Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
this now
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| Sat. morn final was not my idea |
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| heater broke |
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| nor was this my idea brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr |
thanksgiving 2013 / so late to post
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| me and peacock besties |
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| roadtrip |
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| you know |
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| you know |
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| selfies hayfield |
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| packers hat support but packers looooost |
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| nerds |
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| lucy |
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| work |
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| like daughter like mother |
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| stuff on my GREET |
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Thursday, November 21, 2013
you have a future but no pony. get a pony. -bob hicok
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| din with my pal Scott at le petite grocery. Scott was one of my fav regulars from my hooch slangin days at Agustin. |
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| this is how i feel about school end of the semester. burn out. |
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Cutbank 40th Anniversary Anthology - a poem from Heifer 2008 is included
To help celebrate CutBank’s 40th anniversary we’ve published a unique volume containing some of the finest writing we’ve published over the last 40 years.
It’s an impressive list: Annick Smith, Chris Dombrowski, David Alan Cates, Debra Earling, Ed Skoog, Greg Pape, Jane Hirshfield, Jim Harrison, J. Robert Lennon, Judy Blunt, Karen Volkman, Kim Barnes, Kim Robert Stafford, Mông-Lan, Richard Hugo, Sandra Alcosser, and the venerable Williams, Kittredge and Stafford, among many, many others.
Copies will available for sale at our 40 Years of CutBank event in Missoula on October 26.
For those who cannot attend in person, copies can be ordered online for $25.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Friday, November 15, 2013
Bob Hicok, one of our own HICK POETICS poets doing his thing on Poetry Daily
Why We Must Support PBS
"I didn't think of it as killing them," the executioner
from the late eighteenth century said to Charlie Rose,
still wearing a hood, his axe resting on the wood table
I've assumed is oak. "I don't know how to put this:
it's as if I loved them in the moment I swung, loved them
and wanted to offer them peace." Charlie Rose was smiling,
excited. Even more than usual, the joy of an otter
seemed to be swimming through the long river of his body
when he put a hand on the man's memoir and said,
"But then something happened that made you question
your entire existence up to that point." It was hard
to see the man all in black on Charlie Rose's black set,
as if midnight were speaking, saying, "Yes. One day
I looked down and there was the son I'd never had
staring up at me from the block, I could tell
by his eyes, this was my boy, this was my life
flowing out, reaching beyond the sadness of its borders."
"You knew this," Charlie Rose said. "I knew this,"
the executioner replied. "Even though you'd never been
with a woman." "Never. I was all about career." "You knew
because the eyes tell us something." "Because the eyes
tell us everything." "And you couldn't go on." "No.
I couldn't go on." They changed gears then and honestly
I drifted off, half-dreamed I'd arranged a tropical
themed party on a roof without testing how much dancing
and vodka the roof could hold, people were falling
but still laughing, falling but still believing
there was a reason to put umbrellas in their drinks,
that otherwise their drunkenness would be rained on,
rained out, when I heard the executioner say, "We
were running and running. Finally we made it to the border
and I put my arms around my son and told him, you have a future
but no pony. Get a pony." Charlie Rose smiled
like he was smiling for the otter, for whatever is lithe
and liquid in our spirits, and repeated, "Get a pony."
"That's the last time I saw him," the executioner said.
"And that's why you've refused to die." "Yes."
"To keep that moment alive." "Yes." "And you believe eternity
is an act of will." "Yes," Mr. Midnight said. "Will.
Will and love. Love and fury."
Thursday, November 14, 2013
by the by it's cold in this southern town / gifts from my girlbear Dr DD / Annie & Mike came to town--lots of good eatin
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| in love with this shirt--thank you sisterbear DD |
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| oh my goodness look at these sleeves |
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| my sephora perfume guy JOSHUA hooked me up |
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| these bunnies came to town. din at maurepas. also baccanal. luke. |
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
thanks Don, for the shoutout in SOUND MAG "HOW TO READ A POEM ALOUD"
Read it like someone trying to sound like you. Read it like your parents would. Read it like how you’ll sound in forty years. What parts of it will go missing when you’re old, when you’re your parents, when you can only any longer imitate yourself?
Record yourself again, to have a record of what you sound like. Doesn’t that sound better? Use the webcam again. Aren’t you so charming now? Won’t your future self be glad you took the time to do this?
Now that you’re reading this poem as a record of yourself, try out silly accents. Australian accents are silly, as are most southern accents. If you can manage, do Italian, South African, Minnesotan, and Japanese. Try reading it like Donald Dunbar, all monotone and nasally and lethargic. Read it like you’re more or less educated than you are. Read it as if you don’t know half the words. Deeply, then falsetto.
Read it imitating Catherine Wagner, Ilya Kaminsky, Matt Hart, Joyelle McSweeney, Diana Salier, Abraham Smith, CAConrad, K. Silem Mohammad, Shelly Taylor, Dana Ward. If you haven’t heard all of them reading, go look them up! Find out what poems can sound like.
Start listening to hip-hop. Try to fit the poem into Gucci Mane’s flow. Into Lil B’s, 2 Chainz’s, Waka Flocka Flame’s. Read the poem as if the poet had a new name. Read the poem saying, “I am [poet’s name, original or new],” after every line. Stop listening to hip-hop if you start thinking too much about earnestness and self-parody, minstrel shows. Stop reading Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, C. K. Williams, everybody you had already heard about. Start listening to slowed-down hip-hop. DJ Screw.
Record yourself remembering as much of the poem as you can some hours later, some days later. Think about language as a tradition, poetry as a tradition, entertainment as a tradition, instruction as a tradition, strung along beside humanity and life, and then read the poem as if you’re the worthy heir to them. Read it as if you’re spending your life reading it. As if all life is is sounds, over and over. Read the poem timidly, in parody. Never read the poem timidly.
How do you know if you’re reading the poem timidly?
You are.
Me too. We’ll know when we’re not.
--DONALD DUNBAR
--DONALD DUNBAR
Thursday, November 7, 2013
READING SATURDAY WITH FELLOW LOYOLA COLLEAGUES MARK YAKICH & ANYA GRONER
PXP 2013: Schedule of Events
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
my grrrl Meg Wade has a poem in Phantom Limb
THE AMBULANCE OUTSIDE ISN'T REALLY A MOVING TRUCK
The medics positioned the gurney and shut the doors. Is it a gurney or a stretcher? A structure. I wish it didn’t matter I can’t see you anymore. It’s dark and this old town doesn’t believe in streetlamps. The basement floods, so we keep the important boxes on wire racks. The water rises and the little bridges to my heart become impassible. Maybe I’m in the belly of something. You know what happens to the girl who’s swallowed by monsters? Rescue. Yes, it’s the fisherman who finally cuts the thing open, but it’s always been up to her to crawl out of the dark.
Meg Wade was born and raised in the hills of East Tennessee. She recently received her MFA from the University of Arizona, where she served as poetry editor for Sonora Review. Her work has appeared in CutBank, and online at, The Feminist Wire. She lives, writes, and teaches in Tucson, AZ.
Monday, November 4, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
60 essays done / take up 20 more today
but BUT mama & granny are coming to NOLA on Friday! wooohooo, makes everything all good in the world according to mwah.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
poem from MMM - Tucson ache
Fall in My Garden
For Danielle and Shelly
October
into November—
my favorite time
in the garden.
Here in the desert,
it’s when I feel
most connected
to the earth.
The light softens
and turns golden
as the sun lays lower
in the bluer sky
as it travels
through the day.
The harshness of light
is gone
until June returns.
Like the plants,
my breath deepens—
and slows.
[...]
When I move inside my house
in December—
away from my garden—
a gathering-in happens for me.
I pull the edges of my life
up around me,
only going out
to visit my plants
onthe warmest
of the winter days.
Mary Martha Miles
October 2012
Tucson, Arizona
Saturday, October 26, 2013
TWO ABRAHAM SMITH POEMS UP AT VERSE DAILY! WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!
19
what kept me
from shooting myself
when i was ten
was going to the river bridge
fish like flags that's all
all i have ever had
to say
fish like flags and i probably stolid
that from v woolf
sometimes comfortable
with the current sometimes advancing on it
like life
from shooting myself
when i was ten
was going to the river bridge
fish like flags that's all
all i have ever had
to say
fish like flags and i probably stolid
that from v woolf
sometimes comfortable
with the current sometimes advancing on it
like life
42
mmm long time remembering
the tug of the waters against my ankles
in the days before hairs
something like time is a rinsing thing
or star a alabaster start or
like a river i am always just begin
if how you approach things is clean
then poke this way along
up over the lane where
the creaking and the fans and the more
more belts watch
your fingers around them friend
behind the beautiful rocking
never will quite quit tip
this grace friend
you don't have to wait for what i am talking about
hug me out airy fear manure carts
throwing turkey tail of you know what
till the land stands so green
them golfing radicals
dream and drool
a pillow so heather in linnet
you could wring it and
satiate an birdie
for least one two moon
the tug of the waters against my ankles
in the days before hairs
something like time is a rinsing thing
or star a alabaster start or
like a river i am always just begin
if how you approach things is clean
then poke this way along
up over the lane where
the creaking and the fans and the more
more belts watch
your fingers around them friend
behind the beautiful rocking
never will quite quit tip
this grace friend
you don't have to wait for what i am talking about
hug me out airy fear manure carts
throwing turkey tail of you know what
till the land stands so green
them golfing radicals
dream and drool
a pillow so heather in linnet
you could wring it and
satiate an birdie
for least one two moon
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Monday, October 21, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
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Thursday, October 17, 2013
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