Category: poetry

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Hammond Pond Reservation, Green Line crossing

For five extra minutes you follow the path
through mayapple, sarsaparilla and anxiety
over a little hill and through
what might be blueberry and poison ivy
with beech and oak and maple rustling overhead
to a pond, a flooded field really
and the curl of wind over its flat surface
and the beaten-down dried rushes
and a barrier of stones
upon which rests
a butterfly with black, gold-tipped wings

thirty seconds later, you turn to see
the Riverside Line cross,
two green trolleys
over the silent water

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Boston-Area Poetry Readings for April/May 2012

If you live in Boston and haven’t had a chance to celebrate National Poetry Month yet, here are more than a few chances. Some are readings and some are open mics — skim the listings for more details.

This information comes from a mailing put out by a gentleman at one of the MIT presses. His emails come out once every few weeks — no more than once or twice a month — and provide clear evidence of the rich literary landscape of Eastern Massachusetts. If you would like to be added to his mailing list, please leave a comment with your email address and I will connect the two of you privately.

Tuesday, April 24, 1 pm
Suffolk University Poetry Center
Sawyer Library, Third Floor
73 Tremont St.
Boston

Tuesday April 24, 7 pm
Writers at the Black Box: Graduate Students and Alum of the BU Creative Writing Program
Rebekah Stout, poetry/alum, Megan Fernandez, playwriting, Abriana Jette, poetry, and Laura Goldstein, poetry
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
949 Commonwealth Ave.
Boston

Saturday April, 28, begins 8:30 a.m.
Newburyport Literary Festival
Google it.
Newburyport, MA

Saturday, April 28, 10 am – 4:40 pm
Sunday, April 29, 1:10 – 4:30 pm
56 poets each reading for 10 minutes
inluding Sam Cornish, Rhina P. Espaillat, Richard Wollman ,Christine Casson, Dan Tobin, Jennifer Barber, Alfred Nicol, Kathleen Spivack, Doug Holder, Elizabeth Doran, Richard Hoffman, Lucy Holstedt, Charles Coe, Kim Triedman, Ryk McIntyre, January O’Neil, Regie O’Gibson, Kate Finnegan (Kaji Aso Studio), Victor Howes, Susan Donnelly, Jack Scully, Rene Schwiesow, Chad Parenteau, Linda Larson, Tomas O’Leary, Marc Goldfinger, Gloria Mindock, Tim Gager, Diana Saenz, Stuart Peterfreund, Valerie Lawson, Michael Brown, Mignon Ariel King, Tom Daley, Molly Lynn Watt, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Lainie Senechal, Harris Gardner, Joanna Nealon, Walter Howard, Zvi Sesling, Irene Koronas, Fred Marchant, Sheila Twyman, Robert K. Johnson, Suzanne E. Berger, and others
Boston Public Library
Copley Square
Boston

Saturday, April 28, 3 pm
Joseph Torra, Amanda Cook, and Sam Cha
Outpost 186
186.5 Hampshire Street (in rear)
Inman Square
Cambridge

Sunday, April 29, 3 pm
Over The Centuries: Poetry at Harvard (A Love Story)
A performance celebrating the work of Harvard-affiliated poets Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Ashbery, T.S. Eliot, Adrienne Rich, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, e.e. cummings and many more. Featuring an ensemble of Harvard students, the event will be a tapestry of live voices mixed with images and recordings of the poets themselves reading their work. Conceived by Professor Jorie Graham in collaboration with Matt Aucoin ’12 with curatorial assistance provided by the Woodberry Poetry Room.
Agassiz Theatre
Event is free but tickets are required. Limit of 2 tickets per person.
Tickets valid until 2:45 pm
Available on Tuesday, April 17th to Harvard Affiliates
Available on Thursday, April 19th to the general public.

Monday, April 30, 6 pm
Timothy Donnelley
Harvard
Location details to come, maybe

Monday, April 30, 7pm
Jordan Davis and John Godfrey
The Deja Brew
121 Lockes Village Rd
Wendell, MA
$1-$5 sliding scale

Monday, April 30, 8 pm
Franz Wright and Geoffrey Brock
Blacksmith House
56 Brattle Street
Harvard Square
Cambridge

Tuesday, May 1, 2:30 pm
Grace Krilanovich
McCormack Family Theater
70 Brown St.
Providence
Free and open to the public

Tuesday, May 1, 7 pm
Tom Sleigh, Lloyd Schwartz, Gail Mazur, Fred Marchant, Fanny Howe, Saskia Hamilton, Robert Gardner and Christopher Benfey
Celebration of Robert Lowell & launch of AGNI 75
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
949 Commonwealth Ave, Boston (Green Line B, Pleasant St.)
Boston
free and open to the public

Wednesday, May 2, 7 pm
Rebecca Lindenberg and Stephen Burt
Porter Square Books
25 White Street
Cambridge

Thursday, May 3, 6 pm
Christian Bök
MIT, Building 6 — room 120
Cambridge
Free and open to the public

Friday, May 4, 8 pm
Myfanwy Collins, Carroll Donnell, Joel Peckham, and Yuyutsu Sharma
Dire Literary Reading Series
Out of the Blue Art Gallery
106 Prospect Street
Cambridge

Saturday, May 5, 7:30 pm
Julian T. Brolaski and Cole Swensen
Gloucester Writers Center Poetry Salon
126 East Main St.
Gloucester

Sunday, May 6, 12:45 pm
John Holgerson and David R. Surette
Poetry: The Art of Words/Mike Amado Memorial Series
The Plymouth Center for the Arts
11 North Street
Plymouth
Music feature at Noon

Sunday, May 6, 1 pm
Plein Air Poetry Celbrations at Fruitlands Museum
Special guests and CPC members X.J Kennedy, Bob Clawson , Barb Crane, Joan Kimball and and Amy Woods
Winners of CPC and Fruitlands Museum first Plein Air Poetry Competition will read their poems.
Fruitlands Museum
102 Prospect Hill Road
Harvard, MA

Monday, May 7, 7 pm
Susan McDonough, Margot Wizansky, and Connemara Wadsworth
Workshop for Publishing Poets
Porter Square Books
25 White Street
Cambridge

Monday, May 7, 8 pm
Stanley Plumly and Jane Shore
Blacksmith House
56 Brattle Street
Harvard Square
Cambridge

Wednesday, May 9, 7 pm
Jorie Graham
Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge

Thursday, May 10, 7 pm
Jorie Graham and Sophie Cabot Black
Amherst Books
8 Main Street
Amherst, MA

Friday, May 11, 7:30 pm
Gary Duehr, Karen Miller, and Margaret Young
Chapter and Verse Literary Reading Series
Loring-Greenough House
12 South Street
Jamaica Plain Centre

Saturday, May 12, 3 pm
Kevin Bowen, Fred Marchant, George Kovach, Paul Brailsford, Marc Levy, Martin Ray, Aldo Tambellini
War and Writing: Readings and Conversations
Gloucester Writers Center, William Joiner Center and Consequence Magazine
Harbor Room
126 East Main St.
Veterans and students free
Suggested Donation $10

Saturday, May 12, 3 pm
Ned Balbo and Nancy Bailey Miller
Powow River Poets Reading Series
Jabberwocky Books
50 Water St
Newburyport (in The Tannery Mall)

Saturday, May 12, 7 pm
Naomi Shihab Nye
Old Ship Church
90 Main Street
Hingham, MA
$10

Wednesday, May 16, 7 pm
Susan Jo Russell, Jim Henle, Mary Ellen Geer, Oliver Payne, and Laurie Rosenblatt
Porter Square Books
25 White Street
Porter Square Shopping Center
Cambridge

Thursday, May 17, 7 pm
William and Beverly Corbett: Forty-four Years at 9 Columbus Square
A Woodberry Poetry Room Oral History Initiative
Moderated by Fanny Howe
Barker Center, Thompson Room
Harvard University
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge
free and open to public

Friday, May 18, 7 pm
Nate Klug and William Corbett
Back Pages Books
289 Moody Street
Waltham

Friday, May 18, 7pm
Breakwater Reading Series
Join us for a night of new fiction, poetry, and essays
from the MFA candidates of Emerson, UMASS Boston, and BU.
Brookline Booksmith
Coolidge Corner
Brookline

Saturday, May 19, 3:30 pm
Zvi A. Sesling and Alvah Howe
Poetry Series at the Brockton Library
304 Main Street
Brockton, MA

Sunday, May 20, 3 pm
Teresa Cader and Charles Pratt
Concord Poetry Center
Emerson Umbrella
40 Stow Street
Concord, MA
Open Mike. Free.

Sunday, May 20, 2-4 pm
Brookline Poetry Series
Susan Becker and Kevin Goodman
Brookline Public Library
Main Branch
Brookline Village

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The Drama of the Disoriented Traveler

M thought we’d postpone the trip until June, but he underestimated the pull of California. I may be Yankee-bred, but I’m California-born, and that handful of years I spent there shifted me in some fundamental way a born-and-bred New Englander can’t comprehend. If I don’t feel the humid air and smell the eucalyptus once a year — preferably before the cherry blossoms burst out on the East Coast — I get very cranky. And nobody likes a cranky Okelle.

So what if we had just expended time and energy taking two households and combining them into one? Since when has an empty bank account — or exhaustion — ever stopped me from hopping on a plane to someplace warm?

When I’m feeling ashamed or embarrassed, M will say, “I love you because you’re a woman of strong passions.” Which calms me down a bit, strips away the old intensity of perfectionism. And allows me to forgive myself for dragging him off to my homeland before either of us was really ready.

On the upside, I’d been saving for the trip in advance and definitely stayed within my budget. On the downside, he bought the rip-off rental car insurance and couldn’t say the same thing. On the upside, we tooled around in a Mustang convertible so new, we had to break open the shrink-wrap on the owner’s manual. And he finally me the rest of my family. And after almost 800 miles negotiating the tiny roads that run from valley to valley, he was ready to admit that maybe California had a certain appeal. The upsides have it.

About 24 hours after we arrived at SFO, after an extra-long day that took us from the Embarcadero to Muir Woods and then to the rest of San Francisco, we met his brother at a Boston bar called, ironically enough, Connecticut Yankee. The aroma of 100 years’ worth of spilled beer greeted us at the door. Since I can no longer drink the tasty, hoppy, liquid bread — and since I’d spent the better part of the day pounding pavement and mud with my jet-lagged legs — I was more than a little cranky by the end of dinner. Cranky enough to make a bratty declaration and go for a walk before the check came.

Here’s what I wrote while standing at a mailbox outside of a boarded-up dot-com startup, taking deep breaths and regarding the San Francisco skyline while hipsters bar-hopped all around me. I won’t apologize for it, but I will say it’s very much worthy of my inner 13-year-old, who was very much running the show at that moment:

stand with legs closed
san francisco’s silhouette in the distance

inhaling, heart pounding
one breath, one moment, one breath

sometimes nothing heals but time
sometimes nothing fills the god-shaped hole

all day walking
through the city
through the redwoods

foreign city, foreign parts
foreign homeland

distress of disconnection
a technology deeper than time
wider than space

one moment, one moment
and then the next

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Three San Francisco Haiku: Phoenix Hotel in the Tenderloin

Three haiku at the Phoenix Hotel on the edge of the Tenderloin

san francisco streets
wrought iron gate, open sky
urban oasis

blue mosaic pool
low chairs arranged artfully
artwork, fountains, fire

outside, the homeless
squeal of buses, 6am
unmerited gifts

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Rest in Peace Adrienne Rich: Fellow Poet, Feminist, Queer Woman, Trail-Blazer

Last week, I was about to board a plan to San Francisco when I saw Adrienne Rich’s obituary on the front page of the New York Times.

It’s hard to describe Adrienne Rich’s impact on my life with grace and brevity. That’s because my relationship to her work mirrors my relationship to the literary establishment as a whole. I first heard of her when I was a junior in high school, young poet full of promise and bereft of friends after the class of 1989 graduated and scattered off to college. A precocious freshman named Deborah, with reddish hair and presumptuous mannerisms, was shocked to learn I hadn’t already read and loved her work. What Deborah didn’t know (and neither did I) was that I’d been raised on the literary canon, comprised then as it is now almost exclusively of men. Five years later I wrote my senior thesis at Vassar on her work and the arc of her life. Seventeen years later, Margalit Fox‘s obituary said it better than I ever could.

Continue reading “Rest in Peace Adrienne Rich: Fellow Poet, Feminist, Queer Woman, Trail-Blazer”

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Empty Pond, Full Sky

what does it mean to be empty
and what does it mean to be full?

empty air
over the still glass
surface of the pond

empty belly

geese make
full-throated calls,
expectant

on a monday after the clocks change–
magic hour of daylight
missing hour of sleep

banks empty
still winter-brown

the fluttering sound
of a goose
drinking from the pond
she glides across

empty water, swirling,
then still
after her passing

the park full
of people stunned
at the way winter falls away

the playground full
of children shouting
in foreign tongues

pen drops from my hand
over the empty boulder
into the clear water
rests on the empty bottom

my womb, empty again

this moment
full of silence

this mind
full of the moment
blessed
empty