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Category Archives: Poetry
The L Word
By the time I reached the end of this reclamation poem, I chortled. You might say the word lesbian with a shudder, like there are cooties crawling up your back porch. You might say the word lesbian like you’re reading … Continue reading
Poet Master: Computer Tamer
January 22, 2010. NY Times Gary Snyder Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh Because it broods under its hood like a perched falcon, Because it jumps like a skittish horse and sometimes throws me, […] Because I have … Continue reading
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Displacing Display
I will never quite look at a cursor the same way again: […] The arrow-headed cursor points Into space, but glides like a shark between Sandbar and reef […] From Mark Ford’s “Inside” in Soft Sift (Faber & Faber, 2001). … Continue reading
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Machine Poem Mix
Jonathan Ball. Ex Machina. BookThug, 2009. Like Cortázar’s Hopscotch, each section is numbered and, unlike the novel, each line offers a path to read on, a sort of hyperlink in print. [50] The poem is not written by machines. [36] … Continue reading
Invisible Extra Colo(u)r
On John Ashbery Like Wallace Stevens, whom he cites as a precedent, Ashbery favors picturesque titles that bear a quizzical relation to the lines that follow. If his poems were paintings, these titles would amount to an invisible extra color. … Continue reading
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Explosive Ending Expanding
A simple poem about the encounter with gentle beasts, gorgeous ponies, ends with amazing bravura… She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is … Continue reading
Fantasia on a Formula
It’s a formula you discover perhaps after the third or fourth iteration because it is done with variations in the syntax and what appears to be a storyline because of the play of pronouns (I, we, he). The formula is … Continue reading
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Icarian Positions
There is a counterpoint of violence to the invocations of eros in the poetry of Ocean Vuong. Emblematic is the kneeling figure which recurs through Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Don’t worry. Your father is only your father until one … Continue reading
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Stitching
I came across this mash up i.e. poem while doing a search on a string of words for which I wanted more context and took a second look. First the source texts: Artist: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Album: Shahbaaz Track: … Continue reading
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Furnished
Phil Hall in “The Chase” in Conjugation (Book Thug 2016) provides an infinitive that may mistakenly be read as an imperative. To not let poetry be furniture Which the Magic 8 folks at CBC read as a rallying cry. Less … Continue reading