Tessera

Karen Elizabeth Bishop

@kebishop.bsky.social

52 Posts262 Follower 391 Folgt

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 7h ago

Flinching in my hands this soiled and studded but good heart, which stippling my cupped palms, breathes – —Jen Hadfield, “Hedgehog, Hamnavoe” published in NIGH-NO-PLACE, @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social 2007 #hedgehog #poem #poetry www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/hedgeho...

Hedgehog, Hamnavoe
Jen Hadfield

Flinching in my hands
this soiled and studded but good heart,
which stippling my cupped palms, breathes –

a kidney flinching on a hot griddle,
or very small Hell’s Angel, peeled from the verge
of a sweet, slurred morning.

Drunk, I coddle it like a crystal ball,
hellbent the realistic mysteries
should amount to more than guesswork

and fleas.

Sara Eliza Johnson @saraelizaj.bsky.social · 5d ago

rereading this book and have gasped several times now

Amsterdam Review @amsterdamreview.bsky.social · 3w ago

"we come forth and sometimes singing. but no one / cares after the song or what promise, this thing / called faith. the revelation is always home-grown" 3 poems by @kebishop.bsky.social in Amsterdam Review www.amsterdamreview.org/three-by-karen-elizabeth-bishop.html #poetry #poetrycommunity

alight
i thought we were trees,
shrieking, dense, millenial. but no, we were hands,

we were ocean hands, blind,
fleeing, ignorant. unknowing we swept seawater into

speech, cleaving, the fugitive
madness settles, grief a feathered mouth, a mother

that stays, when we face
pain she says, alight, child, alight, we are torn, born

wanting. hollow as moon &
sometimes the fragment is a continent that floats

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 3w ago

My whole career the Humanities seem to have been curled up in a defensive crouch trying to justify our meaning/existence. At times it has even seemed a productive thought exercise, but I think generally whatever body has demanded the justification is not really open to being persuaded of anything.

John Glenday @johnglenday.bsky.social · 3w ago

Just occasionally, you come across a new poem from a young poet that reassures you all is well with the future of poetry. Dean Browne, from his debut Picador collection ‘After Party’

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · 4w ago

ah wis a fox!!

Association for Scottish Literature@asls.org.uk · 4w ago

Happy #NationalFoxDay to all who celebrate! 🦊 #fox #poem #poetry Ian Hamilton Finlay FOX see me wan time ah wis a fox an wis ah sleekit! ah gaed slinkin heh an snappin yeh the blokes aa sayed ah wis a GREAT fox aw nae kiddin ah wis pretty good had a whole damn wood in them days hen

A page from a book, printed in a reddish-brown ink. The top left contains a stylised papercut picture of a slightly scrawny, scraggly-looking fox. Beneath it is the text of the poem, “Fox’, by Ian Hamilton Finlay, published in GLASGOW BEASTS, AN A BURD, HAW, AN INSEKS, AN, AW, A FUSH, with papercuts by John Picking & Pete McGinn (The Wild Flounder Press, 1961):

see me
wan time
ah wis a fox
an wis ah sleekit! ah
gaed slinkin
heh
an snappin
yeh
the blokes
aa sayed ah wis a GREAT fox
aw nae kiddin
ah wis pretty good
had a whole damn wood
in them days
hen

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · 4w ago

Oh.....one of our best...

the babahuck@tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 4w ago

rip annie dillard

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · last mo.

This beautiful, unexpected news ❤️

Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · last mo.

Love, cast all thought aside. I cast aside all thought. Wendell Berry

A POEM OF THANKS

I have been spared another day
to come into this night
as though there is a mercy in things
mindful of me. Love, cast all
thought aside. I cast aside
all thought. Our bodies enter
their brief precedence,
surrounded by their sleep.
Through you I rise, and you
through me, into the joy
we make, but may not keep.

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · 2mo ago

And mine.

Liberty Hardy@libertyhardy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

My heart. 💔

Tim Curry in the 1970s, dressed as William Shakespeare.

Liberty Hardy @libertyhardy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

My heart. 💔

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · 2mo ago

So grateful to @amsterdamreview.bsky.social for the nod and for honoring Raúl Zurita's always extraordinary work and Héctor Hernández Montecinos' exquisite curation ❤

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · 3mo ago

So pleased that this translation found its home in the @amsterdamreview.bsky.social. A joy to work with such enthusiastic editors and to see Zurita's prose go far & wide

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Read 𝐹𝑢𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑅𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑠, an #essay by 𝐑𝐚𝐮́𝐥 𝐙𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐚 (transl. 𝐊𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐄𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐡 𝐁𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐩 @kebishop.bsky.social) in the Spring issue. Zurita is widely regarded as one of the most significant contemporary writers from South America. bit.ly/AmsterdamReview #nonfiction #poetry #writingcommunity

Funeral Rites
by Raúl Zurita

translated from Spanish and with a foreword by Karen Elizabeth Bishop

Translating Zurita in this stereophonic form is like handling one hundred thousand stars that each announce themselves and their distance at once. I’m up close, inside, and then it’s gone before I even realize where I’m at and I’m on to the next one. Only in stepping back does the whole picture, the whole night sky, come into view. What becomes clear before us is that Zurita’s interventions in prose rival his poetic voice. And that Zurita sees our shared human future very clearly.

Thad DeVassie @thaddevassie.bsky.social · 3mo ago

A favorite from Beth Ann Fennelly for #smallpoemsunday cc: @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Nobody speaks on the page like Zurita. Many thanks to Amsterdam Review for so generously hosting these words.

Amsterdam Review@amsterdamreview.bsky.social · 4mo ago

If the cosmos spoke, it would speak in the voice of poems. You find out that you’re part of a much wider, communal dialogue, that everyone speaks with everything: plants with the sea, the sea with the stars. Everything. And probably, poetry isn’t more than the record of a small part of this great big conversation.

David Atkinson @davidatkinsonpoet.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Today I was proud to take part in a panel discussion sharing my story about being the parent of a trans child I love this poem by Jay Hulme. It is about grace & belonging It's about the possibility of being loved exactly as you are & accepting this truth. #poetry #poemoftheday #Pride #LoveIsLove

Poem - 'Jesus at the Gay Bar' by Jay Hulme

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Current reading. I write about Ní Ghrófa in my latest, still under consideration, book. She's beautiful. observer.co.uk/style/whats-...

Doireann Ní Ghríofa: ‘I treasure any visits from our frie...

The writer in Irish and English, verse and prose, considers love and loss, fact and fiction and the terrible price children pay in warzones

observer.co.uk

Detroit Breakdown @detroitbreakdown.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Nothing says “dying civilization” like gladiator fights at the capitol for the emperor’s amusement.

Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Poems should evidence some degree of control, but poets should be a little volatile. The poem is a high-risk investment, a long-term commitment. Like a big dirty city, it should make you feel a little uncomfortable. Susan Briante, @noemipress.bsky.social

When the Buddha touched his finger to ground at the moment of enlightenment, all the leaves fell from the Bodhi tree. It is February IO, 10:04 in the morning, the Dow falls to 12194. The present poetic strives toward total awareness, incessant recording.
Ravenous as a black walnut tree, roots sucking at the sewer line, the Dow touches everything: the taste of our water, color of our sky, torque of our engines. It is February IO, 1O:15 in the morning, the Dow at 12203 is rising. The poet-like the trash tree-uses all of it.
A poem moves as does the Dow influenced by a variety of factors and events: mergers, oil spills, revolutions, suffering. Sometimes what does not move tells the story. I like poems that go to prisons and coal mining towns. I like poems that act as archive or a view to Elizabeth Street. I admire circuitry and cosmology. I write with a power industry dictionary on the bookshelf behind my desk, a copy of the King James, a guide to Texas trees.
Poems should evidence some degree of control, but poets should be a little volatile. The poem is a high-risk investment, a long-term commitment. Like a big dirty city, it should make you feel
a little uncomfortable.
It is February 10, I:II in the afternoon, the Dow falls to 12197. The poet wants to remind the Dow that the bird has something to teach it about falling and song.

AAUP @aaup.org · 5mo ago

"We can & must fight for public investment that allows us to serve all students, across the broadest spectrum of academic fields, with a renewed commitment to true academic freedom & secure employment for those who further this mission & serve our students." —Rebecca Givan, @ruaaup-aft.bsky.social

Opinion | How Bad Is Higher Ed’s Budget Crunch?

Eleven experts unpack a crisis we all knew was coming.

chronicle.com

SarahJSloat @sjane.bsky.social · 5mo ago

A garden of the flowers that appear in Swann's Way for #WorldCollageDay.

the flower names that appear in Swann's Way typed onto colored paper and collaged on the inner cover of a hardback book.

Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · 6mo ago

My writing advice is deadhead your roses so the abundance will continue ✨

Yellow and pink peace rose in bloom with buds around it

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · 6mo ago

A project I've been working on a while: "Funeral Rites," by Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, in English translation. Many thanks to Héctor Hernández Montecinos; to the fantastic editors of #AmsterdamReview; and to Zurita for trusting his voice in my hands. www.amsterdamreview.org/funeral-rite...

phillip crymble @phillipcrymble.bsky.social · 7mo ago

to be loved to the end / without ruth or recrimination C.D. Wright

AGAINST THE ENCROACHING GRAYS

I held up the femur
of a grasshopper

some blue air fell over me
what I want is less clear to me
now than it was then

to be loved to the end
without ruth or recrimination
to forgive myself as others

have forgiven me
to enjoy the birds
with little bones

at the farmers' market
I still see his truck
from time to time

notices on utility poles
for a lost dog answering
to Scout sometimes I sit

in a café pretending
to read but knowing

I want to be the one
to find Scout
instead

I do what I have done
I wake up and join
the struggle

of the trees
to find a way
through and then

a dark clot
of poetry breaks off

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · 7mo ago

mothers of saffron, fathers / of insurrection

phillip crymble@phillipcrymble.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Linda Pastan

Crocuses

They come
by stealth, spreading
the rumor of spring--
near the hedge...
by the gate...
at our chilly feet ...
mothers of saffron, fathers
of insurrection, purple
and yellow scouts
of an army still massing
just to the south.

Tom Snarsky @tomsnarsky.bsky.social · 7mo ago

happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜 feel free to share small poems you love by other poets, or ones you wrote :) this week I got my first physical copy of my new book MOUNTEBANK, so for the next couple Sundays l’ll be sharing small poems from it — starting with this one 🐑

POEM

The ewe rejects her lamb
& so anticipates
All philosophy

phillip crymble @phillipcrymble.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Closing this run of Louise Glück poems with a personal favourite

REUNION

When Odysseus has returned at last
unrecognizable to Ithaca and killed
the suitors swarming the throne room,
very delicately he signals to Telemachus
to depart: as he stood twenty years ago,
he stands now before Penelope.
On the palace floor, wide bands of sunlight turning
from gold to red. He tells her
nothing of those years, choosing to speak instead
exclusively of small things, as would be
the habit of a man and woman long together:
once she sees who he is, she will know what he's done.
And as he speaks, ah,
tenderly he touches her forearm.

Stephen McGann @stephenmcgann.uk · 7mo ago

I still think about this a lot.

Karen Elizabeth Bishop @kebishop.bsky.social · 8mo ago

february, still. from *the deering hour* (Ornithopter).

𝙽𝚊𝚜𝚑 𝙸𝚜 𝙷𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝙵𝚘𝚛 𝙸𝚝 @nashishereforit.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Wow.