11/19: round-up
HI. I don’t have much for you today because I’ve been busy working on grad school & fellowship applications, but here’s a little round-up.
And—if you want to read a post with a little more substance—here’s the one from Monday:
What I have for you today:
Housekeeping
What I read last week
Quotations
Tweets
Housekeeping:
The next issue of The West Review is set to come out on December 1st! Woo-hoo!
As always, you can help me pay future contributors by buying one book for $10 or 5 books for $30. All proceeds go straight to writers.
I have a poem out in Borderlands today:
What I read last week:
After-Cave, Michelle Detorie
The New Quarantine, Sara Tuss Efrik
Quotations:
When I was a queer kid dealing with the violent ridicule in rural Pennsylvania, well, that was hard enough, but then AIDS came along. In other words, I was already terrified of my body because I was queer, but THEN came this disease, which many of my classmates were quick to point out was my own personal disease, a symptom of my perversion. My body became the very center of evil, and I believed them for a little while.
-CAConrad
…trying to find a way to love this world as it is, and to not let it kill me.
-CAConrad
This sounds strange but being queer made creativity easier for me if only because I was shunned, forced outside the acceptable, respectable world, and writing was something I turned to in that imposed solitude, for writing was an actual place I could go to where I was free. Not an escape by the way! I really HATE when writers say they write to ESCAPE! I escape nothing, ever, nor do I want to escape!
-CAConrad
Every memory we have is cellular. […] Our bodies actually remember.
-CAConrad
A poet learning TRUST is essential learning. Trusting the world, trusting the audience. When a poet is verbose in the line it's usually a result of their thinking the audience isn't capable without them. They are, they very much are capable, and the sooner we learn it the better for our poems, frankly.
-CAConrad
Poetry is a blueprint of who we are at the time of writing it.
-CAConrad
All of you I can still touch, / I cherish: how easily torn, how / quickly smashed we are.
-Marge Piercy
I am / a woman with my guts loose / in my hands.
-Marge Piercy
It hurts to love wide open.
-Marge Piercy
Lest fear be my tyrant.
-Nico Peck
How is it that I have come this far / with nothing, that I am empty- / handed in this country of blessings?
-Jacob Shores-Arguello, “Pilgrims”
What I do know is that when I read poetry, good poetry, I forget to breathe and my body is suffused with something unnamable—a combination of awe and astonishment and the purest of pleasures.
-Roxane Gay, “Losing It”
This is the shucked meat of love, the alleys and broken / glass of love, the petals torn off the branches of love, / the dizzy hoarse cry, the stubborn hunger.
-Ellen Bass, “Marriage”
I’m hell-humming in / your direction, giddy, I am too taken / to leave it alone, the will / locked in as if it is already / inside of me now: to fall.
-Elena Karina Byrne, “Vertigo”
i am the prison that turns to rain in your hands.
-Danez Smith
You are searching for an entry to the poem, I am searching for an exit wound.
-Sara Tuss Efrik
Tweets:
Dudes wearing little ass beanies while their boats are unstable in stormy waters… Bro you are worried about the wrong capsizing
I love hearing about economics from people who don't mention that one hour of most American work doesn't pay for one hour of most American childcare
Men who abuse their female partners ARE ALSO abusing their children. Period. There is no “he was abusing the mom in front of the kids.” NO. That violent spectacle is a form of CHILD ABUSE.
I really want us to stop teaching children to have a "dream job." Our dreams for ourselves have to exist outside of labor and capitalistic production.
paid time off for family and medical leave is important yes but what about paid time off to be a little silly . to goof around
flirting with Women by calling them “babygirl”: weird, creepy, not feminist enough
flirting with men by calling them “babyboy”: kinda hot, maybe he’s a lil freak and into it
when u get hired and ur boss is like "this isn't just a job it's a family" u bout to have the WORST experience of your life
i got kinda confused with all the November challenges and ended up writing a 0-word novel and jerking off 50,000 times. sorry
Part of the appeal of Succession is doing the math on which character you’d become if you gave your personality disorder a billion dollars
love when you see a "best of the year" list and it's all the most buzzed about books and each description is just clearly pulled from the publicity ad copy lol
sorry I didn't text you back for a month. darkness took me. and I strayed out of thought and time. stars wheeled overhead, and every day was as long as the life age of the earth. but I'm good now. how are you?
Okay, now I’m off to go get some work done. Hope you have a great weekend!
-DB
Linktr.ee