a new(-ish) writer named Tracy Truels, whose poem, “Bedrooms, Glass, and Black Water,” is eight lines of mysterious beauty we are glad to have encountered today. Here are two of those eight lines:
We must take something unknown to our grave so that the ones we love will follow us.
I cannot blame the places I’ve slept. I held onto our bed until it broke like a dam.
At Jacket 2, Barry Schwabsky reviews Amy King’s I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press 2011).
Writes Schwabsky:
[O]ddly vivid yet disconnected fragments [are] registered with greater or lesser accuracy by a good deal of contemporary poetry, but rarely with quite the conviction that King brings to it. . . .
Amy King’s poems are written from a place without an overview. The opposite of Olympian, this poetry is down here with the rest of us, mired in the details, some of which may be tedious while others astonish — a poetry just trying to keep its head in the air, mainly for survival’s sake….
Guest-blogging for Best American Poetry, Michael Schiavo interviews Samuel Amadon regarding Amadon’s second poetry collection, The Hartford Book, published this year by Cleveland State University Poetry Center.
This man is not afraid to tell the Governor where to go.
Three favorite clips:
How has Hartford/Connecticut as a landscape/place affect your development as a poet and the language in your work?
Well, Michael, as you might recall, it can be incredibly lonely. That’s partly what I think of when I think of Hartford. Driving in circles through empty streets and listening to the radio. Sitting by myself at the coffee place. Big empty parks. I didn’t do a lot of writing there, and I didn’t do a lot of reading. But for the part of being a poet that is about being alone, Hartford taught me how to do that. It’s not surprising that I grew up four or five blocks away from Stevens.
Do you consider the Hartford Whalers to be the 2006 Stanley Cup winner even though they won it as the “Carolina Hurricanes”?
No. But I did watch some footage of the end of the last Whalers game the other week, and wept a bit while looking for my dad and me in the crowd. Look I know that teams get moved, and the Whalers going to Durham is nothing like the Dodgers and Giants going to California or anything, but it has to be one of the stupidest and most wasteful thing’s that’s ever happened to a franchise. Rowland thought he’d move the Patriots to Hartford, so he let the Whalers go, and years later I drove by him walking his dogs on the street (when he was getting impeached) and shouted, “Governor, you’re an asshole.” If I saw Bob Kraft, I’d do the same thing.
What was it like to be published in The New Yorker for the first time?
Not to say that poetry hasn’t given me a lot, but it did feel pretty good to pay the last part of that month’s credit card bill with “the money from my poem.” It was unexpected. I sent into the slush for years. Turns out they actually read it.
More awesomeness and hilarity follows, but there’s also discussion of process/craft of writing, etc, if you’re into that kind of stuff. Read the rest.
Noah Saterstrom, “Children & Letters #1”
In addition to frequently donating cover art for Tarpaulin Sky Press book & magazine covers, Noah Saterstrom pencils, pens, paints, and otherwise manifests art daily.
Once a year he makes his “workaday” art/ifacts available for purchase, and on the cheap.
That may be a reindeer, but the point is this: Jen Tynes’s everfab Horseless Press is having a “We Are Thankful” chapbook sale.
Says the press sans horse:
We think it is better to give AND receive. From now until December 10, order any two chapbooks for $10. That’s one for you and one for someone special. Or two for you and it’s the thought that counts….