Caelan Tree, current student in my beloved MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation program at Drew, has taken up the NaPoWriMo challenge and is blogging at: tethered here, breathakingly awkward and alive
Another NaPoWriMo blogger!
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Author Archives: thisfrenzy
NaPoWriMo 2/30 Measuring White
Measuring White
White opinions always matter
women’s rarely do.
So she dons a suit of I Am Serious
to discover how white she’s willing to lie
White lives define the Civilized
Black, the dark and wild
White hangs Black art to the sound of Black music
oh Black is still something White loves to buy
White speaks White English grammatically
an accent a sign of the barbarous
White is proud to only know White to choke
on the tongues grandparents forced parents to swallow
White families, the realm of the norm, of bliss
the choice to live queer, abomination
Now measure the cost of the fight to be civil
Gasp at the price of domestication
the measure of White the measure of right the measure of kith
and kin the measure of White the measure of light to see
who is out and who in the measure of White the measure of
might the measure of power that does us all in
______________________________________
2 reasons I am, today, once again, furious about White:
The Apartheid of Children’s Literature
Link
Over at The Book of Kells, Kelli Russell Agodon has posted 30 great writing prompts to help all meet the NaPoWriMo challenge. Find them here – they’re awesome!
NaPoWriMo Guest Dane Kuttler
1/30 April ’14
April 1, 2014 at 11:40am
Dane Kuttler
In childhood, the war is never won;
the basement walls are plastered, leaky wounds,
a damp place to rest your June-baked body, leaning
into the concrete, cold as a kind hand on a fever.
Every exit, an escape or a banishment; your fingernails,
grime and gouge.
Your body is an English pea vine,
curling, white,
in the dark of the second grade coatroom.
You live in mutter and howl, on the wrong sideof every clothesline;
you brandish yourselflike a new jacknife,
like you belong to the heat that forged you.
You are arch and bend, always looking at stubble. You are
the top of the stairs, the second chapter, the breath
before the jump.
Link
Thousands of poets, that’s who! Find out more at NaPoWriMo 2014
Women Write Resistance @ Split This Rock
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Happy to share a reading with a crop of beautiful and brave woman-warrior poets!
NaPoWriMo 2014! 1/30
Waaayy too long away from my own blog doing other business. Now its April and BACK TO WRITING I MUST GO. One never knows where poem-a-day will take one, but this one has been thinking constantly about white privilege, whiteliness, and the sixth extinction, so one suspects a lot of poems exploring whiteliness will be coming out.
First up
Destruction Lies in White DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid
Deoxyribonucleic acid
Deoxyribonucleic acid
we whites refuse to assess disasterDeoxyribonucleic acid
Deoxyribonucleic acid
Deoxyribonucleic acid
acquired slaves so the world we’d masterDeoxyribonucleic acid
Deoxyribonucleic acid
‘til cost was then reappraised—oil
less coins than breeding black flesh, and faster.Deoxyribonucleic acid
the ways that we disconnect from actions,
industrial revolution hiding
the dead and dying. Oh we profit masters!Deoxyribonucleic acid
the ways that we disengage from actions
that we take every day. The world knows,
though—that we are their disengaged assassins
The Title as a Tuner
Great thoughts on what titles can do for poems!
SMU’s annual LitFest
happened last week, and luckily, I was in town for work. I’ve been able to attend at least one reading from this event for the past couple of years, and I’ve never been disappointed. This year, I had the pleasure of hearing
Jamaal May
and
Rob Yardumian
. Yardumian began the reading and quickly captured the audience with his easy style (which, as a writer, you know doesn’t come easy) and his relatable and witty dialogue. May then took the podium and delivered a powerful and moving series of poems from his collection
Hum.
If you’re familiar with May’s work or his book, you know his titles make statements: “A Detroit Hum Ending with Bones,” “The Man Who Paints Mountains and Helicopters,” “The Girl Who Builds Rockets from Bricks,” “Pomegranate Means Grenade”… May doesn’t use his titles as placeholders and they do more than just announce…
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An Animal Response to Poetry
Next up at #poetrylive – Pattiann Rogers “Eating Bread and Honey”
I came across a poem from this 1997 Milkweed Editions book last month and decided to get a copy. Bees and honey poems are always worth a second look here at This Frenzy.
Since it is cold and dark here in Philly on March 1st, with another snow storm headed our way, it seems like a perfect night to read some poetry.
I’ll be tweeting favorite lines as I read, and will work on a summary after.
This Frenzy 