#BlackLivesMatter: Guide to 6 Black Poets Who Have Given Me Strength

Written by Yunqin Wang

In one of the essays of Joseph Brodsky, he declared that at certain periods of history, it might be only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise couldn't be retained by the mind. In a moment like this, when sounds of sirens, voices for justice, cries of victims drum in our ears all at once, I believe alongside donating and speaking up, another thing we could do is to understand. To understand what is happening and the people being involved. We do not want to be suffocated together in this air of bias, violence and intolerance. And these poets, clinging to their pens and sheaves of paper all along, have been paving a long road for this understanding to happen. 

In this article, I’m sharing with you some of the black poets who have moved me deeply. Their influence over not just the literary realm but also the entire human history has proclaimed over and over: black lives matter. 

---

Lucille

Clifton

“won’t you celebrate with me” by Lucille Clifton is one of the earliest poems I have ever read in my life, and it then became a poem that supported me during some of my most difficult times. Clifton, who has experienced segregation and racism firsthand, has offered me with this poem a guide to self-understanding.  

Born in Depew, New York, Lucille Clifton was the first author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, whose judges marvelled at the looming humaneness and moral quality in her works. Many of her poems, including “won’t you celebrate with me”  were written in the 1960s. It was a time when the civil rights movement awakened a new sense of self-awareness of African Americans. As part of this generation of whom had experienced both an historical exile from Africa and a metaphorical exile from the so-called American Dream, Clifton has always sought in her poetry to position herself and her people in relation to the world. Her works emphasized endurance and strength through adversity. 

In this short poem “won’t you celebrate with me”, as the narration goes, the speaker gathers more and more strength from her own experience, more confidence from her ability to stand alone. It investigates reasons for the faltering sense of identity and then overcomes it, thus giving me strength too.

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

---

Gwendolyn Brooks

I was introduced to Gwendolyn Brooks in my first creative writing class in college. The poem we read was “The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith”, the longest poem in Brooks’ first collection, “A Street in Bronzeville”. I was immediately attracted to the poet’s elaborative language which weaves the character’s inner-self and the awareness of the outside world so well -- there is irony, and also beauty. That is Gwendolyn Brooks, she is always clear about who the people she wrote were and what it meant to write about them. And for most of her works, even though her creative style went through different phrases--from tighter to more loosened with less dense allusions--her subject matter has remained unchanged: she looks at the black people who lived in the kitchenette apartments of Bronzille.

One of the most highly regarded poets of 20th-century American poetry, Brooks was the first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize, and also the first Black woman to be assigned the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. Distilling a modernist style through the unique sounds and shapes of a variety of African-American forms and idioms, her works, especially those from the 1960s and later, often display a political consciousness too. I am moved by the unambiguous race pride penetrating through her words which, after so many years, still ring true to the complex poetic details of black people’s lives.

This poem below is from the collection, “A Street in Bronzeville”. Starting with the pronoun “we”, the poem immediately brings out a crowded yet lonely voice of this community living in these close quarters.

kitchenette building

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,

Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong

Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”

But could a dream send up through onion fumes

Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes

And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,

Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

Even if we were willing to let it in,

Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,

Anticipate a message, let it begin?

We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!

Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,

We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

---

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, has been one of the early and enduring influences of Brooks. The conversational and syncopated rhythms, people and personalities, as well as urban settings in Brooks’ works to some degrees owe to Hughes’ influences. And Langston Hughes, a major poet and a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance--the flowering of black intellectual, literary, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of American cities--could be regarded almost as influential an anthologist as he was a poet. Portraying the joys and hardships of working-class black lives yet avoiding both sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes, Hughes’ works have for several generations of readers helped form a sense of an American poetics and the possibilities of African American literature. Through his words, we not only witness moments of race-pride, but also feel a strong sense of urgency, an urgent revelation and belief. Helen Vendler has once commented that perhaps, in this man’s hurried life, “he may have believed the cause was so urgent that it did not leave him the time for that digestion of thought into style that alone allows poetically successful representation of belief.”

Harlem Renaissance

In this piece below, Hughes, adopting a Whitman-style voice performed yet what Whitman could not achieve: he imagines a truly equal place at the table for “the darker brother.” It sings to me how beautiful the black experience is.

I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

---

Maya Angelou

I believe most of us are familiar with Maya Angelou, but she is indeed the figure who should be brought up again at this time. She had a broad and distinguished career not only inside but also outside the literary realm. She is a poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist, working with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She also worked in entertainment, as a singer, a dancer, an actor, and a director. Inspired by her own life and work, also with a firm root in African American history, the poetry of Maya Angelou bears both deep personal connections and the strength to bring out hopes, calling us to overcome any kinds of oppressions. The power of rhythm in Angelou’s verse also indicates her belief that life struggles could be overcome through rhymes and our voices. When she was eight, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend who was killed shortly after. She thought her voice had killed the man and remained mute for five years, but developed a love for language. After all, she knows the great force of both oppression and voice, both silence and words.

Over the course of a career spanning the 1960s to her death in 2014, Angelou captured, provoked, inspired, and ultimately transformed American people and culture. By 1975, Carol E. Neubauer in Southern Women Writers: The New Generation remarked that Angelou should be recognized “as a spokesperson for… all people who are committed to raising the moral standards of living in the United States.” The poem below, written at the time of Black Arts Movement, is indeed calling every one of us in this society to rise, and live above the society.

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

---

Yusef

Komunyakaa

Last night, I put down the poetry collection Dien Cai Dau by Yusef Komunyakaa, feeling like I just had a long dream. It is a collection of poems on the poet’s experience as a soldier at the Vietnam War. Loss, struggle, fear, relations between black and white soldiers, humanity of the enemy… All kinds of emotions flow in this book, in between the harrowing lines.

On April 29, 1947, Yusef Komunyakaa was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana where he was raised during the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. From 1969 to 1970, he served in Vietnam as a correspondent and managing editor for the military newspaper Southern Cross, work that earned him a Bronze Star. Yet it was only in 1984, 14 years after he returned home, did he start to reflect on his experience in the war fields, and we thus have in hand the collection Dien Cai Dau, which means “crazy” in Vietnamnese. I think there must be certain intersections between how Komunyakka in his book reminds us of the struggles of those suffered, mistreated, even forgotten in the war and how today in the Black Lives Matter movements people once again actively start to voice out, listen, empathize. Komunyakka recounted the war experience in a distant yet almost ghostly voice. He is here dealing with some of the most complex moral issues, writing about the most harrowing ugly subjects of the American life, and yet, as the poet Toi Derricotte remarks, his voice, whether it embodies the specific experiences of a black man, a soldier in Vietnam, or a child in Bogalusa, is universal. And through this African American veteran, I have learned, deeply, what it is to be human.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

“Facing it” is the ending poem of the collection, though one of the first poems Komunyakka started out to write about the war 14 years later. Standing before the Vietnam Wall, he confronts his feeling for that history. And while reading I think, we should never turn our nation into a place which doesn’t recognize its own soldiers.

Facing it

My black face fades,   

hiding inside the black granite.   

I said I wouldn't  

dammit: No tears.   

I'm stone. I'm flesh.   

My clouded reflection eyes me   

like a bird of prey, the profile of night   

slanted against morning. I turn   

this way—the stone lets me go.   

I turn that way—I'm inside   

the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

again, depending on the light   

to make a difference.   

I go down the 58,022 names,   

half-expecting to find   

my own in letters like smoke.   

I touch the name Andrew Johnson;   

I see the booby trap's white flash.   

Names shimmer on a woman's blouse   

but when she walks away   

the names stay on the wall.   

Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's   

wings cutting across my stare.   

The sky. A plane in the sky.   

A white vet's image floats   

closer to me, then his pale eyes   

look through mine. I'm a window.   

He's lost his right arm   

inside the stone. In the black mirror   

a woman’s trying to erase names:   

No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

---

June Jordan

In an episode of the “Poetry Off the Shelf” podcast, the host tried to introduce June Jordan but failed to categorize her. He said, “But let’s try. [She is] An African-American bisexual political activist, writer, poet, and teacher. But if you try to look at her through that lens, you will not see all of her.” Toni Morrison, on June Jordan’s career, remarked, "I am talking about a span of forty years of tireless activism coupled with and fueled by flawless art." Back in the 1960s, Jordan was one of the first writers to validate African American vernacular. And I wonder, what would Jordan, who had committed full heartedly to human rights and political activism throughout her life, make of the incidents we are facing today. 

Born in Harlem in 1936 to Jamaican immigrant parents, she is a poet who was fiercely connected to and living in this world. She was so conscious and aware of what was going on politically, and more importantly, had the ability to bring that out into her work. We are constantly challenged by her words, being pulled out to confront this world. In a radio interview before her death, Jordan was asked about her role as a poet in the society. Here is part of the answer, “...the task of a poet of color, a black poet, as a people hated and despised, is to rally the spirit of your folks…I have to get myself together and figure out an angle, a perspective, that is an offering, that other folks can use to pick themselves up, to rally and to continue or, even better, to jump higher, to reach more extensively in solidarity with even more varieties of people to accomplish something. I feel that it’s a spirit task.”

While Jordan has left us physically, the power of her work stays real, transformative, transcending time. To end this article, I will include one of her last poems before cancer took her away. Jordan asks over and over In this poem, “what’s anyone of us to do / about what’s done” and answers through her action both inside and outside the poem. She is sending the message that the effort to do it, regardless of the degree of restoration, is hard but necessary like a laundry, and beautiful. This spirit of bettering the world through art and activism, let us pass it on.

It’s Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean

Poem for Sriram Shamasunder 

And All of Poetry for the People

It’s a sunlit morning

with jasmine blooming

easily

and a drove of robin redbreasts

diving into the ivy covering

what used to be

a backyard fence

or doves shoving aside

the birch tree leaves

when

a young man walks among

the flowers

to my doorway

where he knocks

then stands still

brilliant in a clean white shirt

He lifts a soft fist

to that door

and knocks again

He’s come to say this

was or that

was

not

and what’s

anyone of us to do

about what’s done

what’s past

but prickling salt to sting

our eyes

What’s anyone of us to do

about what’s done

And 7-month-old Bingo

puppy leaps

and hits

that clean white shirt

with muddy paw

prints here

and here and there

And what’s anyone of us to do

about what’s done

I say I’ll wash the shirt

no problem

two times through

the delicate blue cycle

of an old machine

the shirt spins in the soapy

suds and spins in rinse

and spins

and spins out dry

not clean

still marked by accidents

by energy of whatever serious or trifling cause

the shirt stays dirty

from that puppy’s paws

I take that fine white shirt

from India

the threads as soft as baby

fingers weaving them

together

and I wash that shirt

between

between the knuckles of my own

two hands

I scrub and rub that shirt

to take the dirty

markings

out

At the pocket

and around the shoulder seam

and on both sleeves

the dirt the paw

prints tantalize my soap

my water my sweat

equity

invested in the restoration

of a clean white shirt

And on the eleventh try

I see no more

no anything unfortunate

no dirt

I hold the limp fine

cloth

between the faucet stream

of water as transparent

as a wish the moon stayed out

all day

How small it has become!

That clean white shirt!

How delicate!

How slight!

How like a soft fist knocking on my door!

And now I hang the shirt

to dry

as slowly as it needs

the air

to work its way

with everything

It’s clean.

A clean white shirt

nobody wanted to spoil

or soil

that shirt

much cleaner now but also

not the same

as the first before that shirt

got hit got hurt

not perfect

anymore

just beautiful

a clean white shirt

It’s hard to keep a clean shirt clean.

---

*Sources: Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, and back covers of the poets’ poetry collections are referred in the introductions above. Photos are from internet.

Try This Rain Meditation For Spring Showers

By Lucy Cheseldine

When I think of New York, I think of rain. It’s chasing a year since I spent time in the city working at The New York City Poetry Festival and still my freshest memories are of falling water. I can smell the dank subway on my way home from Central Park’s deep puddles; from a deli doorway on a quiet street I watched the city sink. Rain feels right in isolation. It isolates. It pushes us inside and keeps us in rooms with its sudden showers. Or it sets us to daily tasks with taps that sound out the rhythm of steady work. Rain is homemaker and caretaker. It prompts conversation. I remember speaking with a doorman who recommended over and over his mother’s Cajun cooking as if, when the rain stopped, we might celebrate together with dinner. Rain is ceremony and birth: it washes out and cleans corners. To rain we open our mouths in the hope of its blessing, forming words as we go. But rain silences too with its war-like pelting, scattering the city to shelter. Rain leaves no people out, showering without discrimination, but it shows who we’ve left out from the safety of high windows by soaking the discriminated. It can be an angry divinity. Rain is like lock down; rain is like illness; rain is like life. Rain is Spring’s never timelier gift. 

It’s little wonder that so many poets have taken rain as their subject. In Elizabeth Bishop’s “Song for a Rainy Season”, rain is a collector of images to “the ordinary brown/owl” and “fat frogs”. Its drops of water domesticate and summon a democracy of the forest:

House, open house
to the white dewa
nd the milk-white sunrise
kind to the eyes,
to membership
of silver fish, mouse,
bookworms,
big moths; with a wall
for the mildew's
ignorant map;

This house, “beneath the magnetic rock/rain,/rainbow-ridden”, opens onto the world. Her quaint lyric is “rainy”, harmless and intermittent, and its various intruders are most welcome. But only for a time, “For later/era will differ”. The world will move one, leaving us behind, “no longer wearing rainbows or rain” as “waterfalls shrivel/in the steady sun”. Our place here is temporary. Today, in our closed houses, such knowledge feels close. For Bishop too, knowledge is like water. As she tells us is in “At The Fishouses” it is “historical, flowing, flown”. Rain and its element can make a slippery case for existence. 

For Wallace Stevens rain is also a passing in his poem “Sunday Morning”:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; 
All pleasures and all pains, remembering 
The bough of summer and the winter branch. 
These are the measures destined for her soul. 

 Unlike Bishop’s porous house, there’s an integrity to Stevens’s “passions”. Rain is a necessary release, pulling our internal life towards lived experience. It’s hard to find these moments confined to the high-rise flats and human tracks we’ve made of our cities. But perhaps now is as good a time as any to ask how we’ve been measuring what’s “destined for” our souls. Another comfort I take from this poem, at a time of potential boredom, is the unstoppable nature of human drama. While these fits of feeling can be trying and difficult, I think Stevens knew too that in another sense our inner life provides the most constant and vital form of activity, even entertainment.  Much like the rain. Or as William Carols Williams writes “so much depends/upon/a red wheel barrow/glazed with rain water”. Like his language, so much depends on our material banalities being a passage to grasping what we can’t touch.

During the pandemic, as I sit inside watching the world through drips and drops, I have the uncanny feeling that instead the world is watching me. The empty streets ask questions and the trees want answers. Or they don’t. Their vacant stares are I-told-you-so. At a time of uncertainty and vigilance, I turn to Philip Larkin’s “The Whitsun Weddings” to think about what we need to leave behind, who we should watch out for with greater care, and who we should stop watching. His rain is elsewhere but it is going to fall, and when it does, the hope is change:

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,   
And someone running up to bowl—and none   
Thought of the others they would never meet   
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.   
I thought of London spread out in the sun,   
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across   
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss   
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail   
Travelling coincidence; and what it held   
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power   
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower   
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

Travel Around the World During Self-Quarantine

Written by Yunqin Wang

As the pandemic ravages the world, my plans to travel to Seattle, Wyoming, Austin, as well as back to Asia seem to have been postponed indefinitely. Looking back the past month, I realize that the only trip I’ve made was a 10 minute walk to the closest grocery store. Yet, within that 10 minute, I found I was feeling upset about not just the prospect of not being able to travel, but also I miss the “city” so much -- the New York bustling with life, news and videos of events happening all over the world. 

Thus, I thought this would be a good time to recommend some of my favorite films about other places and times -- since why don’t we take this time to just give ourselves a temporary escape? Or, more realistically, to decide the next city we’d love to land on?

New York, USA  - Frances Ha (Film) 

As the name suggests, Frances Ha tells the story of Frances Halladay, a 27-year-old apprentice dancer who lives in New York. Her life is upended when her roommate decides to move out, and she finds herself unable to afford the rent alone and has to find new places to live. She moves to Chinatown and shares an apartment with two other friends, and at the same time, keeps struggling in her dance career. Although filmed in black-and-white, Frances Ha has always been one of my favorite New York films as it portrays the life of young dreamers in the city so movingly. Through the picture and the amazing soundtrack, I keep getting reminded of the bustling energy of the city, and what’s more, some of the most amazing human interactions which I sometimes think could only happen in New York.  

Paris, France - Before Sunset (film)

“But you have to think that Notre Dame will be gone one day.” This film made in 2004 almost made a prophet of the heartbreaking Notre Dame fire. Opening inside the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Before Sunset invites us to go on a tour along Marais district of the 4th arrondissement, to a French cafe, then the Promenade Plantée park, and finally on board a bateau mouche from Quai de la Tournelle to Quai Henri IV. The process of the production was almost like planning the most romantic touring route in Paris -- a route that closes “before sunset”. Wouldn’t it be nice to travel back to Paris in the early 2000 again — the time when Notre Dame was still intact — and to be bathed in music and sunlights?

Hong Kong, China - Made in Hong Kong (film)

Part of director Fruit Chan’s “1997 Trilogy” which celebrates the reunification of Hong Kong, Made in Hong Kong centers around Autumn Moon, a low-rent triad living in Hong Kong. With his encounter with a girl who committed suicide, he starts his journey of finding meaning in his hopelessly violent existence. While the film is considered as a low-cost independent production for it is made from lots of left-over film reels, I found extreme authenticity and a sense of realism in the picture. We see streets of Hong Kong, stores along the street, absurd but moving life stories… To me they are not only an intimate portrait of Hong Kong, but also a symbol of the anxiety people were facing back then — an anxiety and insecurity that could be universal. 

Venice, Italy - Death in Venice (book/film)

As our protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach, travels to Venice for health reasons, he becomes obsessed with a beautiful boy named Tadzio who is staying with his family at the same hotel on the Lido as Aschenbach. With Gustav’s arrival in Venice, we soon hear the water, see the gondola, begin to embrace the sand and the ocean. There is calm in Venice: the waves, winds, delicate meals. There is passion too: music and festivals in the hotel, men and women lying on the beach. There is certain pain, as the problem of health penetrates throughout the story, and yet there is more importantly, love and beauty. While I was reading the book, I was constantly reminded of Keats’ poem, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”. How I want to be in Venice, and feel the summer breeze bringing all those beautiful scents and life to me. 

Buenos Aires, Argentina - Happy Together (film) 

My all-time favorite film by Wong Kar-wai, Happy Together is about a couple who comes to visit Buenos Aires hoping to renew their relationship. In Buenos Aires, they took a road trip to the Iguazu Falls, but on the road, went into an argument and broke up. They thus came back to Buenos Aires and stayed there for a while separately. Throughout the screen, the agony of love interweaves with the tango, the music, the colorful nights of Buenos Aires. While watching, I can’t help but call Buenos Aires a true city of passion. I don’t want to spoil the film, but by the end, we will get a glimpse at the sublime Iguazu Falls, and what’s more, also arrive at Ushuaia, the south-most part of Argentina which bears a breathtaking view. Happy Together tells a journey from the most vigorous Buenos Aires to the cold end of the world, and at the same time, a journey of two lovers.

These Poets Went Online and You’ll Never Guess What They Did

Staying at home was alright at first. There was writing to catch up on, books to read, pets to keep us company, and a bountiful selection of movies to watch. Everything seemed good to go once we settled into it. Plus, we already had practiced social distancing as teenagers social distancing from our parents. But as time went on, this independence morphed into feelings of boredom and loneliness, not to mention it might have been time to brush our teeth. We realized that amid this peculiarity and isolation, the artistic community needed a way to come to grips with this new reality. There needed to be a program that helped artists whose income had depended on the ability to perform. So, The New York Poetry Society decided to spend time under the blue hue of the internet’s pixelated glow and devise a plan.

With poets plenty, hopeful of getting their words out into the hearts and minds of literary lovers, Poet Stream was created. What’s Poet Stream? Glad you asked. It’s a literary video-chat service in which poets share their original poetry with individuals and small audiences in homes around the globe! Pretty cool, right?

 Poet Stream has a quirky group to pick from - witches, a medium, a deathrock dandy native, two clownish poetesses dying to tell you about their swamp Yankee grandparents, and more. If you have a hard time picking which poet to choose from (we don’t blame you), artist photos are provided on Poet Stream with each poet’s bio, work sample, & personal appointment calendar. The good news is you don’t have to pick one! And if you ~love~ your live reading, you can keep coming back for more by booking recurring appointments with the poets on the daily (or even weekly or monthly).

 If you’re in a pinch for time, between your movie marathons, trying to decide if you’re Team Edward or Team Jacob, and writing the next bestseller, you can book a quick 10-minute session. However, if you have a bit more time on your hands, Poet Stream also offers 30-minute and 50-minute sessions. We’re hopeful that this project will alleviate feelings of separation, isolation, boredom, and loneliness for both artist and audience no matter the amount of time.

 Feeling shy from not seeing anyone for a while? Us too… if you’re a bit camera shy, consider gifting Poet Stream to a friend or family member instead! PSNY is also giving away free Poet Stream sessions to folks who are 65+ (don’t worry, we’ll tell everyone you’re not a day over 23 if you prefer).

 Well, what are you waiting for? Wherever you are, Poet Stream is only a few clicks away! With accessible poetry readings, washed hands, and standing 6-feet apart, let’s go anti-viral together.

Click here to go anti-viral!

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It's Pisces SZN

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Illustration from a Japanese children’s magazine. 1930s.

Hello Piscean Poets (and poets of all other astrological sensibilities), 

On February 19th we said goodbye to the season of Aquarius and welcome in the days of the fish. Pisces is all about compassion, imagination, artistry, and the thinning of the veil between the boundaries that the world may often create between us. 

Pisces is governed by Neptune, the planet of dreams and the subconscious and so it is no surprise that some of our most favorite and famous poets have been channeling the power of their sun sign, Pisces. Pisces is the Zodiac's twelfth house and so it champions healing (as most poems do in their own way). 

Some poets with Pisces birthdays are Cesar Vallejo, Jack Kerouac, W.H. Auden, Gertrude Stein, Ovid, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

And to celebrate...enjoy this poem about a fish.

The Fish

Elizabeth Bishop - 1911-1979

I caught a tremendous fish

and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

By: Kate Belew

You Won’t Believe What These Poets Said About New York City

New York City is a place where creatives flock in order to make their mark. With its magnificent bridges and towering skyscrapers, who wouldn’t draw inspiration from the city that never sleeps? We’d like to share with you a few poems in which NYC has been highlighted. Enjoy!

“My Sad Self” – Allen Ginsberg

“on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind,

          its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men

               walking the size of specks of wool”

Read the full poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49307/my-sad-self

“Walk about the Subway Station” – Charles Reznikoff

“Walk about the subway station
in a grove of steel pillars”

Read the full poem here: https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/walk-about-subway-station

“Dawn in New York” – Claude McKay

“The Dawn! The Dawn! The crimson-tinted, comes
Out of the low still skies, over the hills,
Manhattan’s roofs and spires and cheerless domes!”

Read the full poem here: http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=370

“On Broadway” – Claude McKay

“The rainbow lights of Broadway blaze

All gay without, all glad within”

Read the full poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44695/on-broadway

“February Evening in New York City” – Denise Levertov

“As the stores close, a winter light

    opens air to iris blue,

    glint of frost through the smoke

    grains of mica, salt of the sidewalk.”

Read the full poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42535/february-evening-in-new-york

“The New Colossus” – Emma Lazarus

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch,”

Read the full poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus

“Gamin” – Frank O’Hara

“All the roofs are wet
and underneath smoke
that piles softly in
streets, tongues are
on top of each other
mulling over the night.”

Read the full poem here: https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2007%252F06%252F27.html

“Let Me Please Looking into my Window” – Gerald Stern

“Let me please look into my window on 103rd Street one more time—
without crying, without tearing the satin, without touching
the white face, without straightening the tie or crumpling the flower.”

Read the full poem here: https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2014%252F04%252F04.html

“On Mother’s Day” – Grace Paley

“In those days in the afternoon I floated   

by ferry to Hoboken or Staten Island   

then pushed the babies in their carriages   

along the river wall   observing Manhattan   

See Manhattan I cried   New York!”

Read the full poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48319/on-mothers-day

“Second Generation: New York” – Langston Hughes

“Remember Third Avenue

And the el trains overhead,

And our one window sill geranium

Blooming red”

Read the full poem here: https://www.unz.com/print/CommonGround-1949q1-00047

“Manhattan” – Lola Ridge

“Out of the night you burn, Manhattan,
In a vesture of gold –
Span of innumerable arcs,
Flaring and multiplying –
Gold at the uttermost circles fading
Into the tenderest hint of jade,”

Read the full poem here: http://www.ourdailyread.com/2018/10/poem-of-the-week-manhattan-by-lola-ridge/

“Union Square” – Sara Teasdale

“With the man I love who loves me not,

I walked in the street-lamps' flare;

We watched the world go home that night

In a flood through Union Square.”

Read the full poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46011/union-square

“Mannahatta” – Walt Whitman

“City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!

City nested in bays! my city!”

Read the full poem here: https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1881/poems/271

Playlists, Podcasts, and More on Spotify for Poetry Lovers

Who doesn’t love female poets? Listen to the beautiful, intelligent, and influential voices of poets like Joy Harjo, Margaret Walker, and Elizabeth Bishop. This playlist is perfect for when you first get up, while you’re working, or even on your subway ride back home after a long day. Who are we kidding… this playlist is perfect for all hours of the day and night. We could live and breathe listening to this playlist alone. What are you waiting for? Try it out yourself.

Looking for poems, you could stumble across and listen to forever? Want the familiarity of poets like Richard Frost, E.E. Cummings, Max Eastman? Well, look no further. This playlist has all of them! While the playlist might not have the rise and fall in the speaker’s voices like spoken word poets, the words are by no means less powerful. You may suddenly find yourself in summer in the countryside or stumbling along on a winter night.

This specific playlist is a bit more expansive. Or fun for the whole family might be a better term to use? With wide-ranging options, you might be listening to spoken word poets like Sarah Kay, then suddenly switch over to Sylvia Plath. There are even poems interspersed with music from artists like j’san. If you’re adventurous or describe yourself as a little on the wild side, we recommend you take a look. Who knows what you might find!

Ready to take a trip to Elizabethan England? Pull out all your silks and furs, you can even add some buckles for your shoes. This playlist is Shakespeare all day and all night. If you aren’t able to make it to The Globe, close your eyes, and this might just do the work for you. Many of the pieces are also ready aloud by The Marlow Society. So, if you’re craving even more Shakespeare, their account is on hand to guide you through Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Henry IV, and so much more.

Olivia Gatwood and Melissa Lozada-Olivia have a lot to say and a lot of questions too. Navigate topics like yeast infections, true crime, and menstrual cups with these internationally renowned writers and performers. These ladies are relatable, funny, and ready to talk about the hard-hitting topics the world needs to know. What’s more, is if you donate to their patron page, you can get access to their newsletter and secret recordings…

Poetry Unbound, guided by Pádraig Ó Tuama, is a great way to immerse yourself in creative thinking, reflection, and poetry all at the same time. The goal of this podcast is to take a single poem and allow the listener to anchor their week in it. With new episodes on Monday and Friday, this podcast will make sure you’re grounded, while enjoying one of the best things the world has to offer (poetry, duh).

The Poetry Society is one of Britain’s leading art organizations paving the way for “a more general recognition and appreciation of poetry” since 1909. This specific podcast on Spotify explores the ins and outs of poetry concerning craft, poetry happenings, conversations with poets, and so much more. If you’re not only ready to hear poetry be read aloud but truly immerse yourself in the world of poetry, then this playlist is for you. Prepare your ears to learn more than you ever thought you could about this art form.

Who says that poems can’t be your friends? Arguably some of our best friends at PSNY are poems. The Poetry Exchange argues that poems are vital pieces of your friendship circle, whether you know it or not. How sweet! Each episode is made up of a conversation with a person who speaks on how a specific poem has been a friend to them. Looking to add a few more friends to your inner circle, well, The Poetry Exchange has got you covered.

Looking to add some spoken word poetry to your life? Look no further. You might have stumbled across Button Poetry on Youtube before. Why not take a look at their Spotify account too?! Listen to some great spoken word poets like Sabrina Benaim, Rudy Francisco, and Blythe Bard on the reg (as the kids say). Become accustomed to the melodic way these poets exhibit their craft for the world to hear.

Last but certainly not least – did you know we have a Spotify account? Every month we craft a playlist for our fans with artists like The Zombies, Chet Baker, and Bob Dylan for your listening pleasure. While we love poetry here at PSNY, we figured why not shake it up with a little music too? If you have a Spotify account, we would love it if you stopped by and looked around at our picks!

Have a playlist, artist, or podcast we missed that you love? Make sure to let us know, so we can shout it from the rooftops. We want everyone to know about the world of poetry on Spotify!

8 Shocking Truths Your Doctor Won’t Tell You About Poetry

1. You’re at Risk for Metromania

Metromania, otherwise known as an obsessional enthusiasm for writing poetry, be careful when fostering a deep love for poetry. One minute you’re writing a few verses down, and then the next minute, it’s 4am, and you’re hunched over your desk trying to find a metaphor for the subway. Not a good look. We all want to develop our craft, but make sure you keep up on your hygiene and have other passions outside of poetry. Maybe go for a walk outside and get some fresh air? Read a book? Go bird watching? Whatever floats your boat.  

2. You May Suddenly Come to the End of the Sidewalk 

It turns out the cracks on the sidewalk aren’t the only thing you should be worried about when you’re walking around. There is said to be a place where the sidewalk ends. Most children know where it is, but make sure you keep your eyes open for where the chalk-white arrows go. Imagine, one day, you’re walking back home from the library and local farmer’s market, your nose stuck in Wuthering Heights expecting the next step to carry you home, but instead, you’re tumbling into the abyss. It could be just like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, or it could be worse. Your mother will blame it on technology, saying, “Those kids never look away from their damn phones.” 

Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends”: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/shel_silverstein/poems/14836

3. You’re at Risk for Developing a Deep Fear of Ravens 

One night in bleak December, there is a chance you may be grieving for your late wife Lenore, but instead, a raven will come tapping on your chamber door. At first, you may think that it’s wind and nothing more, but you will find it perched on the bust of Pallas. While it’s hard getting over a loved one, having an omen of death in your study may not be the ideal house guest. Furthermore, poetry, while full of rainbows and puppies (while objectively cute), is also full of darkness and mysticism, so be wary. And don’t forget, “Nevermore.” 

Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven

4. You May Want to Live Alone 

Maybe it’s in your room on the second floor of your house? Emily Dickinson wrote poetry in her room for the last twenty years of her life apart from society! Or maybe it’s in the woods recording Transcendentalist interpretations of nature like Henry David Thoreau? Writing poetry is something that is typically done alone, and there are many great poems about solitude. However, be warned, one too many days away from society can make anyone a little loopy. At least give your mom a call via carrier pigeon, so she doesn’t worry. 

5. You May Have to Choose Between Two Roads 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to get lost in the woods and find yourself trampling through the woods trying to find a way out. It happens to the best of us. However, alarmingly many people immersed in poetry find themselves divided between two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And who’s to say which one is the best one to take? The way that most people follow or the road less traveled? Ultimately, you’ll have to decide which beaten path to follow.  

Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken

6. Occasionally You’ll Come Face to Face with Death  

You might start seeing visions of phoenixes or have death stop for you on the side of the road in a carriage. Death may occasionally strike a bargain with you or knock on your door. Either way, in the world of poetry, death will most likely have some sort of presence in your life. Don’t worry, having a relationship with death can be a powerful force in a poet’s life. Rumor has it that Sylvia Plath was even able to rise from ash! 

Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49000/lady-lazarus

Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not Stop for Death”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47652/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death-479

7. You Will Start Comparing Your Lovers to a Summer’s Day 

Forget babe, honey, or sweetie, all those ways you’ve been addressing your significant loved one will go out the door once you’re involved in poetry. The new best way to show love to your partner will be to compare them to a summer’s day. Truthfully, their eternal beauty will never fade, so why not state the obvious attributes of your lover. However, you’ll have to get crafty with the metaphors and similes before you run out of time. 

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: https://poets.org/poem/shall-i-compare-thee-summers-day-sonnet-18

8. You Might Have a Strange Descent Into Your Elderly Years 

Hang onto your youth while you still have it. One minute you’re running around and living out your childhood. Then you’re spending your money on brandy and summer gloves, and suddenly life has flashed before your eyes. Your eating habits will shift into the ability to eat three pounds of sausages or only bread and pickle for a week! The good news is that you won’t have to buy any more clothes since you’ll be wearing purple for the rest of your life! 

Jenny Joseph’s “Warning”: https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/warning/

Interviews with Tina Chang and Lynn Melnick

Lucy Cheseldine sits down to chat with Brooklyn poets, Tina Chang and Lynn Melnick, to talk about their work, advice for aspiring writers, and much more.

Tina Chang

Cheseldine:  Hi, we're here in Brooklyn with Tina Chang, one of our headliners at the New York Poetry Festival this year. And we're just going to have a little chat about what brought you to poetry and how you became to be a poet. 

Chang: Yeah, I started off as a poet, probably in college, where I started to get the scary feeling that I was maybe very interested in poetry. But I didn't really know what that kind of life would be like, and I thought (and my mother thought) would be a very finically insecure life. But then as time went on, I tried different jobs - I was in the fashion editorial field, and I was really sad. And I thought let me think back to a time where I was very happy, and it was when I was in college and in a circle discussing poetry. And I thought I have to find a way to get back to that place. 

I decided to apply for an MFA, and I just happened to get into schools in New York. And that meant for me that I should stay in New York. And then, I studied, and then right after that, after publishing my first book, my career just started taking off on its own. And I think it just followed a natural trajectory after that, where I found myself more and more immersed in the poetry field. And yeah, I think that's how it happened, and in terms of the Brooklyn Poet Laureate, that was such a surprise. I mean, I think I was pregnant with my first child, and I was very focused on being a mother.

And then, my husband was reading the newspaper, and he said, "Oh, there was an advertisement here that they're looking for the next Brooklyn Poet Laureate. And there are poets here on the list they are thinking would be a great person for the job."

And I said, "Am I on the list?"

He said, "Let me see. No, you're not."

And I thought, "Maybe I shouldn't apply."

He said, "Well, that's just a journalist… you should still apply."

But I forgot about it. And then a few weeks later a committee got in touch with me.

And they said, "We're really looking far and wide for the next Brooklyn Poet Laureate. We would love for you to apply."

So literally overnight, I applied, and I realized everything I was doing up until that point was really leading up to that position.

And I interviewed for it the next day the Brooklyn Borough President, who was Marty Markowitz, called me up on the telephone and said, "Good morning Brooklyn Poet Laureate."

So, it was just this beautiful prize that came out of nowhere that motherhood and being the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn happened at the exact same time. So, they say be careful what you wish for because it all happened all at once. 

Cheseldine:  That's fantastic. And did the position kind of change your relationship to Brooklyn? Did it strengthen it?

Chang:  It really did strengthen it. I think that before I became the Poet Laureate of this burrow, I wasn't quite aware of how much was happening in the burrow. And then, when I got the position, suddenly, I was being welcomed into all of these spaces. And I realized there are spaces in Williamsburg, there are spaces in Dumbo, there are spaces in all these pockets of Brooklyn where so much good work in poetry is being done. There is poetry for pre-K (for kids) that are just beginning to learn words and learning how to read. There is poetry for those who suffer from Alzheimer's disease. I mean there really are so many different services being offered. And so many communities that welcomed me in and offered me a scope and picture of what it was they were doing. So, more than anything, I feel so honored that so many organizations welcomed me into their space to say - This is what we're doing every day on behalf of poetry. These are the projects that we have, and we want you to be involved in some way. It's almost an embarrassment of riches. There is so much happening in Brooklyn, and I don't think I would have been aware of just the range of how much is being done unless I had this position. 

Cheseldine:   And did that influence your most recent collection of poetry hybrid, which is this kind of connection? There's a lot of disjoint in the collection as well as there is a sense of community. 

Chang:  Well, at the heart of the collection is just urban living. It's this idea of living in New York and what that's like. And I think just being here, I've been here my entire life, outside of traveling for readings and maybe a stint in San Francisco for two to three years, I'm really a New Yorker at heart. This is where I live, this is where I breathe, this is where I fell in love, this is where I found my family, so everything I know is here. So, it seemed very natural after I had my child, I wasn't necessarily searching for a topic to write about. I was just very naturally writing about my family. What started out as reading fairytales to my son and daughter really kind of turned into a different kind of myth about how children are living today. Especially children of color. And what seems like safety for some is not for others is I think our current political situation is teaching us. Not everyone is created equal in this country. And I think that as I was writing it in this urban environment, that is Brooklyn, that is New York. I was thinking about not only the backdrop but the environment, the setting, that someone like my children are living in right now. Is it safe? Is it truly safe? We're surrounded by beauty, it's calm, there are trees, there are brownstones. But then there's a different kind of life for a child of color, and I think that the setting of New York played a big part in that. 

Cheseldine:  Did your identity as an Asian American woman play into that or as your identity as a New Yorker?

Chang:  I identify as so many different things - that's another that I've learned. We identify as women, definitely, especially in this current administration, I definitely identify as a woman. But I think as an Asian American woman, it actually took me a really long time to find out what that meant. I think because I spent a long time, not necessarily denying it, but not really understanding what it meant for me until I also reach college. I realized that everybody that I was studying was either from America or the UK. And I had never studied an Asian poet, I had never studied an African poet, I hadn't studied a good majority of the world. And I only came to realize that in college (because of) wonderful teachers. But there was definitely something lacking in terms of the type of background I was being offered. And it was after I graduated that I saw the lack, and I tried to fill up those pockets by educating myself.

And what that really meant was heading out into New York City, looking for different reading series, basically living at the library, living at bookstores, talking to people. I was really in charge of finding what I was missing. And so, I found an organization called The Asian American Writer's Workshop which helped me to discover, that I'm Asian American. And there is such a breath, and such a range, of writers that I could be discovering. And it felt like it was just the beginning and I think it was back in 1991 that I discovered them and just the whole world opened up for me. Where I could be really proud of who I was, where I could read other Asian American poets, and know that the world reading was actually so large. 80% of what I was reading had actually little to do with me. You know I think that I searched for a long time in terms of what could even be a notion of who I was in literature, which I never saw before. Strangely very few of my teachers presented that to me. But I also think that they gave me enough of a background and enough of a knowledge of poetry to be able to head out there to do it for myself. 

Cheseldine:  Do you have a nugget of advice for aspiring writers?

Chang:  Well, I got some really great advice a long time ago. I think one of the greatest pieces of advice that I got from my graduate schoolteacher when I was leaving Columbia – I was really hesitant to leave because I had such a wonderful experience there. I was scared to go out to the world and be on my own. 

And I said, "Can you give me one more piece of advice?" 

And he said, "Well, never stop writing."

And I thought it was the simplest piece of advice, and I said, "Is that advice?"

And he said, Absolutely. 80% of your class will stop writing over time because it gets too difficult, because life gets hard, because they have other responsibilities, or they have a family or other aspect of their lives. Be the 20%."

And that professor was so right because really only 20% of our class continued on and continued to be published, poets. And the other 80% went on to do really wonderful things, but it wasn't poetry. So, I think that was a lesson to me that number one, my professor knew a lot, and that the simplest idea that he planted in me really grew. And in those moments where especially as a young poet, there were lots of moments where I could have quit, I think it did seem like life was harder. It did seem like life was telling me to turn in another direction and try something else. And maybe try something a little bit more lucrative and a little bit more stable, and had I not had those professor's words somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I would have done something different. I might have wound up in the fashion industry or done something that seemed a bit more sensible. And I think that now it's later, it's 20-30 years later, I think that everything about me is not sensible and I needed to adhere to that. So, his piece of advice and my piece of advice to sort of add to that for any young poets, poetry is about writing very, very well and studying your craft and doing all that you can to understand this beautiful art form. But in addition to that, it's also about a person's tenacity. A person's will to want to continue on in this very, very difficult art form. And also, a very difficult industry or career because we do have to support our self through this. I think it's just that aspect of it that feels very difficult, so if someone can persist through all of that, then you know the art form and the career get to marry one another. And I think that is the piece of advice. I hope I can pass on to someone since it has been incredibly valuable to me. 

Cheseldine:  Well, I'm glad you kept writing. 

Chang: Thank you! I'm glad I kept writing too, thank you so much. 

---

Lynn Melnick

Cheseldine:  We're here on the Highline with Lynn Melnick, one of our great poets, who's going to be reading at the New York Poetry Festival. And we're just going to ask a few questions about poetry and what the city means to you.

Melnick: Thanks! Thanks for having me.

Cheseldine:  Thanks for being here! So, so much of your poetry is about the intersections of your life. I was wondering how you draw the line between being a writer and having experiences in the world, and where that sits?

Melnick: Well, that's a good question. Mostly what I write is autobiographical. Most of the time, I sort of write my ancient history, so it doesn't really interfere with my current life. Sometimes, I write about things that are happening right now, but I'm also sort of dreadfully good at compartmentalizing. So, I just sort of put all the crap in the poem, and then I can go off and be sort of a functioning person like 80% of the time.

Cheseldine:  So, lots of your poetry asks, when we should speak, when we're allowed to speak, and when we're not allowed to speak. And I just wondered how your roles as a teacher and an activist, and your world in the arts, play alongside your role as a poet as well?

Melnick: Because I spent so much of my earlier life, not speaking, actually speaking up in my poetry saved me and used to save me. And I felt really strongly about just writing my truth and telling my story. And it sort of spills over into my life as an activist because I can't shut up about certain things. It all sort of blends together, it's all of a piece. In my personal life, I feel the need to say what is true to me. I think to acknowledge certain truths even when they're painful is what will ultimately make them right.

Cheseldine:  I was wondering about your relationship to revise your poems and the writing process if you could tell us a bit about that.

Melnick:  I love revising. Revising is my favorite thing, and I think that I drive my students crazy because I make them revise a lot. When I write, I sort of vomit everything out onto the page because if I don't do it quick enough, I feel like I'm going to miss something that I need to say. And then I shape it endlessly. I tinker with things endlessly. That's why I'm slow at writing because I want it to be absolutely perfect. Revising, I think it is exhilarating. And that's what I try to tell my students. You can take something good and make it extraordinary, and why not do that. It's so worth it, and it's exciting, it's my favorite hobby. I think it's addictive. And that's actually a problem too. Because then I turn to my manuscript and then I'm like, well let me change this one word or this column and then it's a book.

I emailed my editor a few months ago, and I was like, "If we go into another printing, can we just maybe change this one piece of punctuation?"

She's very patient. She was like, "Sure."

But it is addictive because art is living, and it can always be made better. And the feeling that you're never done with something stressful but also comforting at the same time.

Cheseldine:  So, I wanted to ask you a bit about your Americana in your poems, this kind of pick-up trucks and rusted basketball hoops, and what your relationship to that nostalgia means?

Melnick: That's a good question, and that does come into my last book, Landscape with Sex and Violence quite a lot. And in my next manuscript even more so, which I wrote after Trump was elected. And so, I was sort of talking a lot about Americanness and what it means. I also lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s, which I think was a particularly horrible time for American pride and a particularly horrible place for it. Like we felt really good about ourselves while the country was just sort of going to shit. And I think those are the images that are so much in my last book of the things that we were supposed to be very proud of and feel really good about but were really just really dark and horrible. And so, the kind of idea of Americanness versus the reality of Americanness is something that I'm always interested in. Just like I'm always the same way with anything that I write about – the sort of lies we tell ourselves about who we are personally, and also about our country, and fellow citizens, and all of that. Because the last book what I was writing about was so much part of the uncertain part of the time during the 1980s, it was the tail end of the Cold War, and we were kind of winning. Everyone was feeling really good about ourselves, it sort of brought out the true grossness of pride in ourselves. Because America is a shit show. We're sort of seeing that more now that we're in this mess in with Trump, but it was always there. Now the bad parts are just free to announce themselves and crap all over us, instead of doing it privately.

Cheseldine:  Now, please say some nice things about New York City!

Melnick:       I have almost but nothing to say but nice things about New York City. I love New York City. I've lived here for 25 years this month. I definitely believe this city saved me, and I love it. It's always surprising to me, it's always energizing to me, I'm raising my kids here, which seems like a gift. I had this wonderful moment where I was driving in from the airport, we were going along one of the side streets, all the way from Queens to Brooklyn where I live. And we passed like every neighborhood and all different kinds of people. And I was so filled with this desperate love for this city. I was like I can't believe I feel this way. Like I'm constantly falling in love with it, and I can't imagine feeling any different. Plus, I don't know how to drive, and this is the only place in America where you don't need a car.  

Cheseldine:  So that must be really good for your writing, that kind of constant beginning and refreshing. Is there any particular reason why you like to write?

Melnick:  You know I mostly write at home. I don't have a desk. I write on my couch. Lately, I've been taking my laptop to coffee houses because my kids are home for the summer, and they're driving me bananas. So, I can write in a coffee shop, but I prefer to write at home because it feels safe to me, and what I write about are really unsafe scary things. So, I don't want to be sitting at the library crying or having this sort of overwhelming moment. And also, when you're writing at home, when you get stuck you can just go do dishes or something, which is very helpful for me. But the city is very inspiring to me. I don't write a whole lot about it. I tend to write about what complicates me and what makes me confused and anxious. I almost always feel completely in love with the city, so I'm great at love poems. That's why I start writing more about Los Angeles than New York City. But obviously, New York has shaped me, I've lived here longer than anywhere else. It feels like home to me. I feel comfortable here.

It's hard to write about it when you're in it, it's like I was saying before. Most of what I was writing about is mostly ancient history for me because it's hard to write about trauma or really almost anything when you're right in the middle of it. I've done it a couple of times, but that distance is nice. But also, just being in a place that just makes me feel so safe and loved. Like I do feel very loved by this city. To me, it's like a living thing. Not to be corny, but to be a headliner at the Poetry Festival is really special to me because New York is my heart.

Cheseldine:  On that note, do you have any corny advice for the corny aspiring writers?

Melnick: Making it in the city and just existing in the city is just really hard. I've lived here for 25 years; I'm still barely making it. As far as writing goes, I always tell this to my students and my younger students find this horrific – I published my first book when I was thirty-nine. Which you know, when you're twentysomething sometimes, it doesn't happen right away. The type of poems I was writing were not trendy for a long time, and people weren't all that interested in what I did. But you have to be true to yourself, so you write what you write for you. It's not that I don't want people to read it because I do, and I want people to buy my books, but I also need to write what I need to write. So, I guess that leaves me with the other thing that I would say, which is that as a writer, even just as a person, you know who you are. Don't forget who you are and don't let other people define who you are. I think that's a risk because we want to fit in, and we see other people succeeding, and they're writing this kind of poem, and we want that, but I really think we know who we are. How we write and how we're supposed to be writing for ourselves, and so that would be my advice. Stick with it and don’t expect that everything is going to happen right away. You can still be old like me and still publish your books. It will still work out fine. Not everyone will get everything right away.

I think it's hard because social media makes it look like everyone is doing all these really wonderful things all the time. This is not true, like five people are doing really wonderful things all the time, I'm convinced of it. Karmically they must have done something great. But the rest of us are doing really wonderful things some of the time, and the rest of the time, we're doing boring bullshit that has to be done.

6 Healing Crystals for Crafting Your Next Poem

Rose Quartz 

A love token, the soft rose hue of rose quartz fosters tender energy of compassion, self-love, and forgiveness. Rose quartz is known for bringing about calming effects, reassurance, and strengthening empathy skills. This crystal is therefore perfect for dissolving emotional wounds and stimulating inward reflection to spur a poem that comes from the heart. 

While many anecdotes are encompassing the rose quartz, one of the simplest originates from Greek mythology. Legend proclaims that Cupid, the Roman god of desire, and Eros, the Greek god of love, bestowed the offering of love in the form of the rose quartz anticipating cultivating love and passion in mortals. 

If you are looking to cleanse an emotional wound, magnetize romantic energy, or find comfort in everyday life, rose quartz will foster this act of self-care. Furthermore, once you work to grow your self-worth and trust your intuition, you are more likely to comprehend your desires and needs. What’s more, is that by tending to the love in your own heart, it can further play out in your writing. 

Compatible: Libra and Taurus

Citrine 

By inspiring creativity and imagination, citrine brings about joy and wonder in your everyday life. Furthermore, with mindful qualities and optimistic energy, this warm crystal keeps you motivated and focused on your poetry. Alongside this newfound concentration, citrine is known for strengthening confidence, dissipating negative thoughts, and puts intention into reality. 

In Ancient Greece, citrine was used during the Hellenistic Age for decorative reasons because of its honey shade. It was also desired during the Art Deco era by the rich and famous, making it accessible in jewelry today.  

If you’re looking to start something new or find the energy to start back up again, this pick-me-up gem should do the trick. So, manifest your wishes, wants, deepest desires, and dreams while this crystal is around to improve your craft. 

Compatible: Gemini, Aries, Libra, and Leo 

Tiger’s Eye 

Also known as the “all-seeing-and-knowing eye,” Tiger’s Eye merges frequencies from the Sun and Earth to harness guidance and balance in your life. With a more grounded way of thinking, writers can reduce scattered reflection and make for clearer thought processes. It’s also said to increase patience, along with reducing anxiety and self-doubt in times of tough decisions. 

In the 1800s, the tiger’s eye was advertised sold as a semi-precious after being unearthed in South Africa before it became more accessible in the 1900s. It mainly took off in the 1980s, becoming more appealing because of its ability to reflect light. 

If you’re feeling withdrawn from your work, consider keeping the tiger’s eye near you to keep in the right direction. With inner strength and motivation to conquer your goals, this crystal is a staple for helping you to overcome goals and finish your poem. 

Compatible: Capricorn 

Amethyst

A semi-precious stone, amethyst carries energy to calm the mind and enhance intuition to improve your communication skills. Concerning your poetry, it boosts qualities like sincerity, which ultimately creates a sense of trust between writers to their readers. Amethysts are also advantageous in times of stress, and anxiety to connect the self with earth brings forth serenity. 

Amethyst derives in Greek mythology, after the wine god, Bacchus, took pity (by pouring grape juice over the stone) on the maiden Amethyst after turning her into a white crystal. The crystal was also once thought to protect from inebriation and spiritual intoxication. 

Overall, the cleansing energy of the amethyst improves wellbeing and rids of intrusive thoughts, allowing you to focus on your writing and make rational decisions. 

Compatible: Virgo, Aquarius, and Capricorn

Hematite

The powerful energy of the hematite increases your mental organization by working to clear you of anxiety. This grounding crystal gives you a reality check and is an excellent tool for manifestation. Therefore, whatever your next idea for a poem is, hematite is a staple crystal surround yourself with. 

In the Stone Age, humans used hematite as a sort of chalk for drawing on cave walls, while Native Americans used the stone to protect warriors during battle. 

Hematite is also said to strengthen logical thinking by creating a calm mental state for those hoping to accomplish their next task. Feeling clouded while writing? Hematite is an excellent solution for that. 

Compatible: Aries and Aquarius  

Aventurine Stone

Known for being one of the “stone of opportunity,” the aventurine stone, fosters optimistic and positive energy. This crystal allows you to break out of your comfort zone, so try breaking the rules and being adventurous in your next poem.  

This lucky stone is also perfect for boosting confidence and igniting creativity, by pushing you to question previous thoughts and ideas about yourself. Don’t worry! Aventurine also is a very reaffirming stone and can be an emotional anchor for those who need a new direction or opportunity in their life. 

Compatible: Taurus and Libra

What Contemporary Poet You Should Read Based on Your Zodiac Sign

We all know that the alignment of the planet at the time of your birth determines the course of your career, romantic taste, and basically everything else. But what about your poetic moods?

Aries (March 21 - April 19): Terrance Hayes

The sign of Aries, ruled by Mars and marked by the element of Fire, is known for being courageous and bold. In the current political climate, Aries is particularly suited to activism and speaking out for what they believe is right. No contemporary poet better represents the characteristic of the firey Aries than Terrance Hayes, who performed at the 2018 New York City Poetry Festival. Hayes’ 2018 poetry collection, American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin, examines Trump-era America not as an outlier, but as part of a long history of American inequality. True to its title, the collection is entirely comprised of sonnets. However, Hayes masterfully turns the traditional fourteen liners into a reversal of their strict conservatism, as he employs simple yet active language to address Trump, racism, and violence.

Taurus (April 20 - May 20): Robert Pinsky

The reliable Taurus is grounded both in their thoughts and in their actions. At age 78, Robert Pinsky, who has written over nineteen books, is a clear representation of Taurus dedication. Pinsky may be the oldest poet on this list, but his energy and commitment is constantly renewing. He has served as United States Poet Laureate, and published countless works for which he has won numerous awards and accolades. Pinsky’s poetry often carries a steady Taurus tone, with punctuated sentence patterns and syncopated line breaks. These firm, continuing beats guide the reader through his messages from life, about life, for life. Pinsky was also a headliner at the 2019 New York City Poetry Festival.

Gemini (May 21 - June 20): Tina Chang

Geminis are known for their excellent ability to tune in with their different identities. In Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang’s 2019  collection, Hybrida, she explores the issue of mixed identities — hybrids — through both content and form. As an Asian-American mother to a black son, Chang delves into the push and pulls of race, sex, and motherhood. Her poems examine questions of voice quite literally, narrated by different voices and written in different styles. 

Cancer (June 21 - July 22): Ocean Vuong

Cancers are concerned with emotion, connection, and family. With their intuitive minds, Cancers will love Ocean Vuong’s deeply intimate and authentic works. Vuong’s highly acclaimed 2016 collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, examines love and self-love amidst displacement, and as the title suggests, the lasting trauma of exile. His 2019 stylized novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a rumination on his language barriers with his mother, will tear at the heartstrings of every Cancer. No matter the subject matter, Vuoung’s voice remains emotionally perceptive, lyrically precise, and deeply poignant.

Leo (July 23 - August 22): Aracelis Girmay

Being royalty, Leos will love Aracelis Girmay’s Kingdom Animalia. Girmay’s grounded, deeply expressive work examines our place in the natural world. Creatives born under this sign will love Girmay’s imaginative works such as “Self-Portrait as the Snail,” “Self-Portrait as the Snake.” She not only turns herself into an animal, but brings to life inanimate objects and concepts, as well, expressing people and their motivations through the three principles that govern all animal needs: hunger/desire, and death. As “Elegy” puts it: “Listen to me. I am telling you/ a true thing. This is the only kingdom./ The kingdom of touching;/ the touches of the disappearing, things.” Leos will appreciate it as Girmay warmly leads us through the world in which lions are king. 

Virgo (August 23 - September 22): Natasha Tretheway 

Virgos are kind and hardworking, a combination that they channel into caretaking and nurturing. Former US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer-Prize winner Natasha Tretheway puts this care into her poetry and her celebration of others before her. Tretheway’s lines and stanzas reflect the organized nature of Virgos. She orders her poetry into distinct couplets or quatrains, creating a rhythmic and grounded atmosphere. Her 2018 collection, Monument, is a testament to centuries of unrecorded black history, unsung black heroes, and unmentioned black culture. Her collection becomes their monument, as she eulogizes past and present struggles of black Americans, though not without joy.

Libra (September 23 - October 22): Claudia Rankine

Libras love balance and fairness, both in the small events of everyday life, and in larger issues concerning the world. Claudia Rankine exercises Libra grace in her brave, expressive writings about discrimination. Her 2014 book, Citizen: An American Lyric, a finalist for the National Book Award, examines black identity and race relations in America. In her work, she combines traditional poetry with art, heavy line breaks and unusual punctuation, as she balances the scales of text and blank space.

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poet with poets @nycpofest ❤️ 🌷 ✨

A post shared by Chen Chen (@chenchenwrites) on Jul 30, 2019 at 6:50am PDT

Scorpio (October 23 - November 21): Jericho Brown

Scorpios are expressive and emotional, brave and assertive, and above all value honesty. Jericho Brown’s electrifying work is not afraid of confronting truths. His newest collection, The Tradition, examines both wide political issues and inner personal conflicts. Brown defies the titular tradition by circumventing it with his deeply honest, startling poetry. His innovative writing stems from mythical roots and other traditional imagery, which he employs both as history and parody. Jericho Brown headlined the 2016 New York City Poetry Festival and was also spotted out there in 2019 hanging out with Chen Chen (our recommendation below for all you Capricorns!).

Sagittarius (November 22 - December 21): Tracy K. Smith

The fearless explorers under Sagittarius will love traveling all the way off the planet in Tracy K. Smith’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Life on Mars. Tracy K. Smith is currently serving as the Poet Laureate of the United States. Smith’s work often mixes modernity and poetic traditions, science fiction and history, to underscore truths about human nature. 

Capricorn (December 22 - January 19): Chen Chen

Capricorns rely on structure and long-term planning, asking themselves from a young age what they want to be when they grow up. Chen Chen answers this question in his 2018 collection, When I Grow Up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities. His lovely, open-ended discussions of love and self-actualization are sure to assuage Capricorn fears of narrow career paths to success. The extreme honesty with which Chen Chen tackles questions of self helps create deeply authentic, witty, moving, poignant, charming stories. Chen Chen was a headliner of the New York City Poetry Festival in 2019 and also a participant in the first even Milk Press Happening.

Aquarius (January 20 - February 18): Cathy Park Hong

The original Aquarius deserves some original writing. Many contemporary poets could produce this novelty, but one of the most unconventional poets is the whimsical Cathy Park Hong. Cathy Park Hong challenges literary foundations by playing with punctuation, words, and letters. The musical Aquarius will love her imaginative rhythms, slant rhymes, and exclamation marks. Check out “Ballad in A,” for an extreme example, where Cathy Park Hong uses the same dozen words to create an extensive poem. Despite — or because of — her witticisms, many of her pieces are deeply meaningful. Her works will cause mixtures of amusement and contemplation, as she uses humor and wordplay to reveal the cores of current issues.

Pisces (February 19 - March 20): Morgan Parker

Pisces are imaginative, artistic, and intuitive. With their natural creativity any Pisces would love the work of Morgan Parker. Parker often plays with the structure of lines on a page, creating visual art with her words, and her rhythmic patterns would have the musical Pisces speaking the words out along with her. Her 2017 collection, There are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé, is both funny and wise. including a list poem titled “99 Problems” and a piece named “It’s Getting Hot in Here So Take Off All Your Clothes.” Her clever titles and unusual styles do not detract from her important message. Parker fiercely illuminates the experience of black women in America, her daring humor confronting what has no punchline: the unbelievable, the extreme, the all-too-real.

AN AUDIBLE SHAPE IN TIME: a Q&A with Robert Pinsky!

Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate of the United States and 2019 headliner of the New York City Poetry Festival recently had a chat with PSNY intern and University of Leeds PhD candidate, Lucy Cheseldine.

LC: How does a poem start for you? Do certain lines appear first or does the shape come as a whole? 

RP: The Yeats phrase “I get a chune in my head” seems to apply. It's a matter of the sentence-sounds, the melody of it, maybe without much meaning. Like a conversation heard through a closed door, to use another famous way of saying it: the sound of a meaning before the meaning. An audible shape in time.

LC: Lots of your poetry records snippets of urbanity. How do you understand the relationship between poetry and the city? What role, if any, do observation and experience play here? 

RP: Back to sound, I guess: in the city, compared to the country or the suburbs, there’s more speech per square inch, more music per square mile, probably even more bird-song per square foot. Truth is, I grew up in an ocean-side resort town, so “snippets” may be exactly how I first encountered the city.

LC: You’ve spent time as the Poet Laureate of the United States. Does a poet have a civic duty? And to what extent might this be bound up with memory?  

RP: The poet’s duty is to make poems. The “Laureate” title has that silly, anglo-phile cachet—“Consultant in Poetry” has more soul and dignity— but it’s true that laurel stays green, the bay leaf in the food of memory.

LC: In Democracy, Culture and the Voice, you call poetry “a vocal imagining”. Do you ever talk out loud when you are writing? How do you distinguish reading your poems aloud in front of an audience from the internal vocalisations of reading poetry? 

RP: I always talk out loud when I am composing, or at least mumble out loud. Can’t do it any other way. In that sense “writing” is a kind of misnomer for what I do. The writing part, the pen or computer or Selectric is just for notation, like putting notes on the stave. The music itself is vocal.

LC: Do you think being a critic of poetry has helped your creative practice? 

RP: “The highest form of criticism is actual composition.” The word “critic” comes from krinos, to choose, I think I have read. So the poet must be a critic every moment, in composition. Many so-called critics don't do much actual choosing, or are bad at it.

LC: You take “poetry as breath”. Do you have a poem or poet that you continue to return to when your own sources need replenishing? 

RP: Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, Fulke Greville, William Carlos Williams, Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Bishop, Ben Jonson, Allen Ginsberg, John Keats, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, George Gascoigne, Michael Drayton, Stevie Smith . . . among many others . . . 

LC: How would you define ‘poetry’ to someone who is afraid to read it?

RP: It’s a kind of art based on the sounds of words, partway between talking and singing. After saying that, I’d beg that person to watch a couple of the brief videos at the Favorite Poem Project.

Top 5 Reasons Personalized Poems Are the Ultimate Party Favor

1. Poetry sticks around. For a long, long time. 

Check out this quote from Sappho:

That quote is over 2600 years old—she was right! Also, traditional party favors are overrated. I have received way too many cookies and pastries that taste like sand from the moon. The pens are a slight upgrade, but to be honest, who needs another pen (yes, even when it doubles as a stylus!), when we have smartphones and (hopefully) finger-tips? 

The best party favor, by far, is personalized poetry. Even when the physical paper containing the poem is gone, the memory of the poem will stay with the guest for a lifetime (at least).

A final plus? You won’t offend any low-carb, keto, no-sugar, paleo folks. 

2. Convenience 

No need to spend days wrapping individual grocery store cookies that won’t be eaten, or ordering and designing custom pens that will be thrown away! All you have to do is contact PSNY to hire a Typewriter Poet! We are simply at your fingertips.

3. Pre-written cards are cliché

You can only write or receive “Roses are red” so many times before it just gets old for everybody. Our poets simply write better.

4. You can ditch the creepy clown!

Hey, guess what? Our Typewriter Poets take care of the gift and also double as entertainment, offering a performance for your guests. Think of it like hiring a clown who knows how to make cool animals and swords with balloons but less creepy and more meaningful! And for those of you who really love clowns, we do know quite a few poets who are basically circus people. Also, this:

Clown

BY CHELSEY MINNIS

It seems like I'm growing more and more like a clown. First of all, I'm always sad. Secondly, all my knives are made out of rubber. Thirdly, it's like my house is on fire.

No, I'm definitely becoming more like a clown. I have a tendency to want to put on clown clothes. As soon as I put the clown clothes on I feel faintly happier...

Another sign is that I constantly feel like I'm alone in a dressing room. Most of the time I feel amused. Anyway, the only thing good about the circus is the tigers.

Read the full poem here.

5. People get to see vintage typewriters!

Yes, each poet will be wielding a vintage typewriter. How cool is that? Some of the younger guests may have never even seen one before and might react with totally adorable bewilderment: “Is that a phone???”

Enough said.

WHAT DO JIM MORRISON, ARTHUR RIMBAUD, AND THE 2019 THE NEW YORK CITY POETRY FESTIVAL HAVE IN COMMON?

Happening: The action of happen v.; occurrence (of an event), the fact of taking place.

The very fact of taking place is something to celebrate. To exceed existence or being, but only marginally. To dwell in our edges and crevices: the fold of a page, the frame of a canvas. Here, things happen. They happen because they begin to take on a strange, distinct life of their own, unplanned and voluptuous births seeping forth to make the shape of art. 

We come to happen in various ways, one of which poet Arthur Rimbaud described as a ‘dereglement de tous les sens’. Those moments of total abstraction, of a detachment that verges on the sublime, where sensory distortion leads directly to new ways of seeing reality. For Rimbaud, the temptation of Dionysus’s lusty wine was a path towards his ambitions as a ‘seer’ and fuelled his surreal poetic happenings on the page. 

Years later, another seer of the art world, Jim Morrison, took Rimbaud’s obsession with creating a disjointed present even further. For Morrison, the possibility of the present as occurrence spurred his vision of a bizarre scene in which chemicals would be filtered into a room of people through air vents, turning those people into the essential ‘artist-showman’ that lies latent in all of us. Not only would this scenario produce a show for spectators, but each participant would be a witness to their own capacity for performance: ordinary people become both artist and audience in a spectacular moment of absolute poetic fulfilment. 

Exactly what this looks like, Morrison has to leave to our imagination because his oddly simple plan never quite comes off. If there were such a drug… But its end is clear; he wants to find a substance that will possess us spiritually—all of us— to create the pure experience of art. In his notorious performances with The Doors, Morrison himself would strip naked, posing as a shaman against a myriad of audio effects, whispering lyric as if they had just appeared to him like ghosts that very same instant. Particularly, for me, it was his eerie omission of the final syllable of words that gets closest to reaching inside the potential of a Happening. His sudden exits from a lyric point towards a recognition that words are autonomous, that they are ceaselessly entangled with atmosphere, sound, and the air we collect in, the air that we live off, the air that makes us happen.

Poetry makes things happen. When I interviewed headliner poet Lynn Melnick for the poetry festival, she told me that she writes about '“ancient history”. This fascinating comment spurred my own poetic happening which I hope says something about the kind of place we might try to reach in our artistic experiments:

I write about ancient history. Meaning a childhood of cakes and cameras, of uncles waiting in the wings. And blurred vision, incommunicable hunger and confusion, and the absolute impossibility of choice. Meaning awful teenage years of pathetically flowered wallpaper, and scratched CDs that skip right at the part where the song diffuses into untouchable sounds which radiate around bedrooms and heads and the slender wandering limbs of secret visitors. And the afterglow of youth, the vulnerable-making ambition, the coffee and the car rides home with strangers stronger than you. 

These things are important. These things happened. Our bodies were taken by others and the time has come to recover them. 

But always I can’t help letting the present burst in 

Because it’s so present to me 

Is way beyond experience and atmosphere

It’s an actual body sitting right inside the contours of

Mine and pressing, sometimes bulging, against nerves

And veins and skin and getting right inside all the important organs

Naming them again, re-introducing them to one another

Wanting nothing but giving this well-worded blood, imprinting

It in their invisible, obscure systems, and pushing it

Out of my fingers and mouth: all the incredible, silent, potential of now.

At the New York City Poetry Festival this July 27th and 28th on Governors Island, we’ll be exchanging our opium for a glass of thick, white milk in the Milk Press Gallery for Milk Press’s inaugural Milk Press Happening. Lush and pure, mysterious and natural, artists, including Donna Masini, Joanna Valente, Gregg Emery, and more will be making art in real-time, pushing their way towards another consciousness.

Join us for a moment of poetic reverie.  As Matthew Zapruder writes in Why Poetry, the state of reverie is poetry, and reverie is ‘just beneath the surface of our moment-to-moment existence’ if only we could find its gate. A happening is always underlying the contours of a laid table, a stuffed sofa, the made lives we make for ourselves; the potential is in their undoing.