ModPo

Read her essay on the first nine films in Lumiere here .  Check out how she masterfully weaves ModPo poets and their works into her review. Read her essay on the next 14 films here.    Same as above, but also check out how she riffs about the relationship between poetry and film.   

Let’s go dance (End of ModPo ’13) after reading the first poem my head went numb– have I answered your question? how do I get started? a quick rough sketch, warts and all I think you’re going to enjoy THIS– when they were good they were incredible. Most of us don’t sleep, I’m pretty sure Al doesn’t. Most of these poets would have been sent to the Ministry of Love and vaporized, bourgeois decadence– degenerate art– making sense is overrated. What do you make of her use of windows and doors? What else could she have meant by Paradise? I hadn’t the slightest idea. You’re only disqualified from the group if you forget your towel. Don’t panic. How would one avoid the “splinter” that shunts the brain out of its groove? What do you see? Isn’t any creative work bullshit if you look at it in a certain way? What I assume you shall assume– she leads her alien invasion as Williams dances like a lunatic and Kathleen and the baby sleeps downstairs. I’m not a lit guy, so I don’t know. It’s always a c...

Goodbye but not farewell. We will continue our conversations and social media chats – with new friends, with old friends. And we will continue writing poems: together in small groups, and at home, alone, in the midnight hour that is not midnight, but that floats between isha and fajr - the darkest part of night - when passions die, and distractions fall to the side. The songwriting teacher said all I needed was a thesaurus and a rhyming dictionary – but it hasn’t proven sufficient – and there are no final words, anyway, no bridge, no chorus, no refrain, just a tight hug, a soft sigh, a tender kiss, and a throw-away “see-you-tomorrow,” maybe, if you’re lucky. And all my countrymen are poets, and sailors. No, goodbye is not farewell. There is SloPo on Facebook, and sudden spoon is resurrecting, and the Breakfast Club opera is on track, and KWH is always open, and there are Sunday get-togethers in DC whenever you are passing through. And all our blogs and our websites are up, and NaPoWriM...

Mothers of Poetry Who is this mother? She sits and waits by a window Tears streaming down her cheeks With bratty babe sniffling at her sleeve Is she Jane Austen's melancholy, forlorn side-kick The kind who reads too much weepy Shakespeare By candlelight, on a stormy night? A hopeful Romantic Now withered by form Is her blood noble Or is she strong and brazen Stein-like, contemplating sentences? A wild vixen who shushes grammar Sinister, slinking Sneaking up behind you To scare the daylights out of rhyme Look how she poses Dabbing at her cheek Who are these mothers? Dancing around silky syllables Accenting hazy lines Plying us with Diatribes that never really speak These mothers of poetry Sit, Slumping in overstuffed chairs That never fade with time Forcing a half-smile And with a woeful wink, They wait for us Words pressed to silent lips.

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                         MODPO Modern & Contemporary American Poetry    MODPO MODPOPENN MODPOLIVE                  MODPOPENPOLIVE                            Modern                         Anti Modern                        Green glass                           Spreading                      We are the grass                      Mending the Wall                     Cut up into pieces                and scattered on the ...

Ciao without a Vuvu (to Wallace Stevens, after ‘Farewell without a Guitar’) Spring’s bright promise has come to this. So the thousand-dreamed home fails to show. Ciao, those days. The thousand-dreamed home Speaks to this trumpet of lies At its most venal culmination – A Cape Flats gale, A vast, stark corrugation, In which a cab drives home without its riders, Shades down. The recurrence of recounting, The shunt and shuttles of raw senses Of the riders that were, Are ticking constructions, Of zinc and sun, of state banality And of those others and their desires.

Who said that shelters are there to protect?       Who said that words mean promises?             Who told you that love is forever? I know almost nothing. Just time and distance. I hide, forget and seek. The name of the game is oblivion. I rest in peace. I fly in dreams. I was once crucified. Where is my martyrdom. How many times have you closed your eyes to your death. Is shadow to shade, what loneliness is to solitude. Has love always been an enigma and life a mystery? Where do you plan to raise your voice. In darkness or in light? How to do you plan to raise it? In a song or in a box? When do you plan to raise your voice? In life or after death? Count to three and you will rise, my resurrection. Did you rehearse your today-self yesterday? Is your suit suitable? Did you put on your smile or your grave facade on the morning mirror reflection? Is the mirror reflecting you or are you reflecting the mirror image? Did you have your first sip...

And I die. And I die The Giants I hold up the umbrella of misbehaviour and turn the square axle my dark sky clouds and storms that befit me savory nights the regalia of my Opera where no glittered stars. So wild a den I to complain in my hair disease incurable. My syllables in its leghold trap. Here's the Hunter It was spring, a day! (reprinted here with the author's permission)

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Autumn urban afternoons get shorter and sweeter - standing in the middle of I street I await a very specific angle on the bow as my ship called Earth comes about: a unique perspective on how time passes – in the distance you can see Virginia: but how many beats per measure are there in Standard time? the future is reaching back to join us, to warn us, to help us alter course to starboard so we can pass port to port – the present and the future, like two ships,  passing in a storm. We post to a blog or sing a song: we write some non-rhyming words we call poetry – and time is a social construct a contractual agreement we accept from fear of things we don’t know – dawn to dusk, high noon to the darkest part of night – a 24 second shot clock. We sink a three pointer that leaves a vacuum in its wake – the chain nets echo its refrain. 11/05/2013