The Best American Poetry

Jane Shore: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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God

 

Mary, my baby sitter, once took me on a bus

to her shabby boardinghouse in Jersey City

where she showed me a white plastic statue

of a bearded man wearing a bathrobe

who stood on her dresser among her dime store perfumes.

I remember Mary telling me “This is God.”

 

God was about the size of a bottle

of eau de cologne, light as a chicken bone.

I held Him in one hand, turning Him over,

the way you’d examine an object

you’d picked up off the ground, thinking it was

just a rock but a minute later discovering

it was a gold ring, and how lucky you were

finding a thing like that

when you weren’t even looking.

 

In Sunday school, the rabbi told us

that God was invisible. It was a sin

even to draw a picture of Him

or to say His name out loud.

If you did, you’d die on the spot.

But here I was, staring at God, holding God,

and I was still on this planet breathing.

My best friend, Janet Crosio, had the same

statue on a shelf in her living room:

I thought it was one of her mother’s knick knacks;

I never dreamed that it was God.

 

Mary told me God’s name—Jesus Christ—

and that his mother’s name was Mary, too.

But Mary—my Mary—was sixteen, Italian,

a high school dropout, a heavy smoker

who lived in a boardinghouse, alone.

Why my mother had hired her, I don’t know.

I quickly slipped God back to her.

And while I waited to be taken home,

still amazed that I’d seen God,

I stared out of the second-story window

at an ugly concrete yard below.

                                                                      

On the windowsill, Mary’s glass ashtray

overflowed with ashes and cigarette butts.

I wasn’t thinking, something came over me—

I blew into the ashtray, and ashes flew

into my eyes, a whirlwind of ashes

stinging and burning, gritting up under my eyelids.

Rubbing only made it worse.

I had to cry the ashes out, every last one—

tears like burning rain.

I had to be blind for the hour or so

until I could see again without hurting.

Since then, I often confuse revelation and pain.

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Jane Shore’s six books of poems have garnered the Juniper Prize, the Lamont Prize, the 2010 Poets’ Prize, and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Widely anthologized, her recent poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Salmagundi, Moment, and the Best American Poetry (2019). She teaches at the George Washington University, and lives in Washington, DC, and in Vermont. [See this link for more poems by, and information on, Jane Shore.]

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Buck Downs: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buck Downs, 2019. Photo by Steven Phillips

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More Special Music

 

            looking in my face

            at the shaving glass

 

                        a glass of air

                        I work by feel

 

            a dozen souls

                        have died

            in this body—

            reincarnation

running in reverse—

 

            the great glam drone

            of heart & head

beating together—

                        that’s my jam—

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A native of Jones County, Miss., Buck Downs works as a publishing consultant and writing coach for corporate clients, technology developers, and authors who need individual attention. In 2017, Furniture Press Books of Baltimore published a selected poems, Unintended Empire. His most recent book of poetry is Not Right, Now! (Buck Downs Dot Com). For thirty years he has distributed his poems as a series of postcards and other author-published ephemera. (Click here for Buck Downs on writing.)

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Ted Berrigan on the 38th Anniversary of his Death: Posthumous Pick of the Month [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Mark Hillringhouse Photography

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New Personal Poem

to Michael Lally

You had your own reasons for getting
In your own way. You didn’t want to be
Clear to yourself. You knew a hell
Of a lot more than you were willing
               to let yourself know. I felt
Natural love for you on the spot. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Right.
Beautiful. I don’t use the word lightly. I
Protested with whatever love (honesty) (& frontal nudity)
A yes basically reserved Irish Catholic American Providence Rhode
               Island New Englander is able to manage. You
Are sophisticated, not uncomplicated, not
Naïve, and Not simple. An Entertainer, & I am, too.
Frank O’Hara respected love, so do you, & so do we.
He was himself & I was me. And when we came together
Each ourselves in Iowa, all the way
That was love, & it still is, love, today. Can you see me
In what I say? Because as well I see you know
In what you have to say, I did love Frank, as I do
You, “in the right way”.
That’s just talk, not Logos,
               a getting down to cases:
I take it as simple particulars that
               we wear our feelings on our faces.

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Ted Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. He attended Providence College for a year before joining the army in 1954 at the age of 19. After serving in Korea he received a BA in English from the University of Tulsa in 1959 and an MA in 1962. Berrigan moved to New York in the early 1960s where he edited and published C Magazine and C Press Books, wrote art criticism, and collaborated with writers and artists Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, and Anselm Hollo. Berrigan taught at the St. Mark's Poetry Project and was writer-in-residence/visiting poet at the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Yale University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, University of Essex in England, Northeastern Illinois University, and the Naropa Institute. In 1979 he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Berrigan was a central figure in the second generation of the New York School of Poets, which included Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Jim Carroll, and Anselm Hollo. He was the author of more than 20 books, including The Sonnets (1964), Bean Spasms (with Ron Padgett and Joe Brainard) (1967), Poems, In Brief (1971), Red Wagon (1976), and A Certain Slant of Sunlight (1988).  Blue Wind Press published So Going Around Cities: New & Selected Poems, 1958--1979 in 1980. The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (edited by Alice Notley with Anselm Berrigan and Edmund Berrigan) came out in 2005 from the University of California Press. [bio mostly from Poets.org]. Ted Berrigan died on July 4, 1983.

Michael Lally blogs at Lally's Alley.   [Also check out this post on Michael from 2008.]

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                                           Alex Katz,Ted Berrigan,1967.

 

             Ted Berrigan,Tim Dlugos, Penny Milford, Michael Lally, Caitlin Lally (profile) at Michael & Penny's wedding, NYC, 14 Feb 1982.

                                                 

 

Gardner McFall: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gardner McFall. Photo by Susan Unterberg.

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First Kiss

 

When Raymond glided by me across the playing field, I chased him

     like a jet off radar

to plant the ultimate sting on his cheek: a kiss that burned him

     to a blossom of tears.

"What drove you to that?" the teacher inquired, pulling us both aside,

     his small shoulders heaving,

my eyes scanning the air for a reason. It sprang from the boys'

     chanting, "Girls have cooties."

If I had them, why shouldn't he? After school, Mother's withering

     look met me at the door.

She forced me to confess the recess affair to my father,

     the squadron commander,

God's right-hand man, my prank now promoted to a top-ranking sin.

     Love and sex dove under-

ground, buried deep as my spinster great-aunts, though I recall once

     during my college years,

when I came home too late, Mother asked if she should screw a scarlet

     bulb in the front-yard lamp—

Did I plan to turn our street into a red-light district?

     Raymond, wherever you are, whatever your last name is,

you are the pyre on which I throw each guilt-ridden kiss.

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Gardner McFall is the author of The Pilot’s Daughter and Russian Tortoise (poems), an opera libretto entitled Amelia (commissioned by Seattle Opera), and two children’s books.  She edited Made with Words, a prose miscellany by May Swenson. She has poems in Norton’s 2018 anthology, Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees, edited by Laren McClung, with a foreword by Yusef Komunyakaa. Her 2018 chapbook, On the Line, was published by Finishing Line Press. [“First Kiss,” from Russian Tortoise (2009), is reprinted by permission of the author]

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   Roy Lichtenstein, Kiss II, 1962.

Bob Hicok: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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The Order of Things

 

Then I stopped hearing from you. Then I thought

I was Beethoven's cochlear implant. Then I listened

to deafness. Then I tacked a whisper

to the bulletin board. Then I liked dandelions

best in their afro stage. Then a breeze

held their soft beauty for ransom. Then no one

throws a Molotov cocktail better

than a Buddhist monk. Then the abstractions

built a tree fort. Then I stopped hearing from you.

Then I stared at my life with the back of my head.

Then an earthquake somewhere every day.

Then I felt as foolish as a flip-flop

alone on a beach. Then as a beach

alone with a sea. Then as a sea

repeating itself to the moon. Then I stopped hearing

from the moon. Then I waved. Then I threw myself

into the work of throwing myself

as far as I can. Then I picked myself up

and wondered how many of us

get around this way. Then I carried

the infinity. Then I buried the phone.

Then the ground rang. Then I answered the ground.

Then the dial tone of dirt. Then I sat on a boulder

not hearing from you. Then I did jumping jacks

not hearing from you. Then I felt-up silence. Then silence

and I went all the way.

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Bob Hicok's tenth collection, Red Rover Red Rover, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2021. Elegy Owed (Copper Canyon, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. This Clumsy Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007) was awarded the 2008 Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress. Animal Soul (Invisible Cities Press, 2001) was also finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Recipient of nine Pushcart Prizes, a Guggenheim and two NEA Fellowships, his poetry has been selected for inclusion in nine volumes of Best American Poetry. [For more poems by, and information on, Bob Hicok, click here.]

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                         Joseph Cornell, mixed media collage

 

 

 

 

Wang Ping: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wang Ping on the rooftop of Rudy Burckhardt's apartment building in NYC. Photo by Rudy Burckhardt.

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Our Prayers on Father’s Day

Dear God, we are not child actors. We are children. Real children.

Dear God, where is my papa and mama? We just walked 3,000 miles, fighting coyotes along the way. We thought we’d be safe once we crossed the Rio Grande.

Dear God, you said everyone is born equal, every life is a gift, and the kingdom of heaven resides in the mustard seed.

Dear God, we are small and young. Some of us just learned to walk, some still wear diapers, and some are still nursing. Are we not your tiny mustard seeds, dear God?

You say a kid must not be boiled or eaten in mother’s milk. Why are you ripping us from our mother’s breasts, from our father’s hands?

Dear God, we have lost everything: our country, our home, our friends and tomorrow. We have nothing left but our papa and mama. Please give them back.

Dear God, here’s my mama’s number. Here’s my papa’s number. Here’s my aunt’s number. I have it memorized. Please call so we can get out of this dog kennel.

Dear God, you cried for donkeys moaning under loads and falling on the roadside. Are you crying for us, as we fall off la bestia, crushed under tren de la muerte?

Dear God, you wept when you heard starving baby ravens crying from the nest. Are you weeping for us, Lord, as you hear our wailing for papa and mama from the cage?

Dear God, we followed your law to flee from danger: a burning forest, a roaring tsunami, a raging war, violent gangs.

But dear God, it’s been months since I was yanked from mama’s breasts, since I’m left in the cage, crawling in circles . . . as I turn the tender age of 11 months old.

Dear God, we didn’t want to leave home, walk 3,000 miles, or fall off la bestia.

Dear God, we are not criminals or child actors. We just want our mama and papa. Our parents are not criminals or actors. They just want to raise us. There’s no script. Our only word is to live, like all God’s children.

Do not turn off the light on us, dear God. Do not throw away the key to our cage. Give back our papa and mama, dear Lord. Do not forsake us, alone, terrified, drowning in our tears. Hear our cries on Father’s Day. Hear the cries of our fathers and mothers, dying from the death sentence of separation.

Dear God, please let us be children again, like arrows in the hands of a warrior. For we’re your mustard seeds, your heritage, keys to thy kingdom of heaven, dearest God.

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Wang Ping was born in China and came to the U.S. in 1985. Her publications of poetry and prose include American Visa, Foreign Devil, Of Flesh and Spirit, New Generation: Poetry from China Today, Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China, The Magic Whip, The Dragon Emperor, The Last Communist Virgin, Flashcards: Poems by Yu Jian, Ten Thousand Waves, and Life of Miracles along the Yangtze and Mississippi (AWP 2017 award for non-fiction). She won the Eugene-Kayden Award for the Best Book in Humanities and is the recipient of an NEA felllowship, the Bush Artist Fellowship for poetry, the McKnight Fellowship for non-fiction, and many other awards. She received her Distinct Immigrant Award in 2014, and Venezuela International Poet of Honor in 2015. She is the Minnesota Poet Laureate 2021-23, appointed by International Beat Poetry Foundation. She’s also a photographer, installation artist, and flamenco dancer. Her multi-media exhibitions include “Behind the Gate: After the Flood of the Three Gorges” and “Kinship of Rivers,” shown at schools, colleges, galleries, museums, lock and dams, and confluences along the Mississippi River. She is professor emerita of English at Macalester College and founder and director of Kinship of Rivers project.

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                                    Rudy Burckhardt 6 fotos,1992

 

Mary Jo Salter: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Erasers

 

As punishment, my father said, the nuns

   would send him and the others

out to the schoolyard with the day’s erasers.

 

Punishment?  The pounding symphony

   of padded cymbals clapped

together at arm’s length overhead

 

(a snow of vanished alphabets and numbers

   powdering their noses

until they sneezed and laughed out loud at last)

 

was more than remedy, it was reward

   for all the hours they’d sat

without a word (except for passing notes)

 

and straight (or near enough) in front of starched

   black-and-white Sister Martha,

like a conductor raising high her chalk

 

baton, the only one who got to talk.

   Whatever did she teach them?

And what became of all those other boys,

 

poor sinners, who had made a joyful noise?

   My father likes to think,

at seventy-five, not of the white-on-black

 

chalkboard from whose crumbled negative

   those days were never printed,

but of word-clouds where unrecorded voices

 

gladly forgot themselves.  And that he still

   can say so, though all the lessons,

most of the names, and (he doesn’t spell

 

this out) it must be half the boys themselves,

   who grew up and dispersed

as soldiers, fathers, husbands, now are dust.

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Mary Jo Salter is the author of eight books of poems, most recently The Surveyors (2017) and Nothing by Design (2013). Her new collection, Zoom Rooms, will appear in 2022. She has also been a co-editor of three editions of The Norton Anthology of Poetry.  She is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.(Click here for more poems by and information on Mary Jo Salter.)

[“Erasures” copyright Mary Jo Salter; from Open Shutters, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003]  

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Dick Lourie: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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Justice

It’s been reported that when the Beatles

were introduced to Steve Cropper—white genius

of Black Memphis music—the four of them

all stood as one and bowed from the waist: an

 

appropriate homage I’d say     displaying their

good sense—and making me wish that those who buy

records were that astute     instead     as we know

Steve Cropper’s name is not yet a household word

 

except when compared with that of Lowman Pauling

his own acknowledged inspiration now

forgotten     who all through the forties and

fifties played guitar and sang with The 5 Royales

 

Black musicians making Black people’s music

in the USA of lynching and Jim

Crow     colored water fountains and early

death for Negroes who didn’t know their place

 

in a better world we would all stand up

you and I     John     Paul     George     Ringo     and Steve

“The Five Royales” we’d say     as if we were

up on stage proudly introducing them

 

before a huge enthusiastic crowd

“Johnny Tanner and Eugene Tanner on

lead vocals” we’d say     “Jimmy Moore     Otto

Jeffries     Obadiah Carter singing

 

harmony    and on bass harmony and

guitar: Lowman Pauling     Ladies and

Gentlemen” we’d say “this is like gospel

sweetness caught and held by the sting of that

 

guitar—soul starts here” we’d say “and doo-wop

starts here     so will you please welcome The 5

Royales”     and then we would all kneel and kiss

their shiny shoes

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Dick Lourie’s new book, Jam Session and Other Poems (Hanging Loose), reflects his half-century of engagement with two professions: he’s both a poet and a professional blues sax player. In the book’s title poem, Jazz and Blues are two old friends sitting in a café.  A previous book of poems, If the Delta Was the Sea, was inspired by his twenty years of visiting and playing music in the Mississippi Delta. In 1966 he co-founded Hanging Loose Press with Bob Hershon, Emmett Jarrett, and Ron Schreiber. He is still active as co-publisher and co-editor.

[Click for more information on Steve Cropper, Lowman Pauling, and the 5 Royales.]

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Eileen Myles: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

Eileen Myles, photo by Shae Detar

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Joan

 

Today, May 30th, Joan

of Arc was burned.

She was 19 and

when she died

a man saw white doves

fy from her mouth.

 

Joan was born in 1412

between Lorraine

and Champagne. Joan

was raised on legends.

Merlin said France would be

lost by a woman and saved

by a virgin. Joan was

not an adventurous girl, not

a tomboy, but very dreamy,

good, stay-at-home,

the baby of the family.

Joan never got her period.

 

She heard these voices

in the bells, she saw angels

in colored glass. She believed

the sun moved around

the earth because that’s

what she saw. She believed

God wanted Charles VII

to be King of France

because that’s what Michael,

Catherine & Margaret told

her when she listened to

the bells. Her father

said he’d drown her

if she didn’t stop this

nonsense.

 

She was 19 years old

when they burned her body in the middle of town

while she was still alive. A white dove

came out of her mouth as she died.

Five hundred and forty-eight years ago today.

A dove leaped right out of her mouth.

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Eileen Myles (they/them) came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet. Their books include For Now (an essay/talk about writing), I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems, and Chelsea Girls. They showed their photographs in 2019 at Bridget Donahue, NYC. Eileen has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. They live in New York and Marfa, TX. [For more poems and information, see this link and this previous post.] "Joan" is from I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems. Copyright© 2015 by Eileen Myles. Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.

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                  Isidore Patrois: Jeanne d'Arc allant au supplice [Joan of Arc Led to the Stake], 1867, oil on canvas. Musée des beaux-arts, Rouen.

Michael O’Keefe: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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Put Up Your Dukes

 

The last time my father beat me

I was fifteen years old.

After instructing me to “mow the fucking lawn,”

to which I wittily replied, “No fucking way,”

he pinned me against the Chippendale wall

of the library in our new semi-colonial mansion

(Did I mention he was doing quite well since he quit drinking?)

and began working on me like

Sugar Ray Robinson worked on Jake La Motta

but with a distinct difference:

I didn’t fight back.

You don’t hit your father, I thought.

 

Earlier that year I’d acted the part of Peter Pan.

Capitalizing on my androgynous appearance,

and the deeper knowledge

that all the cute girls were into theater,

I landed my first leading role.

The night before we opened my brother made the mistake

of changing channels on the TV without asking my permission.

I beat him mercilessly.

His cries and screams only made me beat him more

because he simply wanted to see what else was on. 

The next night, as one of the Lost Boys, he couldn’t be heard.

I stood in the wings waiting to enter knowing

he would never trust me again.  He never has.

 

So, when Pop began the beating I didn’t fight back

and would never fight back again, at least not

with my hands and teeth, the way I used to.

 

That’s the way peace begins: one beating at a time.     

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As an actor, Michael O'Keefe has garnered both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. He's appeared in the films Eye In the Sky, Michael Clayton, Frozen River, The Pledge, Ironweed,  Instant Family, The Great Santini, and Caddyshack.  Television audiences will recognize him as CIA Agent John Redmond on Homeland and remember him as "Fred" on Roseanne.  Other TV appearances also include The West Wing, Blue Bloods, Sleepy Hollow, Law and Order, House M.D., The Closer, Brothers and Sisters, and City on a Hill. He's appeared on Broadway in Reckless, Side Man, The Fifth of July, and Mass Appeal, for which he received a Theater World Award.  As a writer, his lyrics were in the Grammy-winning song, “Longing in their Hearts,” which was composed and sung by Bonnie Raitt.  He's also written with Irish singer-songwriter Paul Brady and numerous other composers, including Suzzy Roche.  His writing has appeared  in magazines such as BOMB, Mindful, Lake Affect, and Chaparral. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College.  His collection of poems, Swimming from Under My Father, came out in 2009. He has been a Zen practitioner for almost thirty years, and is a Dharma Holder in the Zen Peacemaker Order.

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                                            George Bellows. Dempsey and Firpo, 1924. Oil on canvas. Whitney Museum of American Art.

Harryette Mullen: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo of Harryette Mullen by Hank Lazer, Venice, CA, 2007

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We Are Not Responsible

We are not responsible for your lost or stolen relatives.

We cannot guarantee your safety if you disobey our instructions.

We do not endorse the causes or claims of people begging for handouts.

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

 

Your ticket does not guarantee that we will honor your reservations.

In order to facilitate our procedures, please limit your carrying on.

Before taking off, please extinguish all smoldering resentments.

 

If you cannot understand English, you will be moved out of the way.

In the event of a loss, you’d better look out for yourself.

Your insurance was cancelled because we can no longer handle

your frightful claims. Our handlers lost your luggage and we

are unable to find the key to your legal case.

 

You were detained for interrogation because you fit the profile.

You are not presumed to be innocent if the police

have reason to suspect you are carrying a concealed wallet.

It’s not our fault you were born wearing a gang color.

 It is not our obligation to inform you of your rights.

 

Step aside, please, while our officer inspects your bad attitude.

You have no rights that we are bound to respect.

Please remain calm, or we can’t be held responsible

for what happens to you.

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Harryette Mullen’s books include Recyclopedia (Graywolf, 2006), winner of a PEN

Beyond Margins Award, and Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California,

2002), a finalist for a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and

Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A collection of essays and interviews, The Cracks

Between What We Are and What We Are Supposed to Be, was published in 2012 by

University of Alabama. Graywolf published Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka

Diary in 2013. She teaches courses in American poetry, African American literature,

and creative writing at UCLA. [See this link for more poems and information.]

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         Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Club Scene), 2013; acrylic and glitter on unstretched canvas.

David Trinidad: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

David Trinidad and his mother Joyce, graduation from junior high school, 1968. 

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Sonnet

The day she died, my mother divided

up her jewelry, placed each piece in Dixie

cups (on which my father had written, with

magic marker, the names of her children

and grandchildren): her aunt’s pearls, her mother-

in-law’s topaz and amethysts, her own

mother’s plain gold cross.  Earlier, I’d held

a mirror while she put on her lipstick

(Summer Punch) and ran a comb through what was

left of her hair.  She stared at the gray strands

in her hand—not with sadness, but as fact.

When she placed the last ring in the last cup,

she looked up at me and said, “We never

have enough time to enjoy our treasures.”

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David Trinidad is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry.  These include Swinging on a Star (Turtle Point Press, 2017), Notes on a Past Life (BlazeVOX [books], 2016), Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera (Turtle Point, 2013), and Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems (Turtle Point, 2011).  Digging to Wonderland is forthcoming from Turtle Point in 2022.  He is also the editor of A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos (Nightboat Books, 2011) and Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World: Poems and Notebooks of Ed Smith (Turtle Point, 2019).  Trinidad lives in Chicago, where he is a Professor of Creative Writing/Poetry at Columbia College. [See this link for more poems by David Trinidad.]

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David Trinidad by Billy Sullivan

Barbara Henning: PIck of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barbara Henning, Selfie Photo on 11-1-20 at 4.44 PM

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Here We Are

 

Off to the stationery store on Avenue A

to buy paper and metal bookends.

At least 58 people died in Europe

this week in a brutal cold wave,

plunging temperatures to 17 degrees

below zero.  When I step inside,

I'm suddenly phlegmy and coughing. 

Blood starts pouring out of my

left nostril.  A funny old woman

hidden inside a blue hooded coat

darts out the door.  Republicans

point at the millions of immigrant

workers pouring into the country.

Then I look in the mirror and see

a funny looking old woman

with her head wrapped

like a mummy and a tissue stuck

in her nose. King Tut's mummy

was recently removed from

the sarcophagus, and placed

in a climate-controlled box

to be displayed at a museum in Luxor. 

My husband often had a bloody nose.

Maybe we'll find each other

in another life. When I think of

losing my children, I feel my body

crack into pieces. China's cracking

down on subversive meditating

disciples of the Dalai Lama. 

Be thankful for now, Barbara.

Today. This minute. Here we are.

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Barbara Henning is the author of four novels and eight collections of poetry, most recently a collection of poems, Digigram (United Artists Books 2020) and a novel, Just Like That (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016). She is also the editor of Prompt Book: Experiments for Writing Poetry and Fiction (Spuyten Duyvil 2021), as well as The Selected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins (BV) and Looking Up Harryette Mullen (Belladonna). She is Professor Emeritus at Long Island University in Brooklyn.  [“Here We Are” from A Day Like Today (Negative Capability Press, 2015) is used by permission; © 2021 by Barbara Henning.]

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In this Nov. 4, 2007 file photo, Egypt's antiquities chief Dr. Zahi Hawass, center, supervises the removal of the mummy of King Tutankhamun from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. © REUTERS / Ben Curtis

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Pawlak: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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Do’s and Don’t’s

Tony Bennett said it was Frank Sinatra who told him, "Steal from one person and it's plagiarism. Steal from everybody and it's research."

 

“Keep a strict eye

on eulogistic &

dyslogistic adjectives,”

Lewis (C.S.) advised

Tynan (Kenneth).

“They shd diagnose

(not merely blame)

& distinguish

(not merely praise).”

 

“Almost any noun is better

alone than chaperoned

if it is the right noun,

and very few can stand

two adjectives” --Pound

to Parker Tyler, ‘35--

“‘Unsettled dream’

is stronger than

‘unsettled white dream’.”

 

Precision and economy of language

are virtues this author recommends

when writing poems,

but finds difficult

to put into practice.

 

“It’s more important,”

Ornette Coleman once said,

“to play the correct

feeling

than the correct note.”

 

“Some of the time,"

to quote Chuck Close,

“you know you’re cooking;

the rest of the time,

you just do it.”

 

Or as the handbook

on improvisation

for church organ advises:

"Do not be afraid

of being wrong;

just be afraid of being

uninteresting."

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Mark Pawlak is the author of nine poetry collections and the editor of six anthologies. His latest book is Reconnaissance: New and Selected Poems and Poetic Journals (Hanging Loose). His work has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, and Polish. My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov, a memoir, is forthcoming in 2021 from MadHat Press.

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Elinor Nauen: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The History of Western Philosophy

 

Bertrand Russell had just about convinced me

there’s more to life than sex

I’d like to go to bed

with him but he’s dead      even windowless

monads are sexy     they remind me of gonads

careening around & bumping

each other     hitting on each other

 

I know more philosophy than that

 

you’re not supposed to mix

your muse with your mistress or they’ll both

fuck you     over     the real question

is

is there anything we can think of

which

by the mere fact that we can think of it

is shown to exist outside

our thought   

 

the answer is sex

therefore god exists

 

sex is a revelation

a reason

empirical

possible     credible     self-consistent

the best of all possible worlds

sex precedes existence

precedes essence

I fuck      therefore

I attract every body with a force

directly proportional to the product

of their masses

 

Buridan’s ass

unable to choose between 2 equidistant bundles of hay

died of hunger

call me up sometime     I’ll make you lunch

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Elinor Nauen is a poet and prose writer who writes frequently about baseball, cars and driving, and place, and maintains a six-day-a-week blog (at ElinorNauen.com). Her books include Now That I Know Where I’m Going, American Guys, So Late into the Night (a book-length poem in ottava rima), My Marriage A to Z: A big- city romance, Cars and Other Poems, and, as editor, Ladies, Start Your Engines: Women writers on Cars & the Road and Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend: Women Writers on Baseball. She hails from South Dakota, lives in Manhattan’s East Village with her husband (Johnny Stanton) and a cat (Lefty), and studies Norwegian and strict traditional Japanese karate. She hosted (with Martha King) the Prose Pros series from 2007-2019.

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Daniel Tobin: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Banshee

            The long, drawn-out howling of a dog

            shut up all night inside the auction ring

            out back of our B&B scares awake

            the owner's child so that she cries

            in the room below our bed, a duet

            that in my half-sleep seems to carry

            beyond Mount Eagle and Slea Head

            to my grandmother's Brooklyn apartment

            thirty years ago where, back-lit in her chair,

            she told me her story of the banshee,

            how as a child she heard it wail

            through the townland of Kilvendoney the day

            the neighboring farmer died; and again

            years later she listened to what sounded

            like the keening of an old woman

            under Sixth Avenue streetlights,

            and knew then that no prayer could save

            her oldest son lying in a coma,

            meningitis working into his brain,

            the pain like a small voice rising to a pitch

            beyond all hearing -- a noise so unlike

            the steady hum and beep of machines

            that monitored your induced sleep

            in the outpatient wing where they carved

            the lump from you, as it turned out,

            benign, the word soothing as the whisper

            this child's mother must use to calm

            the fractured music in her daughter's throat,

            Shush, shush, it's only an old watch dog,

            as moonlight softens the tin roof

            outside both our windows, and I draw you

            closer to me in our rented bed

            and rest my hand on your scarred breast.

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Daniel Tobin is the author of nine books of poems, including From Nothing, winner of the Julia Ward Howe Award, The Stone in the Air, his suite of versions from the German of Paul Celan, and most recently Blood Labors, named one of the Best Poetry Books of the Year for 2018 by the New York Times and The Washington Independent Review of Books. His poetry has won many awards, among them the Massachusetts Book Award and fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. His critical and editorial works include Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney, Awake in America, The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, and To the Many: The Collected Early Works of Lola Ridge. His most recent work is On Serious Earth: Poetry and Transcendence. A trilogy of book-length poems, The Mansions, will appear in 2023. He teaches at Emerson College in Boston. [See also this link for more poems and information.]

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                    Kiki Smith, American (born Germany), born 1954; Banshee Pearls (detail), 1991;  Smithsonian American Art Museum.          

Elaine Equi: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo by Jerome Sala

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The Repairman

 

I can’t get rid of him. One day I found him sprawled on the floor tinkering

with the radiator. He was very vague about who had called him (not me)

but seemed to think he had every right to be there. Then he handed me a bill

for several thousand dollars. I said: “I can’t deal with this now, I’m late

for an appointment.” But when I got to my office, he was already standing

in the hallway tapping the walls with a concerned look. “Structural tests,” he said.

After that I began seeing him everywhere, like a shadow carrying a toolbox.

He followed me to school as sure as Mary’s little lamb. Later, he followed me

into a bar, sat a few stools away, sipped a beer, and made fun of my taste

in game shows. He even had the audacity to ring my mother’s doorbell on

Thanksgiving claiming he had come to look at the dishwasher, but instead

got into a discussion with her about fall fashions. In all fairness, he doesn’t

seem dangerous or malicious; he’s never tried any funny business. But I have

to ask myself if he’s fixed one thing. The answer is I don’t think he even tries.

He just seems to want to be with me. Meanwhile, the bills keep coming.

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Elaine Equi’s latest book is The Intangibles from Coffee House Press. Her other books include Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems, Click and Clone, and Sentences and Rain. Widely published and anthologized, her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Big Other,  the Brooklyn Rail, The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry, and in many editions of the Best American Poetry. She teaches at New York University and in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at The New School.

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              "The Painter," collage by John Ashbery, 2014.

David McAleavey: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

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This time tomorrow

 

this time tomorrow     where do you think you will be     in a car, a room

on a road, a floor     of a building with perhaps     many floors, rooms, doors

or lying on grass     playing with your retriever     looking for autumn

falling dogwood leaves     bees complaining for flowers     or by a window

awaiting cloudburst     light hardening, darkening     or fixing coffee

 

I’ve just won a prize     the E-Super-G Award     E stands for Ego

Super for Super     G for Gratification     it’s almost enough

some of you may now     finally and at long last     feel belief in me

of course the money     will send my kids to college     which makes them happy

raccoon coats and such     rah rah siss boom bah Go Team     which is romantic

I mean they think so     which increases my stature     as a lucky dog

I’m the first winner     it’s not like Nobel-stuffy    it’s so very nice

 

I do have duties     I’ve only started to hear     I have to do stuff

remove shrubbery     take out tree stumps and plant new     remove old driveway

remove old sidewalk     have to rent a jackhammer     replace old lamppost

make forms pour concrete     trim slate and lay it in place     got to wear those gloves

but not tomorrow     you can put this hard stuff off     you know how you can

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David McAleavey has published seven books, most recently Huge Haiku (Chax Press, 2005), Rock Taught (Broadkill River Press, 2016), and Talk Music (Flying Islands Press, 2018), as well as one chapbook, David McAleavey’s Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2001), and has edited two collections of writing from and about Washington area writers. He taught literature and creative writing at George Washington University from 1974 to 2020. He has lived in Arlington, Virginia, since 1976.

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Remembering Robert Hershon [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

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Like many others, I am deeply saddened over the death of my dear friend Bob Hershon on March 20, 2021. Bob was smart, funny, and generous. He was also a wonderful poet. Bob was the co-founder of Hanging Loose magazine and press, and helped bring the work of hundreds of writers (including me) to light. He was beloved by many, and earned that love through his great generosity of spirit. Here is a poem of Bob's from last August. It may very well be one of his last poems, but like all his work it is characterized by his warmth, humor, wisdom, and literary genius. Thanks to all of his friends and fellow writers whose tributes to Bob appear below. (More texts, photos, etc. will be added as they arrive.)

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A wonderful, characteristic photograph of Bob Hershon, at a memorial reading I organized for Harvey Shapiro at Stony Brook Southampton in 2013. Now Bob is gone. He was a man filled with humor, warmth and life. He had been ill for some time, but it’s still hard to grasp. —Kathryn Levy

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My dear friend and Hanging Loose co-editor Bob Hershon’s passing has left a gaping hole in my heart. As John Yau recently wrote, he was a major American poet. The quickest of wits, he was an unapologetic city poet in the tradition of Charles Reznikoff and Harvey Shapiro. His knowledge of Brooklyn history, of baseball, popular music, movies and art was encyclopedic. If you ever shared the podium at a poetry reading with Him you made sure he went last lest you be upstaged before you ever got started.  —Mark Pawlak

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Here is the New York Times obituary for Bob.

 

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Did You Know that Robert Hershon is a Major Poet? by John Yau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to listen to

Bob reading at the DIA Art Foundation, November 10th, 2015

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Superbly Situated

you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to
right from the beginning—a relationship based on
good sense and thoughtfulness in little things

i would like to be loved for such simple attainments
as breathing regularly and not falling down too often
or because my eyes are brown or my father left-handed

and to be on the safe side i wouldn’t mind if somehow
i became entangled in your perception of admirable objects
so you might say to yourself: i have recently noticed

how superbly situated the empire state building is
how it looms up suddenly behind cemeteries and rivers
so far away you could touch it—therefore i love you

part of me fears that some moron is already plotting
to tear down the empire state building and replace it
with a block of staten island mother/daughter houses

just as part of me fears that if you love me for my cleanliness
i will grow filthy if you admire my elegant clothes
i’ll start wearing shirts with sailboats on them

but i have decided to become a public beach an opera house
a regularly scheduled flight—something that can’t help being
in the right place at the right time—come take your seat

we’ll raise the curtain fill the house start the engines
fly off into the sunrise, the spire of the empire state
the last sight on the horizon as the earth begins to curve

Robert Hershon, “Superbly Situated” from How to Ride on the Woodlawn Express.

Copyright © 1985 by Robert Hershon. Reprinted with the permission of Hanging Loose Press.

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Introducing Bob Hershon   by Joanna Fuhrman

I wrote this to introduce Bob when he received his LiveMag lifetime achievement award.

My intro for the award: Robert Hershon's 15th collection, End of the Business Day, was published this year. His work has appeared in The Nation, APR, The Brooklyn Rail, the current issue of LIVE MAG and a million other journals! He has been co-editor of Hanging Loose Press since its founding in 1966. His awards include two NEA fellowships and three from New York Foundation of the Arts

I think we all know that Bob Hershon deserves a Goddamn pile of lifetime achievement awards, a sky-scraper full of awards, a mountain of awards.

He needs one for his wry poetry that captures the joy and pain of everyday life, loss, aging, friendship and marriage.

Another for his absurdist poetry that skewers literary fools and know-it-all know-nothings who fill up shopping mall bookstore readings and AWP soirees.

Another for more than fifty years of co-editing one of the best literary journals in the country (and wrangling the OTHER editors into some sort of order)

For publishing the work of high school students from all over the country and the world including some of my early poems.

As other presses embrace, the Ponzi scheme mode of publishing, Hanging Loose is unique in still not charging poets to submit poems, AND actually PAYING writers for their work

He-- of course --deserves another award for putting SO MANY beautiful books in the world (including work by so many of my favorite poets): Paul Violi, Jayne Cortez, his wife the lovely Donna Brook, Charles North, and Quote unquote “younger poets” like Tom Devany and Maggie Nelson

Another for being such a good friend to so many people for so many years. For writing poems to his friends so precise that we all feel like we are their friends too.

I’ve known Bob now for more than 30 years, and in this time his poetry has only gotten better: more honest, funnier and more absurd.

He’s the only poet I know to have a poem on the OP-Ed page of the NY Times AND the menu of a restaurant. I am hoping this publishing trend continues. I would like a Bob Hershon poem flashing underneath the tracks of the F train and in the information books at the hospital.

His work is what we need to make any kind of sense of this backwards world.

I’m looking forward to his 16th, 17th and 18th book.

AND his 50th, 51st and 80th lifetime achievement awards.

 

See also

Celebrating 50 Years of Hanging Loose Press In Conversation with Co-editor Robert Hershon

Interview by Joanna Fuhrman

 

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Bob Hershon, Dick Lourie, and Mark Pawlak. Photo by Gerald Fleming.

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 Bob and Donna believed in me  by Mandy Smoker Broaddus

Over twenty years ago Robert Hershon (and others at Hanging Loose Press - Dick, Mark, Donna...) changed my life forever by publishing my collection of poems. It felt like an incredible dream.  Bob and Donna believed in me, guided me through a new world, boosted me up, and loved me. They became my forever Uncle and Auntie. I will miss him immensely. I will cherish the compliments, the constructive criticism, the witty email banter, coffee at the kitchen counter, after dinner drinks - but mostly I will remember your keen poetics, your bright eye and all the generosity. Thank you.  Thank you so much. 💔

                                                            Mandy Smoker Broaddus, Bob Hershon, Donna Brook

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Robert Hershon R.I.P.  by Michael Lally

Bob was six years older than me and felt like a big brother, a funny one (I had an ex-cop big brother named Robert who was twelve years older and a jokester as well). Hershon's quick wit, even when aimed at me, always made me laugh, which was an unexpected gift because my inability to be equally witty usually soured me on that kind of banter. But Bob Hershon's love for his fellow poets and friends, and most folks, radiated from his heart even when cracking wise.

In fact, his readings were known for the laughter his poems often generated, even sometimes when addressing serious subjects. Some thought of him as a stand-up comic as much as a poet. But he was one of our most wonderful poets and should have had the name recognition of our most famous ones. I think because his poetry was often humorous it sometimes wasn't taken as seriously as it should have been, and because he didn't fit into the categories that critics create for poetry movements and scenes.

In fact Robert Hershon was unique, as a poet, editor, publisher, co-founder and director of The Print Center (that made it possible for many small presses to publish), and husband, father, friend, and wit. His physical presence will be, and already is, deeply missed, but his printed and recorded presence will live on. Rest in poetry, Bob.

PS: here's the full text of the title poem from his 2019 collection

End of the Business Day:

I looked in every file and folder

under the fax and behind the

Xerox. I retraced my footsteps

and pawed through the waste

paper and finally

I found what I'd done with this poem

So I folded it in half and then in

quarters and then to the size of

a matchbook

and I put it in my breast

pocket and I gave it a pat

and I turned out the lights

and I locked the door

and I ran for my life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Lehman, Bob Hershon, Bill Zavatsky, Michael Lally

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                                                               Bob with his daughter Elizabeth       

 

                                                             Bob Hershon and his sister Sue, ca. late 1940s.

Bob was my big brother who decided to teach me to read when I was 3 and gave me vocabulary tests every week. He loved being a big brother to “little sister Susie” and we went to the movies every Saturday as kids. He took me to my first ballet, my first opera, and my first off Broadway play.

He was always funny, and that got us through a rocky childhood. I became a.therapist, and he always wanted to write, and I loved his poetry. I don’t know if you ever saw his cartoons. I have many of them, and when he had a birthday I would give him one, as he never saved them but I did. They are very clever. We never fought, talked very often, and Donna and I were close friends, and close with Jed and Elizabeth. He was very modest and talented. He had an unbelievable memory for all kinds of things. He was one of a kind.

I miss him very much and hated that he suffered so in the last few months. I saw him 3 days before he died, and he held my hand. I bought him chocolate and a big jar of cashews, and he loved that. The nurse said it wasn’t good for him and we looked at her as if she was insane. Life wasn’t always easy for Bob but he was such a kind and loving guy and he knew how many friends were rooting for him. We were all so lucky he was in our lives. (Little sister Susie)

                                                               Bob Hershon and his son Jed

                                                             Bob Hershon as a young man

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Mourning the Loss of Bob Hershon  by Thomas Devaney

His life-long work at Hanging Loose Press is beyond measure.

Bob’s poems, with their "downhome speech," lead with the heart.

The one where he puts his hand back to reach-out for his son's hand as they're crossing the street always hits me. The son much older now, Bob writes:

Don't fill up on bread

I say absent-mindedly

The servings here are huge.

My son, whose hair may be

receding a bit, says

Did you really just

say that to me?

What he doesn't know

is that when we're walking

together, when we get

to the curb

I sometimes start to reach

for his hand.

Bob was one of the great walkers in the city. Cut out of that same generous grain celebrated by Alfred Kazin and Walt Whitman, where he says: "Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else."

The streets of the city are before us: Bob's gait remains distinctive. His stride is deliberate with a range of tempos. His sense of being is transmitted in the stride of his line breaks and lines.

Notice the poem “Pace.” Yes, we never know which direction he might go, or the pace the poem may take to get there. But, in its own workaday way of that form, it’s also a concrete poem. Bob writes:

on skinny old

Lexington Avenue

I speed up

to pass this man

so I can

slow down

I take

great pleasure in the exact size

of my steps

 

The poems are living maps: all the worlds in all of the names, all the places, which continue to live in Bob's honest and vivid words.

Somewhere, I believe, Sherman Alexie credits Bob and Donna with saving his life. They published Sherman's first book with Hanging Loose Press. Later, even though his big publishers wanted him to publish all of his books with them, Sherman stuck with Hanging Loose for his poetry collections. His tribute to Bob helps to tell the larger story:

Bob's Coney Island

Let's begin with this: America.

I want it all back

now, acre by acre, tonight. I want

some Indian to finally learn

to dance the Ghost Dance right

so that all of the salmon and buffalo return

and the white men are sent back home

to wake up in their favorite European cities.

I am not cruel.

Still, I hesitate

when Bob walks us around his Coney Island:

the Cyclone still running

the skeleton of the Thunderbolt

the Freak Show just a wall of photographs

the Parachute Drop

which has not been used in 30 years

but still looks like we could

tie a few ropes to the top (Why the hell not?) and drop

quickly down, spinning, unravelling

watching Bob's Coney Island rise

from the ashes of the sad, old carnival

that has taken its place now, this carnival

that is so sad because, like Donna says

all carnivals are sad.

We drop to the ground, our knees buckle slightly

at impact. We turn to look at each other

with the kind of love and wonder

that only fear and the release of fear can create.

We climb to the top and parachute down

again and again, because there is an ocean

a few feet away, because Manhattan is just a moment

down the horizon, because there was a 13-year-old boy

who believed that Coney Island belonged to him

though we know that all we see

doesn't really belong to anyone

but I'll let Bob have a conditional lease

because I know finally,

somebody will take care of this place

even if just in memory.

 

—Sherman Alexie

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Bob was my friend for more than 40 years, my publisher more than once, and a great sports fan, the Mets above all.  One of the bricks at Citi Field bears his name (a gift from his family).  He watched other sports, too, though not often the pickup basketball games at Murat Nemet-Nejat's annual summer poets parties—and even less me going one on one with Max Warsh, the son of Bernadette Mayer and Lewis Warsh. Bob looks so happy (and young) here, as do Ed Friedman and Marc Nasdor.  Me, I'm worrying about how to get past Max.

—Charles North

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                                                                 Bob Hershon and Gerald Fleming

Bob Hershon was a stellar human being. The web of writers he brought together— some now gone from the earth and the many left who now mourn him—knew him not simply as "funny" nor classically Brooklyn-irascible, but profoundly caring and generous, deeply intelligent, steeped and conversant in both literature and art. That web of writers is wide both geographically and aesthetically: his tastes took in the whole spectrum of good literature without favoring gender or ethnicity, and both the magazine and the many Hanging Loose book titles attest to that.

I remember a Hanging Loose prose poem reading that Sharon Mesmer, Jack Anderson, and I did at the New York Public Library. Bob did the intro, and during that intro grouched about critics' obsession with defining the prose poem: "If it's good writing, who the hell cares?" That was Bob. (And it should be said that Hanging Loose, under Bob's, Dick's, and Mark's editorialship, was an early home for the prose poem—no raised eyebrows when a prose poem manuscript came over the transom.) It's people like Bob Hershon who keep our literature alive at its cellular level, and those of us who knew him, loved him, are aching.

—Gerald Fleming

                                                 Donna Brook and Bob Hershon. Photo by Gerald Fleming.

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Here is Bob reading at the Paul Violi Memorial at the Poetry Project in June 2011. I can imagine that, during a pause between poems, he's recounting a wryly touching and pertinent anecdote, which will shortly be hitting the audience in the way this photograph hit me. [Photo by David Kelley]

—Tony Towle

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                                             Bob out on the town

Bob sent me these pics a few years ago. It was 2016, he was just turning 80 and a bunch of us were eating some great Italian food after a gathering at Poet's House to celebrate his birthday and the fact that some of us had just had books come out from HL Press... I think no one at the table was aware that anyone was taking pics--I certainly wasn't--so it's all very real. ---Patricia Traxler

Yes, I remember that book party. Bob: pleased that the book party went off smoothly, pleased to be in the company of close poet friends, wine, and food. What I remember so fondly from many such annual events is the late night drive back to Wyckoff Street, sitting at the kitchen counter with Bob, the great pleasure he took in tallying up the book sales, recounting who showed up, who said what, etc. Then a nightcap and to bed in the wee hours.
---Mark Pawlak

The restaurant where those photos were taken on May 20th, 2016, by the way, was Gigino's, on Greenwich Street south of Duane. Mark was right on the money in his description---Bob was extremely happy to be where he was with the people that were there, after another successful Hanging Loose celebration, and after a good dinner with good wine (and maybe one pre-dinner cocktail). ---Tony Towle

top: Bob, Patricia Traxler, Dick Lourie, Mark Pawlak, [?], Tony Towle, and [???].
bottom: Michael Lally, Bob, Patricia Traxler, Dick Lourie, Mark Pawlak

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Bob and Donna in Paris at an evening reading I'd arranged at a pal's apartment. Quite a few readers (including Kathryn Levy, who happened to be in town), and Bob was a big hit. (It took some convincing to get Donna to read, but read she did, and I think she was glad she did. Bob was especially happy about that.)  ---Gerald Fleming

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                                                                  Bob Hershon, Ivy Chen, Keri Smith, Wang Ping in NYC

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left photo: Jeanne Calvit, husband of Lisa Von Drasek, Sherman Alexie, Lisa Von Drasek, Wang Ping, Bob Hershon, Donna Brook
right photo: Wang Ping, Sherman Alexie, Bob Hershon

Bob and Donna visited Macalester College in 2015, with Sherman Alexie. The trio caused a sensation in the Twin Cities, with their poetry, stories, humor, and their bonds with each other. Sherman told many stories about how Bob discovered his poetry and has been publishing him ever since. I cooked a banquet for them at home. So many people came, and I had to borrow chairs from friends. One of the chairs was faulty, unfortunately. Bob sat on it, and it collapsed under him. I was terrified, but he got up and continued with the feast, with a joke that made everyone laugh. He was tough and funny. Hanging Loose Press published my first translation: New Generation: Poetry from China Today, with Dick Lourie, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman among the co-translators. It paved my path as a poet and translator for the future. Bob and Donna also hosted a baby shower for my firstborn child at their home. I still hold onto that stroller. Bob's last wish was a Chinese dinner. I am sharing a photo of us feasting on Chinese food at Hong Kong Noodles in Minneapolis. Hope he sees this and smiles from his new place. Bob has made many children of poets and writers. I'm one of them.
---Wang Ping

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                                                                                Dick, Ron, Emmett, Bob

Bob wrote a poem about Hanging Loose editors. That’s the one that, in the last few weeks, has really got to me.

We’ve been doing the same thing for fifty-five years: submissions to the magazine are screened, sent around, and voted on—mostly by mail, since we’ve never actually had all the editors living in one place. Then we meet together about three times a year. We spend a weekend sitting around a table, usually in Bob’s living room, to make final decisions. On warm, sunny days there’s a table in the back yard.

Nothing gets in the magazine until it’s been read aloud—we have to hear it. In the middle of the table there’s a pile of manuscripts. Depending on how long it’s been between meetings, there might be 40 or 50, or only 20 or 30. Ron Schreiber always took on himself the job of doling them out by turns. We never knew if Ron had some devious sorting plan of his own. That would have been in character.

Bob reads someone’s poem to us—his voice: I know it so well—first polishing his glasses with that characteristic gesture I also know so well. He’s right across the table from me. Then we vote (previous votes are disregarded; to make the cut it has to be heard). Because we are kind people, a tie vote always goes to the “yesses.” Ron’s on my right; he’s next; we always read clockwise. (Don’t ask.)

Then me, then Emmett Jarrett on my left; after he has retired into the clergy, Mark Pawlak is on my left; he’s been there forty years. After Ron died, we each had to choose our own manuscripts to read from the pile, and we didn’t need to think about tie votes any more.

Now Mark’s across the table and Bob is on my right, watchful so I don’t steal the pen he’s doodling with. We’re familiar, so joyfully and achingly familiar, with one another’s voices, and with each individual style of reading aloud. Because this is what we do. For a half-century.

Here is Bob’s poem.

The Editors Editing 

Nomi our neighbor 

Asks Donna what are those 

Guys doing out back 

Sitting around the table 

Table full of papers 

And one guy goes blah blah blah blah 

And the others all shake their heads 

And go ahum ahum ahum 

 

Then the oak leaves fall 

Then the white garden furniture 

Covered with gray city snow 

Bluejay walks across the table 

And down somebody's leg 

Blah blah blah blah 

 

Reflecting on it the week after Bob died, I realized why I was so moved by these fourteen lines. Of course, I thought, it’s a poem about eternal friendship.

---Dick Lourie

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I found another photo of Bob I took the last time I stayed with him, in 2019. I love that photo. He was sitting under his favorite painting, happy, content, at ease...full of dreams.  ---Wang Ping

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June Jordan: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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The Reception

 

Doretha wore the short blue lace last night

and William watched her drinking so she fight

with him in flying collar slim-jim orange

tie and alligator belt below the navel pants uptight

 

“I flirt. You hear me? Yes I flirt.

Been on my pretty knees all week

to clean the rich white downtown dirt

the greedy garbage money reek.

 

I flirt. Damned right. You look at me.”

But William watched her carefully

his mustache shaky she could see

him jealous, “which is how he always be

 

at parties.” Clementine and Wilhelmina

looked at trouble in the light blue lace

and held to George while Roosevelt Senior

circled by the yella high and bitterly light blue face

 

he liked because she worked

the crowded room like clay like molding men

from dust to muscle jerked

and arms and shoulders moving when

 

she moved. The Lord Almighty Seagrams bless

Doretha in her short blue dress

and Roosevelt waiting for his chance:

a true gut-funky blues to make her really dance.

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June Jordan was born in Harlem in 1936 and was the author of ten books of poetry, seven collections of essays, two plays, a libretto, a novel, a memoir, five children’s books, and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. As a professor at UC Berkeley, Jordan established Poetry for the People, a program to train student teachers to teach the power of poetry from a multicultural worldview. She was a regular columnist for The Progressive, and her articles appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms., Essence, and The Nation. After her death from breast cancer in 2002, a school in the San Francisco School District was renamed in her honor. [From the forthcoming volume, The Essential June Jordan (May 2021, Copper Canyon Press]. See also this link.

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June Jordan on being a poet (and to hear her wonderful laugh)---