A new poem by Robert Thomas, now at Guernica
Read it HERE.
Teaser:
Fold back your sleeve, cara, so I can see
the lining and the wrist bone’s alp. A girl
in Castello grew white fur on her tongue
when I was fifteen. All but the pink tip,
like a tiny monk’s head, a tonsured pate.
Then the fur blackened, and the monk
grew horribly young.
I review State of the Union: 50 Political Poems for ForeWord Magazine, HERE.
State of the Union is newly released by Wave Books and edited by Matthew Zapruder and Joshua Beckman.
Poets on Poets, edited by Tilar Mazzeo, is a website featuring poets reading their favorite Romantic poems. I am delighted to be included in the latest batch alongside Molly Peacock, Ken Cormier, Douglas Kearny, and Joshua Kryah. I read William Wordsworth's "Elegiac Stanzas."
You can reach the website HERE.
You can read two poems by Brazilian poet Manoel de Barros, translated by Idra Novey, at Guernica HERE.
Teaser:
To enter the state of being a tree it’s necessary
to begin with a gecko’s amphibian torpor
at three in the afternoon in the month of August.
It was lovely to see you all at last week's Guernica salon! Don't forget about Friday's Guernica/Unterberg Poetry Center event at the 92nd Street Y!
Hamutal Bar-Yosef Reading
Friday, September 19th, 8pm
The 92nd Street Y (1395 Lexington)
$10 (for the under 35 or Guernica subscribers)
For more information or to buy tickets, go HERE
Drinks to follow around 9:30 at Auction House (300 East 89th)
Yesterday I received events calendars from both Poets House and the Poetry Society of America. As I glance through them, circling the ones that look great--the PSA's new Poems & Pints reading series at Fraunces Tavern or the Poets House day on "The Intersection of Poetry & Architecture--I am pleased that Guernica has two upcoming events to add to the mix. One of them of comparable literary importance and both promising just as much fun.
Next Thursday, September 11th, Guernica will have an informal gathering for editors, contributors, and supporters at Le Poisson Rouge, a new bar/venue you must check out even if you don't like any of us.
Guernica Cocktails/Happy Hour/Salon
Thursday, September 11th, 6:00pm
Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleeker)
Free
And the following week, Guernica is co-sponsoring with the 92nd Street Y an intimate reading with Israeli poet Hamutal Bar-Yosef. She has published nine collections of poetry. Her first collection translated into English, Night, Morning: Selected Poems, will be published this fall by Sheep Meadow Press. You can read two poems from this collection, translated by Rachel Tzvia Back, at Guernica, HERE.
Hamutal Bar-Yosef Reading
Friday, September 19th, 8pm
The 92nd Street Y (1395 Lexington)
$10 (for the under 35 or Guernica subscribers)
For more information or to buy tickets, go HERE
Drinks to follow around 9:30 at Auction House (300 East 89th)
from Bar-Yosef's "The Well":
I am a poisoned well,
I told the ram
as he flared his nostrils.
Everything in me is poisoned.
Venom flows in my stones.
Guernica is pleased to publish a charming, new poem by Richard Howard. "Only Different" is an epistolary poem about a failed meeting between Henry James and L. Frank Baum in 1904.
Check it out HERE.
This poem will also be included in Howard's latest collection, Without Saying (Turtle Point Press), due out next month.
Teaser: "Bruce claims it would be madness to suppose / these two poles of American Romance / —does What Maisie Knew fit at the North Pole? / The Land of Oz at the South?—could even / hypothesize each other’s existence…"
Guernica is delighted to publish a new poem from Adam Day. Check it out HERE.
Teaser: "We pour the eyes in with a ladle / like post-holes half-filled / with mud-water, tap them in /
with it if we have to."
In July of last year, Guernica published a poem by Rebecca Morgan Frank that has been selected by Mark Strand for Best New Poets 2008.
To read my comments on the poem and (of course) the poem itself, check out Guernica's blog, HERE.
I am excited to announce that a new Mark Yakich poem is now published at Guernica, HERE.
It may be cheating to give the ending as the teaser, but...
"Honestly I don’t understand many / People. But, Friends, if you plan on dying // By your own hand, don’t use pills. Swallowing / Is simply another way of marking time."
section ten of "Mutable and Immutable" by Maya Bejerano translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keller
Teaser: "let me go don’t be a dog / my very dear cage / haven’t we agreed"
