Jennifer Acker's Blog, page 119
March 27, 2019
Dispatches from Queens
KC Trommer
I get off the 7 and head home, past the Chase and the Jackson Heights penguin that,/ last week, someone dressed as a bunny, and I’m thinking/ of Frankie’s I-do-this-I-do-that poems, and my phone is dead again and/ I can’t afford to replace it. All I want to hear is Spoon/ singing got no regard for the things you don’t understand/ but maybe, as Lorna said, it’s a gift and there’s a poem across the street/ waving Yoo hoo! Over here! and trying very hard to get/ my attention.
I get off the 7 and head home, past the Chase and the Jackson Heights penguin that,/ last week, someone dressed as a bunny, and I’m thinking/ of Frankie’s I-do-this-I-do-that poems, and my phone is dead again and/ I can’t afford to replace it. All I want to hear is Spoon/ singing got no regard for the things you don’t understand/ but maybe, as Lorna said, it’s a gift and there’s a poem across the street/ waving Yoo hoo! Over here! and trying very hard to get/ my attention.
March 23, 2019
Poetry and Democracy: Part Three
Peggy Robles-Alvarado and Erica Dawson
Seven years I have/ mothered this nature into a woman./ The moon, her crevices, a tree/ the sharpness of her tough skin split,/ the river’s green—refluxing bile./ Eve said, I didn’t need a man to be/ my mother. Didn’t need his rib/God’s hand,/ to be made. I was already every sea,/ the month of Sundays. Tide. The singeing brand/ scarring the sky. Woman. The W./ Cassiopeia.
Seven years I have/ mothered this nature into a woman./ The moon, her crevices, a tree/ the sharpness of her tough skin split,/ the river’s green—refluxing bile./ Eve said, I didn’t need a man to be/ my mother. Didn’t need his rib/God’s hand,/ to be made. I was already every sea,/ the month of Sundays. Tide. The singeing brand/ scarring the sky. Woman. The W./ Cassiopeia.
March 22, 2019
Friday Reads: March 2019
What preserves the book, five decades on, is Anna’s uncertainty and confrontation with these big ideas. How should you make your own life as part of the vanguard restructuring the way people have lived?
March 21, 2019
Ice Lovers
David Rompf
Back and forth every day: a disciplined rhythm of desire, pushing away from her land-bound existence. Did the Houghton boy ever skate over to Hancock to see his girl? No one knows the answer.
Back and forth every day: a disciplined rhythm of desire, pushing away from her land-bound existence. Did the Houghton boy ever skate over to Hancock to see his girl? No one knows the answer.
March 16, 2019
Poetry and Democracy: Part Two
MEGAN FERNANDES
White people don’t like when
you say:
white people.
White people
like to remind you
that you are Indian, not black.
Black people
never say that to you.
White people don’t like when
you say:
white people.
White people
like to remind you
that you are Indian, not black.
Black people
never say that to you.
March 13, 2019
The Stables
JAMES ALAN GILL
So each morning through that spring and summer, my dad arrived at first light and entered the metal personnel door next to the large sliding doors that took up most of the barn’s front...
So each morning through that spring and summer, my dad arrived at first light and entered the metal personnel door next to the large sliding doors that took up most of the barn’s front...
March 12, 2019
Three Torabully Translations
KHAL TORABULLY
Only a gashed murmur of gangue / remains at this crossroads of salts. / I notice the sharp-edged tattoo / of a forked harpoon when my memory festers. / In the black of dawn, pure métisse, / my uprooted flesh will no longer give respite to exiles. / And my life’s only protector is Death.
Only a gashed murmur of gangue / remains at this crossroads of salts. / I notice the sharp-edged tattoo / of a forked harpoon when my memory festers. / In the black of dawn, pure métisse, / my uprooted flesh will no longer give respite to exiles. / And my life’s only protector is Death.
March 9, 2019
Poetry and Democracy: Part One
Lawrence Joseph and Vievee Francis
He will dream/ into existence a raft, a rocket, a fort of mud./ From a cloud/ a gift of horses./ From the sandcastle and moat,/ kingdom and cause. Every boy knows he is a lone king,/ that above hover dragons/ from which he cannot withdraw
He will dream/ into existence a raft, a rocket, a fort of mud./ From a cloud/ a gift of horses./ From the sandcastle and moat,/ kingdom and cause. Every boy knows he is a lone king,/ that above hover dragons/ from which he cannot withdraw
March 7, 2019
Photos of LitFest 2019
Students, professors, alumni, and community members came together in Johnson Chapel at Amherst College from February 28-March 2 to hear National Book Award finalists Jennifer Egan, Brandon Hobson, and Jamel Brinkley speak about their writing process, what writing means to them, and the purpose of writing.
Dread
By JULIA PIKE I lived on Dread— To Those who know Emily Dickinson In Emily Dickinson’s bedroom, a white house dress hangs on a headless mannequin in front of the tiny writing table where she penned 1,789 poems. We traipse through the rooms of the Homestead, where Emily was born and died, and the
