Ghost candles in the glass.

“We must not fear repetition in poetry,
because sweet speech is pleasant in the repetition.”

Nasir Khusraw, translated by Alice C. Hunsberger

Just got my copy of Rob Van Vliet’s (@rnv) new book, Vessels. Here’s a sample:

5 July

No matter how many times I asked,
the instructions were no help. So I stood
by the window, watching the buses pass,
all bound for parking lots as empty
as a table after the eviction.

And as the day began, I could still see
some stars, as surprising as
catching a handful of small
water-bugs skating on a lake of ash.

“It is [an] irony of oppression that the solution chosen to eliminate an enemy often guarantees that enemy’s enduring fame. [N]o one knows the names of [Nasir Khusraw’s] oppressors, but his poems…speak across centuries…to anyone who has [known] war, oppression or terror.”

—Alice Hunberger

It’s funny the things you find searching through old files. A long time ago, I collaborated with an artist named Allen Hart on an exhibition pairing one of his paintings with one of my poems. This was the painting, along with the broadside of the poem I made to put on the wall next to it.

“Reflections Before Shutting Down The Computer,” by Gemma Gorga, translated by Sharon Dolin.

from “Reading Matsuo Bashō,” by Gemma Gorga (translated by Sharon Dolin):

I wonder: how many syllables must I remove
to make a perfect haiku from my life?

Poet, Artist, Erotic Muse of Mexico’s Avant Garde: Rediscovering Nahui Olin, by Claire Mullen: About a Mexican woman artist and poet “who reveled in her own beauty…painted portraits of herself with her many lovers…and…died, decades later, in the house that she grew up in, alone.”

Four by Four #2

By Ohara Koson (1877–1945), born in Kanazawa, northern Japan. He was renowned for designing beautiful illustration prints of birds and flowers (kacho-e) as part of the Shin-Hanga (new prints) movement.

This is from Four by Four #19.

“Can You Understand?” by Reneissance, a live, in studio version of a song I linked to in issue #10 of my newsletter, is from this album:

My twelfth grade teacher was a devout Catholic named Mr. Giglio. When I asked him if he would read some of the poems I’d been writing, he said yes. I only remember one of the poems I gave him, though, In rhymed couplets, of which I was quite proud, it imagined a post-nuclear-holocaust dystopian future and ended by passing judgment on God for having let such a thing happen.Mr. Giglio’s response was to tell me, “I think you should stop writing poems and focus on writing critical essays like what we’re doing in class. That’s what you’re good at.” When I asked him to explain why, he wouldn’t tell me. “I’ve said what I have to say” was as much as I got out of him, and that’s when I realized two things. First, his response had nothing to do with the quality of my writing; what I had written about had offended his religious sensibilities; and, second, that if my poem had disturbed him deeply enough that he felt it necessary talk me out of writing more, then I must be doing something right.

Read the entire issue here.

By Eugène Delacroix, circa 1828.

From #25 of my newsletter “Four by Four: Four Things To Read, Four Things to See, Four Things to Listen to, and Four Things About Me.”

From #28 of my newsletter Four by Four: Four Things To Read, Four Things To See, Four Things To Listen To, and Four Things About Me:

I don’t know how old I was when George, the man who was my stepfather for a few years, took my brother and me to the Palisades Amusement Park, but one memory of that trip is permanently etched into my memory: trying to find my way through the Crazy Crystals Glass House, maze of mirrors. My brother found his way pretty quickly, but I kept banging my head into dead ends, so much so that I think I actually raised a small bump on my forehead. At one point, I thought I had succeeded because I walked back out into the park, but it turned out that I’d found my way back to the entrance. I didn’t want to go back in, but George told me I had to get through the right way, just like my brother, so I went back in and kept hitting my head, until the park attendant came in and led me out. I think I might have been crying. I was mortified, of course, especially because my little brother had outdone me, and George did not let me off the hook. He teased me about this for the rest of the day.

Pre-COVID memories.

I am thrilled that this interview is up at Green Linden Press. Catherine Fletcher asks really good questions about my book, T’shuvah, about my writing process, translation, about poetry-as-healing/therapy. The questions made me think, which is why I had such a good time answering them.

from “The Necessity to Speak,” by Sam Hamill

“The true poet gives up the self. The I of my poem is not me. It is the first person impersonal, it is permission for you to enter the experience which we name Poem."

—Sam Hamill, “The Necessity to Speak” in A Poet’s Work

Dealing with health insurance is a healthy pain in the ass! And I have, truly, a good employer-provided plan.

Teaching starts tomorrow. Two syllabi down, one to go. I wish I were more excited.

Four by Four is a curated list of four articles, four images, for pieces of music, and four things about me—lessons learned, books read, random fact…that sort of stuff. Right now subscriptions are free. Number 11 is live. I hope you’ll check it out.