Seshadri &Dawes #2sDayPoems

Tags

3 Sections, Graywolf Press, Kwame Dawes, Memoir, poetry readings, poets of color, Red Hen Press, Tornado Child, Vijay Seshardi, Wisteria: Poems from the Swamp Country

Full text of poem here

from 3 Sections (Graywolf Press)

Full text of poem here

from Wisteria:Poems from the Swamp Country (Red Hen Press)

Favorite (Mostly Poetry) Book Covers of the Year

Tags

Alice James Books, Black Lawrence, BOA Editions, Carcanet Press, Curbside Splendor, Dancing Girl Press, Dialogos, Donut Press, Floating Bridge Press, Great Indian Poetry Collective, Lost Horse Press, LSU Press, Milkweed, NYQBooks, Omnidawn, Penned in the Margins, Persea Books, Red Hen Press, Sabotage Reviews, Santa Fe Writers Project, The Emma Press, What Books Press, Yellow Flag Press

recently asked this question on twitter and posted a short list that included picks from Penned in the Margins, The Emma Press,  Floating Bridge and Donut Press.

 

Here are my top picks.  Enjoy!!!  [Hover over cover for name of the press].

Lost Horse Press

Milkweed

NYQBooks

Omnidawn

Persea Books

Red Hen Press

What Books Press

Yellow Flag Press

Santa Fe Writers Project

Great Indian Poetry Collective

Dialogos

Dancing Girl Press

Curbside Splendor

Carcanet

BOA

Black Lawrence

Alice James

LSU Press

 

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Sunday Sentence #18

Tags

Burn This House, David Abrams, Kelly Davio, Luxury, poetry, Red Hen Press, Sunday Sentence, Women writers

My weekly contribution to David Abrams’ “Sunday Sentence” project in which participants share the best sentence read during the past week “out of context and without commentary.”

When June opened her kissed mouth,
let down orange dust from her teeth,

the garden we thought was solely crabgrass
became a bare-legged revue of tulips.

SOURCE: Lines from poem titled “Luxury” from Kelly Davio‘s collection Burn This House (Red Hen Press)

 

 

2sDay Poems Does the Chicken Dance with RED HEN

Tags

2sDay Poems, African American poet, Anna Lee Walters, Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, Bone Light, But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise, Cave Canem, Circle Shape, Claudia Rankine, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Orlando White, poets of color, Red Hen Press, The Body Deformed by Tidal Forces

Red Hen Press, a small literary press out of Los Angeles, is one of my favorite sources for poetry.  Their collections are expertly done with a wide representation of voices and styles.  Today’s selections come from two poets of color who brought out collections with RHP in 2009 and 2012.

 

Orlando White is a Navajo poet ( Dine’ of the Naaneesht’ezhi Tabaahi and born for the Naakai Dine’e) with a BFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Brown University. Bone Light(Red Hen 2009) was his debut collection. 

CIRCLE SHAPE

Trace a circle on top of another. Both are alike but do not mean the same thing.
Divide zero by zero: both are not something on either side of its given place.
Listen to the clock without numbers, the sound of something not written on.
Write the letter O; see the straight-line curve one end into the other.
Use the color_________to fill in the black dot at the end of a thought.
Without empty form there would be no given fixed point: the center of zero.
The letter L bends white on paper. But the letter O lends itself to be bent by space.
The outline of a zero should roll off the paper after it is written.
The center of black: blank shaped like a circle. Do not think outside of this.

 

 

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram , a former Cave Canem fellow and a graduate of the writing programs at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, also brought our her debut collection with Red Hen. Her book But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen 2012) won RHP’s 2010 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, judged by Claudia Rankine.

 

The Body Deformed by Tidal Forces

Darkness still here, hunkered against the trees.
Spring so uneasy this year.
No matter morning’s boundary culling our bodies,
another romantic passage assaults us!
O limp future centered on this body!
In the model solar system, planets suspend & twirl
as if from a spider’s whirl.
The quantum in backpedal, in decline, spring so ungripping
this year. Bored mouth. Bored fingers.
The umpteenth day/night running like such—
truly, truly—this troubling with physics!
Not still winter, not yet anything.

O thuggish awakening.
All planets but this one were named after gods.

 

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