Fanny
Howe


reading
@


The University of Chicago

Henry
Hills�

Emma�s Dilemma

featuring

Emma
Bee
Bernstein

& friends

Paul
Thomas
Anderson


talking about


Inherent
Vice

Steve Benson


reading
@ Segue


2013

Toma?
?alamun



1941
�
2014

Fanny
Howe


talking
at


The University of Chicago

John
Wilkinson


on


Dylan
Thomas

Nina Simone


on BBC�s Hard Talk, 1999

Nina
Simone


Live at
Montreux, 1976

Nina
Simone


The
Ballad of Hollis Brown

No Coward Soul is Mine by Emily Bront�

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life - that in me hast rest,
As I - Undying Life - have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid

Wendell
Berry
& Gary
Snyder


in Louisville,
2014

Anne
Carson


&
friends


in Seattle

Diane Wakoski

in Grand
Rapids

Charles
Olson


reading


@ the Vancouver
Poetry Festival, 1963

Klaus
Kertess
& Carroll
Dunham


in
conversation @ NYPL

Kit Robinson

reading & talking

@ Canessa Park,

SF 2011

Jennifer
Bartlett

talking on

Larry
Eigner


(note sale on The Collected Poems)

Being here, by Vincent O'Sullivan, New Zealand Poet Laureate

Jane
Freilicher


1924
�
2014

Ralph
Maud


1928
� 2014

Geof
Huth



on Visual
Poetry

Vanessa
Beecroft:



The Female Body
as Art

On
December 10, 2004, I posted the following note here:




It
was twenty years ago today that I last had a drink. Not that anyone�s counting.
Well, as people who know me must understand by now, I tend to count everything,
so why not this? I was seeing a therapist at the time, one Charlie Vella out
at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco, & he

CAConrad,
Jennifer
Moxley,


Lynn
Melnick,
Mark Bibbins


at the
Miami Book Fair

On Sand

                                                 "...Draw 

a line, make it my mouth: I'll name
your country. I'm a Yes man at heart."

~from "The Sand Speaks" (I Was the Jukebox)

These lines are actually an oblique reference to my least favorite idiom, "drawing a line in the sand." I grew up unsure what it meant. I associated the phrase with the Battle of the Alamo, vaguely, but hadn't the Alamo fallen? I did not know the Biblical story (John 8:6), in which Jesus uses the gesture to halt the stoning of a woman. 

So throughout my twenties, I argued with anyone who used the phrase to describe a situation with a hard boundary, or a scenario in which a course of action, once committed to, could not be reversed. I made my case in poetry workshop; at the office of the magazine where I worked; at home, talking to my then-boyfriend.

Why draw the line in sand? I always came back to this. Why not etch the line in stone? Why not concrete? The choice of medium was an endemic vulnerability, the literal promise of a decision's erosion. Sand gets blown away. Sand gets washed away. Sand slips through your fingers. 

The last three weeks have drawn line after line: The failure to indict in Ferguson for the shooting of Michael Brown.  The failure to indict in Staten Island for the choking of Eric Garner. A wave of horrific stories concerning sexual assault at UVA. Mark Strand has died. Marion Barry has died. Steve Cymrot has died. Claudia Emerson has died. 

Amidst it all, an incredible gift as well: an NEA grant. A blessing of confidence in the poems, all of which will be in Count the Waves. A bulwark against debt. 

These are days when everything feels utter. Like anyone, I move through many worlds as a poet, as an alumna, as a DC resident, as an American citizen. All halved in some way, Before and After. As frightened as I am by this feeling, what frightens me more is the notion that it will not last. Martyr, classmate, icon, mentor, friend. How long does it take for any one name to become a footnote? 

I ask that with hesitation, not wanting a genuine unease to lapse into solipsism. "It ?s the blight man was born for," Gerard Manley Hopkins writes. "It is Margaret you mourn for." Amidst the worries of these worlds, my feelings matter very little. 

Still. The practical hours make their relentless march. Pages to proof. Chicken to be cooked. The students of DC need final grades on Friday, even though my poet-heart wants to trek four hours south to a memorial service. I am trying to be responsible. I am trying to burn the candle at one end only. Yet I am trying to change, and be changed, by all that is happening. I'm trying to end up with something more than a fistful of sand.

Shooting Star by Daren Kamali

Tonight a shooting
star
kissed my lips


Its bright spark
shone in my eyes
reflecting love
from the lover in me
My face could not hide
such vulnerability
connecting
affection through my writings
to reality


Tonight a shooting star
kissed my lips






Posted with permission from Daren Kamali
Editor this week: Michelle Elvy











Daren Kamali gets around. A poet of Fijian, Wallis/Futuna

John
Ashbery


reads


The
Skaters

Fanny
Howe,
Claudia
Rankine

&

Maureen
N
McLane


at the
Miami Book Fair

John
Ashbery


reads


Self-Portrait
in a Convex Mirror

Claudia
Emerson


1957
�
2014

Karin
Roffman:


an audio journey


thru John
Ashbery�s


early life in poetry

Mark
Ford
& John
Ashbery


reading
@ the 92nd Y

Talking with



Denise
Levertov

The room of books, by Rethabile Masilo

Every face carries the strife it possesses, and people
wear these like masks to hide the inside of their colour.
You'll see them sometimes, when the dolour of life
is heavy and unbearable, turn away into the confines
of another street. Some wear them against the weather,
like a hat, or a rubber coat, or a pair of old gumboots.
I wear mine like the sun to burn the things that make me,
the tough