Richard Jeffrey Newman's Miscellany

The first of what will be two or three blog posts on my own history of blogging, keeping a journal, and keeping my digital life organized: Workflow/Work Life/Life Work - 1.

Lines Left on The Cutting Room Floor - January 7, 2019

The rules require a precise exchange of words,
not selves, to turn her shackles into birds.
Surrender to that failure. Shave your head.
Embrace her like the resurrected dead.

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows sounds like a very interesting novel.

The Slowdown is a lovely poetry podcast by Tracy K. Smith, US Poet Laureate. Each episode is between 5 and 10 minutes. She picks wonderful poems to share, and her introductions are thoughtful statements about the role poetry plays both in culture and in one person’s life.

This, Following protests, London mosque cancels planned Holocaust exhibition, unless there is some piece of mitigating information not covered in the article, is a real shame.

That’s me and Mikey at my mother’s. She’s got a dog rescue, Wilma’s Orphans. Mikey and I bonded deeply early on in his time with her, and I would have taken him home in a heartbeat. My life circumstances, unfortunately, made that impossible. Not too long ago, his health deteriorated to the point where my mother had no choice but to have him put down. Getting to spend time with him was one of the highlights of visiting her. I miss him…

Lines Left on the Cutting Room Floor - January 5, 2019

You gathered every inch of trust you could
and moved in her like water into water,
but the mother in your head won’t let it go,
“Jewish women make love too, you know.”

This article about the trial in Israel of a Palestinian poet arrested and put on trial for a poem she wrote and published online is worth reading.

When the Chancellor Donates his $50,000 Raise to the University

Instead, they pull their swollen anger tight,
walk it like a wire stretched between
the pliant mask of well-rehearsed delight
they’ve brought for your approval and the scene
they want but will not let themselves describe.
Music they would have you dance to haunts them.
They won’t accept that you don’t hear it. The bribe
they never guessed you would refuse taunts them.

They think the answer’s only yours to give,
that only you can make the question live.

By way of introducing some of my Persian translation work to people here who might be interested, I’ve posted PDFs on Academia.edu:

Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan

Selections from Saadi’s Bustan

Attar’s “Tale of Marhuma”

Currently reading: Body of Water 📚

Lines Left on The Cutting Room Floor - January 2, 2019

Beneath this season’s long and gentle gaze,
the poem grows and then outgrows the page.

What It’s Like to Be a Female Movie Critic in the #MeToo Era

One of the ways that poets and writers can change the cultural conversation in significant ways.

In Screening for Suicide Risk, Facebook Takes On Tricky Public Health Role: Paraphrasing, “Facebook is taking on the role of a public health institution, while behaving like a private corporation.” Deeply disturbing.

Last night was one hell of a New Year’s Eve—for the cat, apparently, not me. We stayed in and had a quiet night. Happy New Year everyone!

My new journal. Handmade in Brooklyn, by a guy from Turkey. He started out making them to display the jewelry that is his family’s main business. Then people talked him into making the journals a business in itself. It’ll take me years to fill these pages. Starting tomorrow.

Keep a tryst that peels the skin from fear,
pierce the clouds before the fight begins,
pull on every chain they have you by,
and feed the flames beneath your hero’s life.
Tonight, instead of sleep, embrace the strife
fucking kept at bay. Do not deny
the chaos. Test the dark where hope begins.
The only place you need to be is here.

You do not have to nurse the injured bird.
You only have to mourn what you have marred.

I have mixed feelings about this: In Defense of Satoshi Kanazawa’s Academic Freedom - ACADEME BLOG

Let the force of this imagined form
make real the hollow where your love should be;
press your lips to its mouth; call down the storm
that lurks behind all calls for compromise. The tree
of which you thought you were a leaf is dead;
the soil parched. Its thirst, now yours, breathes—
the metaphor by which you were misled,
the question your own conscience now unsheathes.

Prepare for what comes next. Be on your guard.
Allow yourself to mourn what you have marred.

America Is Losing Its Teachers at a Record Rate. Specifically, public educators. There are people on the far right for whom this will be good, not bad, news.

From The Desk of Richard Jeffrey Newman #5 is out.

Lines Left on the Cutting Room Floor - December 28, 2018

The waitress moved across the restaurant floor
like language filling out a line of verse.

The to-read piles I’ve accumulated–not new books I’ve bought–over the course of this year and the book I’m planning to finish before New Year’s. 📚