💬 John Ashbery’s 99th birthday is tomorrow!
I loved reading Robert Wood Lynn’s substack post this week where he gives JA flowers and talks about his experience with JA’s work, which is very familiar to my own:
“what is remarkable about this poem is not how [JA] sinks his little word-ship, but the salvage operation he makes at the end—this is the human gesture that AI is still a ways away from understanding. Ashbery has done poetry’s version of breaking the fourth wall by establishing the poem as a character in the poem, the intermediary O’Hara imagines between speaker and reader. The poem is a smokescreen for the speaker the whole time, who hides behind it—appearing only once at the end of the second stanza to briefly substitute his definition of play”
It’s really hard to explain JA and poets love to write about his work because there are so many ways to break it apart and look at it again, which is part of the play and genius of it!
Here is a poem by JA, “Down by the Station, Early in the Morning”
💐 I’ve been obsessed with the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, here are some recent favorite names of the species growing there (& bonus pictures):
Sunny Knock Out
The Poet’s Wife
Blushing Wife
Sweet Flag
Detective Eren
Lamb’s Ears
Lady Bells
Fairy Clouds
Perry’s Baby Red
Golden Hop
Donkey Tail Spurge
Dame’s Rocket
Tall Weeds Rocket
Moon Carrot
Moonshine Yarrow
Shrub Rose
Morning Mister
Desire comes from the Latin, desiderare, “from” and “star” 💫
Desire, desire, desire, that’s what makes the engine go… —Stanley Kunitz
🌬️ new poem published at Poetry Society of America
Notes from the Mezzanine
I mean the hard losses—no coming back from this one
ball already over the fence. Before anyone walked,
before we ran, just phantom steps and the cold sweat.
Headcracks, another long toll back to square one,
breath guttering down to its wick, the rip of hair
strand by strand, code red, then red itself.
Hospitality hours grind the knees, five white knuckles
and the years folded after the cheating. And I’m off
the roll. And it’s late again. I don’t look my neighbor
in the eye though our mail sticks together, it was
my sink water that rained through her ceiling and
an apology is just a down payment on the next flood.
I mean, what do we owe each other at this point—
Ah, see—there is something: a protest that stands up
to the sick voice in the head that executes the self.
In the greenhouse, flaming swords and urn plants
drown flies in their cups. Their leafy necks bend
a little to bear the winds' wrestling; even a child’s flimsy
diamond kite knows this. I feel lucky when the give
doesn’t snap. The good news is I don’t get what I deserve.
The good news is I do. After the affliction, after the water
of life leaks from lopsided lids and we were the drought,
all splits start to make sense until we lean over the rail
to see the gray in their hair. It is in us to spin, but only
on the rim, pennies circling a wish bowl. We have proved
there is no plumb line that can reach a token once it drops
and—just a note to say—it sounds like infinity down there.
Grateful to have been published in Thimble Lit Summer Magazine print edition. It’s so gorgeous! Thank you!
🌬️ Currently reading: The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imaginat… by Wallace Stevens 📚
Wallace Stevens correctly weighs that it is a poet’s duty to hold the interdependence of reality and imagination. Fully living in both, as a poet’s job and task, is to help people to live their lives.
Reality is things as they are, and imagination presses back against the pressures of that said reality.
>“This has to do with our self-preservation… the sound of its words helps us to live our lives. [A poet] cannot be a charioteer traversing vacant space, however ethereal, he must have lived all of the last two thousand years, and longer, he must have instructed himself, as best he could, as he went along… imagination gives to everything it touches a peculiarity, and it seems to me that the peculiarity of the imagination is nobility, of which there are many degrees.”
🌬️ Thoughts on Elisabeth Camp's "Metaphor and That Certain 'Je Ne Sais Quoi'"
In Camp’s essay “Metaphor and That Certain ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi'” she breaks down why Juliet is the sun brings up a kaleidoscope of emotions and stays in the collective Poetry memory. I specifically love that Camp thinks through why this open-ended, some might even call it vague, metaphor actually works differently than we usually assume.
Often in teaching poetry, or being taught it, it’s easy to say “make the metaphor more precise or, just make it stranger”. Truthfully, we are all in fear of cliché, and T.S. Eliot has scared us into staying clear from abstraction… Yet Camp argues that the open-endedness is closer to what she elsewhere calls a frame: the metaphor asks you to see Juliet through the sun, importing a whole perspective, an organizing lens rather than swapping in a checklist of shared attributes.
What I find most useful is her point that any literal paraphrase inevitably turns the metaphor into a list: beautiful, hot, life-giving, natural, central, orbital, and a list is closed the moment you finish writing it, while a lens keeps generating new observations the longer you look through it.
That’s is probably the sharpest argument against “precision” as the goal: precision is a property of propositions, not of ways of seeing!
She also talks about metaphor’s twofold quality, meaning, you’re suppose to hold Juliet is like the sun and Juliet is not the sun at once. I think that unresolved doubleness might be where real strangeness comes from, rather than from just picking a more surprising vehicle. And she notes the frame doesn’t let you cherry-pick the flattering parts, there is a darkness inside the frame, invoking the sun also drags in the danger of staring too long, whether or not Romeo meant to say that. Once you invoke a frame, it has a mind of its own!
🌬️ Still beaming to have been part of such a generous & kind group of poets. All thanks to the PSA and Lynn Melnick for stitching together a solid cohort. The goal was that we would stay connected and invested in each other’s work from here on out, and I have no doubt that will be so! Excited to see where everyone goes and what they do.
🌬️ New poem published! Thank you to the Poetry Society of America for selecting my poem, “And Even You, With Your Lucky Breaks” for their storefront prize & big congrats to the other poets selected. My poem will be on display for the entire month of August on Smith Street in Brooklyn.
You can read more about the selection, the other winners, and my poem here.
🌬️ Grateful to Brooklyn Poets for the finalist mention for their Summer Fellowship. Congrats to everyone! And I’m excited to see what work comes from the fellows!
🌬️ Excited and very into this visual poem by Eugenia Leigh in Poetry Mag: “Oh I Thought You Knew, She Said, Dad Is Alive”
🎵 Obsessed with this remix/reimagining of The-Dream’s “Rockin’ That Thing"
Happy Father’s Day to my beautiful dad.
He was simple, brave, and integrious. Here are some songs we listened to together, and yeah, he did make Nickelback so cool. We had the Spiderman CD (Tobey MaGuire spiderman, obviously) and would blast the Nickleback track* in his blue Ford Ranger with the windows all the way down.
How Your Remind Me - Nickleback
Where The Green Grass Grows - Tim McGraw
🌬️ New poem published!
Thanks to Nadia and the whole Thimble Literary Magazine team for publishing in both print & on the world wide web my poem “Now and Later” in their summer issue (the cover looks amazing!!). Print copies are available next weekend but you can view the issue here.
Without spoiling the magic, I’ll say two things: one) this poem feels like it was given to me. Meaning, I needed it more than it needed me. And two) the last line was written first, which also makes it a certain type of given.
Finished reading: The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis by Fernando Pessoa 📚
>Happy the man who sees that it is all a game,
>But not entirely, for if he knew this,
>He would lose.
>I seek not to live among the stars
>But simply to live with myself.
>For the more clearly he sees things
>The more the gods see him as their equal
>Until, finally, he feels his body
>Brush their eternal bodies.
>How sweet it is just to live,
>How great and noble always
>Simply to live.
>Leave sorrow on the altars,
>A votive offering to the god.
>Follow your destiny,
>Water your plants,
>Love your roses.
>The rest is the shade
>From other people’s trees.
>Make your heart worthy of the gods
>And let uncertain life be what it will.
>Whatever happens to you,
>Accept it. For even the gods do not rebel.
🎵 Came across this playful substack piece Maggie Rogers wrote about accidentally casting a spell with a voicemail freestyle and her journey to reverse it for the Knicks. Been listening to her on repeat lately, major line envy over some of these:
Her whole Heard It In A Past Life album is pretty much perfect (Overnight, Alaska, Light On) but the songs above are some of my more recent favs!
🎵 After the LIVELY game last night, it feels like it should be Friday. That said, here are some songs I am listening to this weekend. I can’t wait to play dress up to all these below:
- Big Spender - Original Broadway Cast of Sweet Charity
- All For You - Janet Jackson
- Someone to Call My Lover - Janet Jackson
- I Wanna Be Bad - Willa Ford
- Dance Hall Days - Wang Chung
- Earrings - Malcom Todd (feel vulnerable about this one, my pop guilty pleasure rn …)
- Don’t Phunk With My Heart - Black Eyed Peas
A real 2000s mood (& 1966)!
The trailer for Broadway’s Hadestown pro-shot is out! I love the original cast, and this musical is my favorite. It’s one of the best-written pieces of contemporary libretto, in my opinion. I hope Anaïs Mitchell feels proud, and I hope ticket sales skyrocket.
>It’s an old song,
>It’s a sad song,
>And we’re going to sing it again
Here’s the original recording of “Wait for Me” Anaïs Mitchell first created Hadestown as a concept album, with Justin Vernon as the voice of Orpheus, though I’ll always love (and prefer!) the original cast version.
I’ve written before about the themes Hadestown draws out and emphasizes from the original Greek tale, and how it’s truly a poet’s story. Maybe I’ll write about it again soon.
But for now, from the original lyrics of Doubt Comes In:
>[ORPHEUS & THE FATES]
>Doubt comes in
>And strips the paint
>Doubt comes in
>And turns the wine
>Doubt comes in and leaves a trace
>Of vinegar and turpentine
>Where are you? Where are you now?
>Doubt comes in
>And kills the lights
>Doubt comes in
>And chills the air
>Doubt comes in and all falls silent
>It’s as though you aren’t there
>Where are you? Where are you now?
>[EURYDICE]
>Orpheus
>You’re shivering
>Is it cold or fear?
>Just keep singing
>The coldest night
>Of the coldest year
>Comes right before the spring
>ORPHEUS & THE FATES
>Doubt comes in
>With tricky fingers
>Doubt comes in
>With fickle tongues
>Doubt comes in and my heart falters
>And forgets the songs it sung
>Where are you? Where are you now?
Need to know what was said in the pep talk the Knicks must’ve had before this last quarter. Wowow!!
🎵 Chanel Beads surprised me with their June NTS show. I definitely expected electronic or strictly contemporary, and while it has some of that, it’s mostly a mix of classical music, soundtracks, shoegaze, musical theater, and more. All to say, I loved it and it made me a bigger fan of their stuff