Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
Twenty years after its initial publication, Claudia Rankine’s groundbreaking Don’t Let Me Be Lonely has been reissued with a new preface written by the author.
Genre: Poetry
Taiyon J. Coleman: Traveling Without Moving
Caption:
In this Moon Palace Books event in Minneapolis celebrating Taiyon J. Coleman’s debut essay collection, Traveling Without Moving: Essays From a Black Woman Trying to Survive in America (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, the author reads with fellow Chicagoan writers April Gibson and Lester A. Batiste.
Genre:
A Wild Life
Zillow Gone Wild is a popular Instagram account, and new HGTV reality TV show, that highlights particularly strange, curious, extreme, or otherwise unusual homes listed on the real estate website Zillow. Even for those who are not actively looking to buy or sell a home, the descriptions and photographs on these listings can serve as an inspiring portal, sparking a curiosity about how others express themselves through their homes, and how one’s own life could be different in a new environment with an idiosyncratic character of its own. Browse through some wild real estate listings online and write a persona poem from the point of view of an imagined inhabitant of the home of your choice. Consider what kind of assumptions or preconceived notions you might be bringing to the persona, and how you can upend expectations.
Ten Questions for Elizabeth Scanlon
“I have found writing to be like channeling.” —Elizabeth Scanlon, author of Whosoever Whole
Tags:
A Prayer by Amal Kassir
Caption:
“We are afraid like all mothers.” In this Write About Now Poetry video, spoken word artist and activist Amal Kassir reads her poem “A Prayer” for a live audience.
Genre:
Defeat Is Inevitable
“In the end, I suppose, defeat is inevitable, / the closing of something once delicately propped / open,” writes Dawn Lundy Martin in her poem “From Which the Thing Is Made,” which appears in her collection Instructions for the Lovers, out today from Nightboat. With each line of the poem, Martin dives deeper into the connection between the narrator and their mother, and how her absence is still felt in the body of the narrator. “Even I can’t let go, can’t sift her being (that part / of her that’s her) from my hands,” writes Martin. This week, start a poem with Martin’s first line: “In the end, I suppose, defeat is inevitable…” What memories and imagery come to mind when you think of defeat or of something closing?
Ten Questions for Tara M. Stringfellow
“If one poem broke your heart, my next poem should uplift you.” —Tara M. Stringfellow, author of Magic Enuff
Tags:
Summer Morning
Caption:
“I know all the dark places / Where the sun hasn’t reached yet...” Charles Simic reads his poem “Summer Morning,” which he says needs no introduction, in this video for an installment of Poetry Breaks, a series created by Leita Luchetti in the 1980s and 1990s presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet died at the age of eighty-four on January 9, 2023.
Genre:
Maria Stepanova on Advice for Young Writers
Caption:
In this Louisiana Channel video, Russian poet and journalist Maria Stepanova offers her advice for young writers to look forward to something unknown and to be able to “look into the future with some degree of hope.”
Scents
“We tend to treat odor in general as a sort of taboo,” writes Scott Sayare in a New York Times Magazine article about a woman who discovered she could smell Parkinson’s disease, in some cases over a dozen years before medical diagnosis. “Modern doctors are trained to diagnose by inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation; ‘inhalation’ is not on the list, and social norms would discourage it if it were.” This week, focus your attention on your sense of smell as you go about your days, perhaps even ignoring social norms as you inhale all the odors around you. Then, write a poem that focuses solely, or primarily, on smell—perhaps juxtaposing scents that are in your everyday life now and those from a more distant past.
Pages
