And
what are your plans, for the last night of the decade?
Montreal QC: Montreal poet, critic
and editor Sina Queyras has long been known for exploring the shape, meaning
and purpose of poetry in their work, questioning what a poem should or shouldn’t
be doing, and what might still be possible. Their latest title is the chapbook SWELLES (Montreal QC: Vallum Chapbook
Series No. 28, 2019), a poem of grief and experience, of poetics and purpose;
of attempting to ground, live positively and live effectively, passionately and
responsibly. The thirteen poems in this extended sequence are rife with
self-examination, from parenting and teaching to the purpose of writing to
climate change, silence and attempting to live as a responsible citizen. There
is an awful lot packed into this accumulation of lines, and I would be curious
to know if this might be part of a larger manuscript.
Dear Siri, can you thank the millennials
for understanding that they no longer need
to manage the status quo? For insisting on
pronouns?
Can you announce my own pronouns? How are
people reading my gender? Have I achieved
maximum
alignment between inside and outside
expectations?
How is my feminism? Am I doing enough?
Have I been a good mentor? Have I been a good
parent? Is there enough money on my Opus?
Was that last Tweet on the right or wrong side
of the moment? Should I speak to my lawyer?
Do I have a lawyer? Why do I have a lawyer?
Is this poem pretty? Is it even a poem? Am I
even
a person? Why is “I” still important? Would I
survive my own “risk triage”? Should I invest
in
the same old feminism? Should I invest in
climate
change? Should I invest in solar power? Has
Greta
reached New York? Is she a corporation yet?
Has big oil branded her potential in the new
old world?
Have I become cynical? Is cynical cynical? What
happens when Roxane Gay starts deleting tweets?
What if impeachments fails? Why are people
posting
photos of each other dressed as formal gardens?
Have I found new levels of optimism to counter
new
levels of end times? Have I accepted that every
thing
I thought I was learning to serve me later is
now
later and poorly serving me? Can poetry
illustrate
the difference between optimism and
inspiration?
What is harder, more solid, than truth? I walk
with two natures in me, one more flawed
than the other. Having come all this way,
I just want to feel okay about being alive.
Cornwall UK: I am very taken with
British poet Astra Papachristodoulu’s latest, the chapbook/pamphlet Stargazing (Guillemot Press, 2019), a
collection of twenty-two poems that play with image, space and sound, staring
up at the sky. Composed as poem-blocks, the pieces here are deceptively
straightforward, managing a complexity as fresh as a breath. Where might I find
more of her work?
northward
out of candlewax and
feathers
some break free from
the eye
and float around toward
the
birth of synthetic gods
and the
shifting sands of
gravitational
possibilities
metal-rich enough
to form rocky planets
and
other friendly messages
that
often call you to sea,
only to
drown you with their
song
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