Author: dig

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still permeable to wonder

Grace is unearned.

Separation from what you love best, that is hell.

(Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar)

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The present moment
is an explosion ,
a scission
of past and future

leaving
those valorous
disreputables ,
the ruins ,

sentinels
in an unknown dawn
strewn with prophecy .

Only the momentary
goggle of death
fixes the fugitive
momentum .

Time Bomb, Mina Loy

via Poetry and the Turning World: Technology, Sarah Howe and Sandeep Parmar–quite enjoyable listening!(LRB)

Also, A World Where News Travelled Slowly, Lavinia Greenlaw and Honeycomb, Jorie Graham.

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              All modesty is false modesty
when it comes to poems,
              or to the silence
in which poems begin
              before they are words,
when they are still daisies
              at the foot of the dead Christ
in an anonymous painting,
              13th century. Not to know how to live
is one thing, and nothing
              to be ashamed of.
But not to know
              how to sit in front of those daisies
with tears in my eyes:
              what a waste that would be.

Not to know how to live, Jim Moore

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A raunchy, spiky take on how poetry can teach us to have better sex, dispensing pleasure and provocation in equal measure.

“Poetry is sex’s best translator,” writes Anahid Nersessian in this witty, provocative tour through the history of erotic verse. If poetry is uniquely able to capture the intricacies (and indelicacies) of sex, then it stands to reason that it can teach us a thing or two about how to have it better—while also shedding light on the state of our sexual psyches today.

How to Have Sex in a Poem begins with a startling premise: Sex is everywhere in contemporary poetry, but positive depictions of it are few and far between. It’s critiqued, not celebrated—and while it may be fair to say our sexual lives and politics are often lacking, this only identifies the problem. Nersessian turns to a rich (and often blush-worthy) countertradition of erotic poetry that revels in sex of all kinds —dirty, anonymous, polymorphous—without ignoring its pitfalls. Beginning with a Sumerian priestess’s ecstatic depictions of orgasm, this book introduces us to the work of a Chinese courtesan who flaunts the freedoms of her trade, a Welsh bard who composes odes to her “quim,” and an earl who writes of how “Signior Dildo” took London by storm. It explores how Milton cataloged the sex lives of angels, and shows how Shakespeare’s use of indirection created the template for contemporary love poetry. It also vindicates the work of modern poets like Bernadette Mayer who defiantly ignored the conventions of what sex in verse is supposed to look like. The result is a manual in the form of a polemic, one that shows us how we can read and imagine our way to better sex.

FSG Originals. ISBN : 9780374616670. On Sale : 02/02/2027

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The Thing Is, Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

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“crouched low and smiling”

Songs (IV), E. E. Cummings

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Goes out,

comes back—

      the love life of a cat.

[goes out comes back] by Kobayashi Issa, translated by by Robert Hass.

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Mosquito at my ear—

does he think

      I’m deaf?

[mosquito at my ear] by Kobayashi Issa, translated by by Robert Hass.

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From Screen to Paper: A Short Story About Why Artmedia Was Born by Gady Alroy.

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The Facts of Life, Pádraig Ó Tuama

That you were born

and you will die.

That you will sometimes love enough

and sometimes not.

That you will lie

if only to yourself.

That you will get tired.

That you will learn most from the situations

you did not choose.

That there will be some things that move you

more than you can say.

That you will live

that you must be loved.

That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of

your attention.

That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg

of two people who once were strangers

and may well still be.

That life isn’t fair.

That life is sometimes good

and sometimes even better than good.

That life is often not so good.

That life is real

and if you can survive it, well,

survive it well

with love

and art

and meaning given

where meaning’s scarce.

That you will learn to live with regret.

That you will learn to live with respect.

That the structures that constrict you

may not be permanently constricting.

That you will probably be okay.

That you must accept change

before you die

but you will die anyway.

So you might as well live

and you might as well love.

You might as well love.

You might as well love.

.

This poem appeared in Sorry For Your Troubles by Pádraig Ó Tuama, published by Canterbury Press Norwich, 2013.