Sad and happy and sad, but true: “Life has taught me / to understand books.”
10.09.2025 15:41
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Sad and happy and sad, but true: “Life has taught me / to understand books.”
This is what democracy looks like! A people united will never be defeated. We want federal forces out of DC NOW! #WeAreAllDC #FreeDC
This is so helpful. Thanks, Allison!
Kaepernick by Sasha Debevec-McKenney
Canary by Rita Dove
I love these two very different approaches to writing a poem about a public figure, one by Rita Dove about Billie Holiday and the other by Sasha Debevec-McKenney more glancingly about Colin Kaepernick. Is the public figure poem a subgenre? If so or if not so, I’m on the lookout for more examples.
Illinois Gov. Pritzker ahead of Trump National Guard deployment:
"To Chicagoans... Look out for your communities and your neighbours. Know your rights. Film things that you see happening... Authoritarians thrive on your silence. Be loud for America."
Hi, it's Deaf Awareness month! When I teach my Intro to Deaf Studies course I always start out with an ask me anything session where no question is too embarrassing, and it's usually pretty fun... If you want to join, hit me with a question here and I'll try to get to it.
There comes a day when the trees refuse to let you pass until you name them. Stones speak up and reveal themselves as the poor of your new country. Then you see that the moon has chosen to follow you here and find you humming the music you stuffed your ears against. You dream, in a language you never wanted to understand. When you pick up the telephone, the voices from home arrive sighing, bent by the ocean. Their letters bear postage stamps that surprise you with their strange, bright birds. Lisel Mueller, from “Your Tired, Your Poor”
There comes a day when the trees
refuse to let you pass
until you name them.
-Lisel Mueller, from "Your Tired, Your Poor"
#everynightapoem #fragment
“It’s very easy,” Lennon told him. “All you have to do is say what you mean, make it rhyme and put a backbeat to it.”
Reading about David Bowie and his friendship with John Lennon. “I’ll never forget something Lennon told me,” he said. “We were talking about writing and I had always admired the way he used to cut through so much of the bullshit, just come straight to the point with what he wanted to say.”
“The words start over again
hold no terror for them.”
Why am I sweating week one prep? I should go full Zen on the first day of class and just open a window.
Something is shifting. They are still breaking things and stealing things. And they will keep trying to break and to steal. But the propaganda magic around the oligarchical coup is fading. (1/2)
Rep Raskin has been great. Rep Ocasio-Cortez has been great. And Rep Frost and Rep Crockett. Senator Murphy. Maybe no one knew exactly what to do. But such people laid down a clear marker. Let’s respect these and other elected federal representatives who stood out these first few weeks.
Stained glass art of Bishop Budde
“Make good trouble.”
~ John Lewis
Jeff Tweedy and Mavis Staples are getting me through this week:
“You are not alone
Every night
I stand in your place
Every tear
On every face
Tastes the same”
Have been on Bluesky quite a bit the last two days (for info & resources) & it’s not social media that’s broken. I think it’s us that’s broken now. I’ll post about places ppl can donate because LA is in bad shape & my replies are full of “ummmm sounds like somebody’s never heard of Pompeii.”
A reminder that Los Angeles had its hottest summer in history last year. Southern California has received just 2% of "normal" rainfall during the current "rainy" season.
These fires are a direct result of a warming & drying atmosphere caused by burning fossil fuels.
We are in a climate emergency.
Los Angeles received just 0.16 inches of rain since May 2024, the second-driest period on record.
Wildfires are now engulfing the city in January.
But some politicians still claim the climate crisis is a "hoax" as they do the bidding of Big Oil.
What planet are they living on?
Vivian Maier
Chicago 1976
The irresistible case for eco-populism, beautifully made by @aldasky.bsky.social and @triofrancos.bsky.social in the NYT! www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/o...
Robert Hayden
From Yoko Ono’s GRAPEFRUIT: A Book of Instruction and Drawings
“To live, to eat, we almost inevitably kill other living things, even if our labor division means that you personally don't do the killing. But to the extent that the affected creatures are probably sentient, we have a moral obligation to minimize their suffering.”
Insects make up about 40 per cent of living species, and we tend to kill them without pause. New research explores the possibility that they are sentient.
Oh wow, they rang a farm bell 39 times at Carter’s funeral because you ring the bell at the end of the day as a way of saying “your work is done, it’s time to rest.” That’s so beautiful!
I am not I. I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see, whom at times I manage to visit, and whom at other times I forget; the one who remains silent while I talk, the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate, the one who takes a walk when I am indoors, the one who will remain standing when I die. Juan Ramón Jiménez
I Am Not I
By Juan Ramón Jiménez
Translated by Robert Bly
Trying to start off my reading year with a little quiet beauty and tenderness before the world comes crashing in, and this book (mosaic novel? prose poem? unclassifiable enchantment?), about a melancholy man wandering the Andalusian countryside with his beloved donkey, is just what I needed.
HBD Patti Smith: “I believe that we, that this planet, hasn't seen its Golden Age. Everybody says it’s finished ... art's finished, rock and roll is dead, God is dead. Fuck that! This is my chance in the world. I didn't live back there in Mesopotamia, I wasn't there in the Garden of Eden, I wasn't there with Emperor Han, I'm right here right now and I want now to be the Golden Age ...if only each generation would realise that the time for greatness is right now when they're alive ... the time to flower is now.
HBD Patti Smith
