My first and last poem

And then your lids flutter
and sighs betray you.
Cells decompress and
the world levitates off my sternum
where it resides every moment that you’re awake.
No more fire-cured creations will shatter;
no shrieks at passersby,
friends,
pigeons.
No more protecting society from all you would unleash
nor you from all its ills.
As long as those lids press and
breath comes softly
I am at peace.
I should [...]

National Poetry Month part v

Entonces la poesia es mejor en las lenguas otras
Frío
–Jorge Gomez Jimenez
Frío,
blanco, quieto y frío,
indolente y básico
como el frío,
delirante y soso
como el frío,
muerto, quebradizo y frío,
viento, tiempo y alero
como el frío
ritmo de mis días.

National Poetry Month Part iv

The changes between Djuna Barnes’s text of Nightwood and the book actually published are striking and make for an interesting study in political bibliographic outrages.I’ll post a paper on that soon, here or on a new Twentieth- and Twenty-First-century blog some brilliant minds are working on.
Here, from Barnes’s later poetry, a different voice that still [...]

National Poetry Month Part iii

Poetry is a tough assignment for me…I’m a maximalist. I love long, convoluted sentences that explode with words and phrases and reiterate their own machinations endlessly. I slurp David Foster Wallace and William Faulkner and streams of erudite consciousnesses. So poetry is my least favorite literary pursuit.
That said, I’m taking this month to learn to [...]

National Poetry Month part i

A little Modernist cubism to start your month of poetry…
this is painted on our bathroom wall.
To Alice B. Toklas
– Gertrude Stein
Do you really think I would yes I would and
I do love all you with all me.
Do you really think I could, yes I could
yes I would love all you with all me.
Do you really [...]

Books I love, that nobody seems to read.

After our extravaganza about classics we loathe, the erudite blogosphere and I have undertaken another endeavor.
Books we love that nobody seems to know about or read:
(This is harder than I thought it would be, since all my books are in a POD storage facility, waiting for us to either buy or rent, hinging on the [...]