Book 11/31 Lucille Clifton – Two-Headed Woman "winged woman was saying / 'full of grace' and like. / was light beyond sun and words / of a name and a blessing." ('mary's dream') #SealeyChallenge #poetry
A.D. Harper
@adharper.bsky.social
Poetry. // Prose. Words in RHINO, The Manchester Review, The Shore, Bending Genres, Dream Pop, Cordite, and others. adharper.com
Book 10/31 Fiona Benson – Bright Travellers (Cape) "My pen moving across the page / and the occasional cricket / calling, calling / to love in another garden, / the marvellous elsewhere." ('Small Mercies') #SealeyChallenge #poetry
Book 9/31 W.B. Yeats – The Rose "First as a raven on whose ancient wings / Scarcely a feather lingered, then you seemed / A weasel moving on from stone to stone, / And now at last you wear a human shape, / A thin grey man half lost in gathering night." ('Fergus and the Druid') #SealeyChallenge
Book 8/31 Sharon Olds – One Secret Thing "the woman opened a file drawer, / low rumble of wheels on rails, / and took out the ashes, in a satin maroon / plastic box, and set them on the desk." ('Satin Maroon') #SealeyChallenge #poetry
7/31 John McCullough – Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins) "I tremble, pick at falafel wraps and store each terror / like those bald eagles who save every twig they find / till their overburdened nests plummet to the ground." ('Please Don't Touch Me, My Head Falls Off') #SealeyChallenge
Book 6/31 Anne Sexton - The Awful Rowing Toward God "I am not lazy. / I am on the amphetamine of the soul. / I am, each day, / typing out the God / my typewriter believes in." ('Frenzy') #SealeyChallenge #poetry
Book 5/31 Seamus Heaney - Field Work (Faber) "When the badger glimmered away / into another garden / you stood, half-lit with whiskey, / sensing you had disturbed / some soft returning." ('The Badgers') #SealeyChallenge #poetry
Book 4/31 Clare Pollard – Changeling (Bloodaxe) "Men wade to shore / and Circe's sure / they're the same men // or close enough, rough / hands, straight hips, / the type who talk / of sharks and ships." ('An Island') #SealeyChallenge #poetry
Book 3/31 Isabel Galleymore – Significant Other (Carcanet) "we stride across; the rails / already bushy with brassy / locks that love the bridge that links / this part of the earth with the next" ('Are We There Yet?') #SealeyChallenge #poetry
Book 2/31 Judy Brown – Loudness (Seren) "The farmhouse is frittered with knick-knackery." ('The Gîte') #SealeyChallenge #poetry
Book 1/31 Syliva Plath – The Colossus Sample: "Some hard stars / Already yellow the heavens." ('The Manor Garden') #SealeyChallenge #poetry
Great article on why surrealism still matters and can "spark the seeds of permanent dissent." There have been 3 new translations of Breton's writing, including Nadja by Mark Polizzotti.
Organizing Pessimism | Los Angeles Review of Books
André Breton, necropolitics, and 100 years of surrealism.
lareviewofbooks.org
It's Andy Warhol's Explosion! / Exploding Plastic Inevitable, 1966 https://botfrens.com/collections/19/contents/1238720
“ ‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story, but ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.” —John le Carré
John le Carré, The Art of Fiction No. 149
“The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building: It's just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights. It will go on and on and on.”
buff.ly
POEM 307: "Unearthed" by A.D. Harper (@adharper.bsky.social) "The wildlife that comes to my house at night is unknown to the books. Maybe / I have the wrong books. Maybe all nature books are a lie." stonecirclereview.com/unearthed/ #Poem #Poetry #NewPoem #PoetryCommunity
31/31 Hannah Levene – Boneless Ribs "Turning the lights on in the living room when I leave the house / to make it look lived in." ('I've Folded the Pages I Think You'll Enjoy') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
30/31 Thom Gunn – The Sense of Movement "We keep ourselves in touch with a mere dime: / Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs / He turns revolt into a style, prolongs / The impulse to a habit of the time." ('Elvis Presley') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
29/31 Carol Ann Duffy – Politics "They have shipped Gulliver up North. / He lies at the edge of town, / sleeping. / His snores are thunder in the night." ('Job Creation') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
28/31 Ian Seed – Night Window "My father was in the front-room: clean shaven, young, expectant. From above, The Rolling Stones' 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' was playing." ('Meanwhile') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
"still there's scones however you pronounce them or plain toast for those unwilling to risk error" #TodaysPoem #poetry Deduced by @adharper.bsky.social (2024 Tentacular Mag) tinyurl.com/36sk6kff
A.D. Harper — Tentacular
Two Poems
tinyurl.com
27/31 Lavinia Greenlaw – The Built Moment "His stories led only back to their beginnings / like the last letter he sent me / in which the second page repeats the first." ('My father appears') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
26/31 Rae Armantrout – Go Figure "AI spells death / to truck stops // and their gift shops / packed with lonesome // doodads." ('Forests') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
25/31 Lucille Clifton – an ordinary woman "Kali / queen of fatality, she / determines the destiny / of things. nemesis. / the permanent guest / within ourselves." ('Kali') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
24/31 Christina Rossetti – Goblin Fruit and Other Poems "My heart is like a singing bird / Whose nest is in a watered shoot; / My heart is like an apple-tree / Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit" ('A Birthday') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
23/31 James Wright – Shall We Gather at the River "They looked me over, / More or less alive, / They looked at me, more / Or less out of place." ('An Elegy for the Poet Morgan Blum') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
22/31 Louise Glück – The Wild Iris "More than you love me, very possibly / you love the beasts of the field, even, / possibly, the field itself, in August dotted / with wild chicory and aster: / I know." ('Vespers') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
21/31 Marie Howe – The Kingdom of Ordinary Time "Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning / to rise from the chair as soon I finish this sentence." ('Prayer') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge
20/31 Anne Sexton – The Death Notebooks "I could eat the sky / like an apple / but I'd rather / ask the first star: / why am I here? / why do I live in this house? / who's responsible? / eh?" ('The Fury of Sunsets') #SealeyChallenge #theSealeyChallenge