Category Archives: Poetry

Membership Has Its Privileges

One of the joys of signing in to the Humanities Commons is logging out because there is a delightful invitation to return. It takes the form of an illustration and an allusion to a poem by Edward Lear, The Owl … Continue reading

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Bones and Picking

Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto III Stanza 63    But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan,    There is a spot should not be pass’d in vain, —    Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man    May gaze on ghastly … Continue reading

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To Gaze Upon the Glaze

Gjertrud Schnackenberg makes me want to want to read Osip Mandelstam. There is a passage in her poem about the poet that has him restored to health and return to his native city and observe the winter scene. The whole … Continue reading

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The Joy of Summaries

In case you hate the long read … Great poets confront the limits of actual poems, tactically defeat or at least suspend that actuality, sometimes quit writing altogether, becoming celebrated for their silence; truly horrible poets unwittingly provide a glimmer … Continue reading

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Brown Bodies – Resistances

Aleatory curating. The titles of their books: Hana Shafi It begins with the body Maged Zaher the consequences of my body The use of anaphora and repetition: i stayed up all night writing poetry drank my sadness; it was sweet … Continue reading

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Maps of Misreading

Encountering Dense Discourse and Utopian Leanings Tamsin Spargo on Gender Trouble The misreading of performativity as choosing gender, like selecting from a wardrobe, may stem from a utopian desire to evade the compulsions of the binary gender system and heterosexuality … Continue reading

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Escape and What the Waves Cast Up

There was something of a reverberation in the line about the lonely shore and the rapture. Henri Cole “The Constant Leaf” Nothing to Declare […] It is strange how the past holds on to us how the rapture of the … Continue reading

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Some Awesome Flavoursomeness

Ginger Ko Motherlover “Prayer for What’s Close”           Let me stay here in the West please God           Let me live on in shabby comfort           Let me find the tinned tomatoes aisle without wandering           Let me feel safe enough to have children … Continue reading

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Body Less Word More

Nathalie Stephens Touch to Affliction First the invocation of distance… It is not possible in your language to grieve. To touch the lungs that collapse or the bones that break. Water pouring from an unbreathing mouth. It is not a … Continue reading

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Putting the Flash in Pansexual

The poem is built around a catalogue. And ends with an endorsement of self-naming. Which produces a retroactive double entendre cascade. Britteney Black Rose Kapri’s appliance-laden poem “Pansexual” in Black Queer Hoe yes, i do like pans and pots and … Continue reading

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