What moves me most in this final testament is how she documents the daunting challenges women poets have faced in the past four hundred years from Duchess Margaret Cavendish (1645) to our current MFA scene.
“When I tell the story about the man who came up to me and opened up his bag and offered me one of a teeming million wiggling ants in his bag, the whole table goes silent and I am reminded all over again how hard it is to get along with the women in this country”
Michael Klein is equal parts flaneur and raconteur, his “verses” lyrically and loquaciously ambling along as he “traverses”…
Culled from the 20,000 poems that he wrote during his lifetime of which 4000 were published, this book collects his Greatest Hits.
He ghosts about the house,
reminding me to take out the trash,
to push the can for pickup,
to find the paper in the bushes,
and to start coffee.
He’d do it, but he’s gone on retreat.
We each practice losing the other.
Favorites: Repeated readings of this text at random will open up new spaces inside your head.
For starters, this collection takes on Mary Oliver, Ronald Reagan, Peggy Noonan, Thom Yorke, Suicide Bombers and iPhone…
This dystopic collection examines what it means to give voice to America via a Puerto Rican vantage point, utilizing new forms and intense repetitions to dizzying effect from chanting and ranting to narratives broken into fractured paratactic lyrics.
Disclosures: For over 25 years, Beasley’s antinomian sermons have renewed my faith in the Art.
Perhaps the secret to adult prayer has been this: the more concrete its particulars, the greater possibility of its actually being heard.
