In this poem, I tried to write the wish to stand between one’s distant ancestors and their future suffering, which is a wish that begins with a desire to know them—paradoxically, even at the cost of one’s own being. Shane McCrae on "Race in Language" |
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"A Poem That’s Like a Perfect First Date" A. O. Scott reads Frank O'Hara: “'Having a Coke With You' unfolds as one breathless ungrammatical utterance: a 325-word run-on that starts with the title and ends without a period. All those words are layered into counterpointed rhythmic passages and arranged in long-lined stanzas....as with most good poetry, the effects—in this case, of informality, of casualness, of companionable ease—are the products of precise and careful craft." via THE NEW YORK TIMES |
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What Sparks Poetry: Jared Stanley on "So Tough" "When the forests (it’s more precise to call them plantations) burn now, it’s a massive conflagration. We downwinders are trapped under a persistent, poisonous haze that sticks around for sometimes six weeks. Under the smoke, it’s hard to breathe, and one feels trapped—by the material, particulate fact of the smoke, yes, but also by an atmosphere of dense thoughtlessness, a failed image of the world that the smoke has come to represent." |
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