This poem, inspired by Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” is working through loss as litany. Like a gentler version of Etheridge Knight’s “Feeling Fucked Up,” the poem turns hurt inside out until sadness becomes anaphora and epistrophe. The story of “Maggot Brain” goes like this: George Clinton told Eddie Hazel to play guitar like his mama died. But later in the recording, he tells Hazel to play like his mama is alive. There’s a metaphor in that unforeseen hope. Even though the world is breaking apart, there’s still a chance we might be able to turn it all around.
Adrian Matejka on "Let's Get Acquainted" |
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"Book Club Chat with Kaveh Akbar"
"The whole project of the book seems to me to orbit my learning to sit in uncertainty without struggling to resolve it. By working in a form that corroded the certainty intrinsic to that grammatical unit, the period, it felt like I was enacting (read: practicing) formally what I was clumsily groping toward in my own psycho-spiritual practice."
via THE RUMPUS |
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