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***Makalani Bandele’s “mary lou williams’s piano workshop (after Fred Moten)” is #207 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote that specific poem. All BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links are at the end of this piece.
Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? So, as you will see by the documentation, I have included I do not write from hand. Oddly, it has just donned on me, but many of my poems never touch wood pulp fiber unless published in a print journal, anthology, or book. This poem, like the majority of my poems, began with ideas and thoughts that I recorded first on my phone in the Google app Keep Notes. It starts here usually out of convenience, I am usually out and about or I am on my computer doing something else, and it is just easier to pick up my phone fire off a few lines, or remind myself of something I want to research, or an idea I want to explore further.
I remain in Google Keep compiling notes and ideas for the poem until I feel like the poem is ready to go and only needs organizing/form-ation. I apologize for not having the initial Google Keep Notes that gave rise to the poem, but in a way we do have them, because the next step in my process is to transfer those notes from Google Keep to Microsoft OneNote. It is at this point on my laptop with the larger screen real estate and a macrocosmic view of my notes and ideas that I either impose a form on the poem, or the lines tell me what form they want to be in.
I remain in Google Keep compiling notes and ideas for the poem until I feel like the poem is ready to go and only needs organizing/form-ation. I apologize for not having the initial Google Keep Notes that gave rise to the poem, but in a way we do have them, because the next step in my process is to transfer those notes from Google Keep to Microsoft OneNote. It is at this point on my laptop with the larger screen real estate and a macrocosmic view of my notes and ideas that I either impose a form on the poem, or the lines tell me what form they want to be in.
This poem is an example of the latter. It is modeled after Fred Moten’s “I lay with francis in the margin” from his collection The Little Edges. I already had a lot of poems in restrictive (but it is good restriction, I often like/need to be restricted) forms, so I figured, and the ideas the lines I had formulated also figured that free verse should be the form of the poem. And yet Jazz is dependent on form (another reason why so many poems in the collection are informed by form), so I felt some element of restriction was being called for.
Moten’s ideas and style are all over, throughout, running top to bottom and side-to-side in this collection so I always had his books at arm’s length and felt ‘I lay with francis…’ struck a similar tone to the one my ideas were striking in the nascent sentiments of this poem. Once I was set on the form, it was only a matter of organizing the lines in accordance with the form.
According to MS Word version history the first draft was dated 9/30/2019 2:16 PM which is about 13 hrs after the MS OneNote timestamp for when I began ‘organizing’ my ideas and lines for the poem. I think you will notice that the difference between the first draft and the final draft that will appear in the book is minimal, a few edits and additions and subtractions here and there.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I was undoubtedly in my bed at 1 AM in the morning. I was in my bed back then also because as a minimalist (and starving artist grad student) my bed is the only piece of furniture I had in my apartment (since then I have gotten rid of my bed frame and turned my futon mattress into a floor couch, I sleep on a pallet on the floor I make up every night out of sheets, covers, and a yoga mat).
My bed back then was pretty cool. It was a 10 in. thick queen futon mattress atop a wooden pallet frame and headboard a friend and I cobbled together. My bedroom in my tiny, one-bedroom apartment is small with one medium-sized window. The queen size bed took up about 75% of the room (a big reason I got rid of the frame, for more floor space). The only items in the room back then (and still) would have been a stainless-steel finish floor lamp from Target, a space heater, a portable clothes closet with a zippered front (needed in addition to the built in closet because I had yet to minimize my clothes), and a wicker clothes hamper in the corner behind the door.
My bed back then was pretty cool. It was a 10 in. thick queen futon mattress atop a wooden pallet frame and headboard a friend and I cobbled together. My bedroom in my tiny, one-bedroom apartment is small with one medium-sized window. The queen size bed took up about 75% of the room (a big reason I got rid of the frame, for more floor space). The only items in the room back then (and still) would have been a stainless-steel finish floor lamp from Target, a space heater, a portable clothes closet with a zippered front (needed in addition to the built in closet because I had yet to minimize my clothes), and a wicker clothes hamper in the corner behind the door.
Again, it goes without saying I was almost always in my bed if I was at my apartment. I was reading Yona Harvey’s (https://www.yonaharvey.com/) Hemming the Water for a class presentation, and Mary Lou Williamson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Williams) is one of the central figures in Harvey’s book.
It was my intention at the outset of under the aegis to give voice to women in the book. The book centers around the life of virtuoso Jazz composer and pianist Bud Powell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Powell), and I wouldn’t call him a feminist by any stretch of the imagination, but by all accounts, women liked to be around him. He was bashful and not the kind of guy to be always in pursuit of women. He did not have the reputation of a womanizer or ‘player” like a lot of other Jazz musicians of his era.
In the biographies I read, women said they liked to be around Powell because he was sensitive, a good listener (in fact Powell didn’t talk much at all) and didn’t objectify them. I took creative license and tried to inject in the book a feminist sensibility, as much as my own very imperfect feminism could inject.
In the final stages of getting the book ready to turn in for the final edits I knew I needed more women voices and perspectives in the poems and Harvey reminded me (I wrote a poem indirectly about Williams in my first book, hellfightin’) that Williams was a central figure in the formation of Bop and after further research I discovered how intimate (nonsexual) Williams’s and Powell’s relationship was.
How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?) I would say I wrote essential one, maybe two drafts, and I just tweaked it here and there slightly to get it to its final draft.
Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us? As I said I think the first draft and final are fairly close to one another, but I would love to share some lines from my notes that I wish I could have fit into the poem:
- “the spaces in between the notes is where you find the most audition.”
- “they came to mary lou's to learn how to fly
their angels alongside their fugitive daemons.”
- “the former treatise have i made, o thelonious,
of all that mary lou began both to do and teach.”
- “but ye shall receive power, after that the bebop ghost is come upon you.”
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? As I said back at the end of question 2, this piece came about out of the desire to include more women’s voices and perspectives in the collection. Even though from the outset I wanted to set as feminist of a tone as thought would be authentic in the book given the hypermasculinity of 1930s to 1960s Jazz community, still as I got closer to the final edits of the manuscript I felt like (and continue to feel like) women’s voices and perspectives were meager, and not at all representative of their impact on the innovation of Jazz and upholding of the Black community.
In this poem, I hoped to showcase the centrality of Mary Lou Williams and her late-night salons and jam sessions at her 63 Hamilton Terrace, Harlem apartment to the birth and innovation of Bop.
Williams’s ideas and technique were a huge influence on all the major Bop innovators and especially Powell. There are three other poems in the collections about Mary Lou Williams and I hope they all investigate the desires, struggles, and aspirations of the black female artist in a hostile, patriarchal society.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? When you compare the drafts of the poem’s the middle section till a few lines before the end, there is little change at all. This is the real guts of the poem, this last part just before the end is the climatic moment for me:
“what freedom of movement,
what to be moving felt like chord to chord,
kinston to st. albans, eighth avenue express,
where she was going, wasn't there before
she left, she made it up as she went along.”
Before this section there are a lot of biblical references, most notably to Acts of the Apostles chapters 1and 2 when the 12 apostles and some 70 disciples were in an ‘upper’ room praying and the holy spirit came upon them all and they were possessed by the spirit.
I was a pastor (Left) in the Baptist church for over 11 years so this entire section draws on that experience and sensibility. When it moves into talking about freedom of movement and what moving must have felt like “kinston to st. albans”, that is a reference to Kinston, NC and St. Albans neighborhood of NYC. When I pastored a church in New Bern, NC, I had some very faithful elderly members (a husband and wife) who had made a modest fortune (not wealth, but a nice nest egg) shuttling black people mostly from eastern NC (Kinston, New Bern, James City) to New York in the late 1940’s to early 1970’s.
Theirs is a story of the Second Great Migration that seldom gets told, namely those individual car loads or two (the wife would drive a carload and the husband would follow behind with another carload) that braved the dangerous highways travelling the segregated South transporting Black migrates to a hope for a better life up North. This was a treacherous journey. Cars were not as safe as they are now, accidents were more prevalent and deadly especially for an African American in the South. The police or highway patrol might come to the accident scene and leave you to die. The black transporters had to be armed to protect themselves from passengers whose plans were to rob them, and from white people they might encounter when stopped by the road or in a town to get supplies. I have very fond memories of the times I spent with that couple listening to their stories and gaining so much from their wisdom and generosity.
Williams spent a lot of time on the road travelling from gig to gig across America. So, she was familiar with the perils of traveling while black in the early 20th century. And she loved riding trains and the NYC subway (eighth avenue express was her train), one of her biographers said she got a lot of her musical ideas from modern travel as well wrote many compositions while she was taking modern travel. I don’t know my heart and mind made that connection between the freedom black people seek and how connected it is to having to escape to places where white supremacy is less virulent, as well as how that freedom is expressed in our music as our musician not just speak to political freedom, but also to artistic and formal freedom in invention.
Theirs is a story of the Second Great Migration that seldom gets told, namely those individual car loads or two (the wife would drive a carload and the husband would follow behind with another carload) that braved the dangerous highways travelling the segregated South transporting Black migrates to a hope for a better life up North. This was a treacherous journey. Cars were not as safe as they are now, accidents were more prevalent and deadly especially for an African American in the South. The police or highway patrol might come to the accident scene and leave you to die. The black transporters had to be armed to protect themselves from passengers whose plans were to rob them, and from white people they might encounter when stopped by the road or in a town to get supplies. I have very fond memories of the times I spent with that couple listening to their stories and gaining so much from their wisdom and generosity.
Williams spent a lot of time on the road travelling from gig to gig across America. So, she was familiar with the perils of traveling while black in the early 20th century. And she loved riding trains and the NYC subway (eighth avenue express was her train), one of her biographers said she got a lot of her musical ideas from modern travel as well wrote many compositions while she was taking modern travel. I don’t know my heart and mind made that connection between the freedom black people seek and how connected it is to having to escape to places where white supremacy is less virulent, as well as how that freedom is expressed in our music as our musician not just speak to political freedom, but also to artistic and formal freedom in invention.
Has this poem been published before? And if so where? This poem has never been published. It had never touched wood pulp fiber until my publisher printed the first galleys for the book a month or so ago. This is one of my favorite poems in the collection, but I never sent it out to journals because it came after the book was under contract and over thirty percent of the poems had already been published, so I wasn’t pressed to get more out there. I read this poem in public a lot, but I almost exclusively read from a tablet and do not print my poems out. Like I said I have poems that never touch wood pulp fiber. I write them and edit wholly on electronic interfaces, they get published in online journals, and I read them on an electronic device. So different from even five to seven years ago when I was not paperless in my drafting process. It was not so much a conscious effort to go paperless, technology for me has just made it obsolete and wasteful.
Makalani Bandele is a resident of Lexington, KY. He is an Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem fellow. He has also received fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, Millay Colony, and Vermont Studio Center. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a BA in the Program of Liberal Studies, as well as a graduate of Shaw University with a Master of Divinity in Biblical Studies. He currently attends the University of Kentucky in pursuit of an MFA in Creative Writing. His work has been published in several anthologies, and widely in print and online journals, African-American Review, Killens Review of Arts and Letters, and Sou’wester to name a few. Most recently work from his manuscript, under the aegis of a winged mind, which won the 2019 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and is slated to be published in September 2020, appears or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Foundry, 32poems, and North American Review. His collection of poems hellfightin’, his only other full-length work, was published by Aquarius Press in 2011.
https://www.autumnhouse.org/books/under-the-aegis-of-a-winged-mind/
#192 Backstory of the Poem
#203 Backstory of the Poem
“Un Poco Pequeño”
BACKSTORY OF THE POEM LINKS
001 December 29, 2017
Margo Berdeshevksy’s “12-24”
002 January 08, 2018
Alexis Rhone Fancher’s “82 Miles From the Beach, We Order The Lobster At Clear Lake Café”
003 January 12, 2018
Barbara Crooker’s “Orange”
004 January 22, 2018
Sonia Saikaley’s “Modern Matsushima”
005 January 29, 2018
Ellen Foos’s “Side Yard”
006 February 03, 2018
Susan Sundwall’s “The Ringmaster”
007 February 09, 2018
Leslea Newman’s “That Night”
008 February 17, 2018
Alexis Rhone Fancher “June Fairchild Isn’t Dead”
009 February 24, 2018
Charles Clifford Brooks III “The Gift of the Year With Granny”
010 March 03, 2018
Scott Thomas Outlar’s “The Natural Reflection of Your Palms”
011 March 10, 2018
Anya Francesca Jenkins’s “After Diane Beatty’s Photograph “History Abandoned”
012 March 17, 2018
Angela Narciso Torres’s “What I Learned This Week”
013 March 24, 2018
Jan Steckel’s “Holiday On ICE”
014 March 31, 2018
Ibrahim Honjo’s “Colors”
015 April 14, 2018
Marilyn Kallett’s “Ode to Disappointment”
016 April 27, 2018
Beth Copeland’s “Reliquary”
017 May 12, 2018
Marlon L Fick’s “The Swallows of Barcelona”
018 May 25, 2018
Juliet Cook’s “ARTERIAL DISCOMBOBULATION”
019 June 09, 2018
Alexis Rhone Fancher’s “Stiletto Killer. . . A Surmise”
020 June 16, 2018
Charles Rammelkamp’s “At Last I Can Start Suffering”
021 July 05, 2018
Marla Shaw O’Neill’s “Wind Chimes”
022 July 13, 2018
Julia Gordon-Bramer’s “Studying Ariel”
023 July 20, 2018
Bill Yarrow’s “Jesus Zombie”
024 July 27, 2018
Telaina Eriksen’s “Brag 2016”
025 August 01, 2018
Seth Berg’s “It is only Yourself that Bends – so Wake up!”
026 August 07, 2018
David Herrle’s “Devil In the Details”
027 August 13, 2018
Gloria Mindock’s “Carmen Polo, Lady Necklaces, 2017”
028 August 21, 2018
Connie Post’s “Two Deaths”
029 August 30, 2018
Mary Harwell Sayler’s “Faces in a Crowd”
030 September 16, 2018
Larry Jaffe’s “The Risking Point”
031 September 24, 2018
Mark Lee Webb’s “After We Drove”
032 October 04, 2018
Melissa Studdard’s “Astral”
033 October 13, 2018
Robert Craven’s “I Have A Bass Guitar Called Vanessa”
034 October 17, 2018
David Sullivan’s “Paper Mache Peaches of Heaven”
035 October 23, 2018
Timothy Gager’s “Sobriety”
036 October 30, 2018
Gary Glauber’s “The Second Breakfast”
037 November 04, 2018
Heather Forbes-McKeon’s “Melania’s Deaf Tone Jacket”
038 November 11, 2018
Andrena Zawinski’s “Women of the Fields”
039 November 00, 2018
Gordon Hilger’s “Poe”
040 November 16, 2018
Rita Quillen’s “My Children Question Me About Poetry” and “Deathbed Dreams”
041 November 20, 2018
Jonathan Kevin Rice’s “Dog Sitting”
042 November 22, 2018
Haroldo Barbosa Filho’s “Mountain”
043 November 27, 2018
Megan Merchant’s “Grief Flowers”
044 November 30, 2018
Jonathan P Taylor’s “This poem is too neat”
045 December 03, 2018
Ian Haight’s “Sungmyo for our Dead Father-in-Law”
046 December 06, 2018
Nancy Dafoe’s “Poem in the Throat”
047 December 11, 2018
Jeffrey Pearson’s “Memorial Day”
048 December 14, 2018
Frank Paino’s “Laika”
049 December 15, 2018
Jennifer Martelli’s “Anniversary”
O50 December 19, 2018
Joseph Ross’s “For Gilberto Ramos, 15, Who Died in the Texas Desert, June 2014”
051 December 23, 2018
“The Persistence of Music”
by Anatoly Molotkov
052 December 27, 2018
“Under Surveillance”
by Michael Farry
053 December 28, 2018
“Grand Finale”
by Renuka Raghavan
054 December 29, 2018
“Aftermath”
by Gene Barry
055 January 2, 2019
“&”
by Larissa Shmailo
056 January 7, 2019
“The Seamstress:
by Len Kuntz
057 January 10, 2019
"Natural History"
by Camille T Dungy
058 January 11, 2019
“BLOCKADE”
by Brian Burmeister
059 January 12, 2019
“Lost”
by Clint Margrave
060 January 14, 2019
“Menopause”
by Pat Durmon
061 January 19, 2019
“Neptune’s Choir”
by Linda Imbler
062 January 22, 2019
“Views From the Driveway”
by Amy Barone
063 January 25, 2019
“The heron leaves her haunts in the marsh”
by Gail Wronsky
064 January 30, 2019
“Shiprock”
by Terry Lucas
065 February 02, 2019
“Summer 1970, The University of Virginia Opens to Women in the Fall”
by Alarie Tennille
066 February 05, 2019
“At School They Learn Nouns”
by Patrick Bizzaro
067 February 06, 2019
“I Must Not Breathe”
by Angela Jackson-Brown
068 February 11, 2019
“Lunch on City Island, Early June”
by Christine Potter
069 February 12, 2019
“Singing”
by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum
070 February 14, 2019
“Daily Commute”
by Christopher P. Locke
071 February 18, 2019
“How Silent The Trees”
by Wyn Cooper
072 February 20, 2019
“A New Psalm of Montreal”
by Sheenagh Pugh
073 February 23, 2019
“Make Me A Butterfly”
by Amy Barbera
074 February 26, 2019
“Anthem”
by Sandy Coomer
075 March 4, 2019
“Shape of a Violin”
by Kelly Powell
076 March 5, 2019
“Inward Oracle”
by J.P. Dancing Bear
077 March 7, 2019
“I Broke My Bust Of Jesus”
by Susan Sundwall
078 March 9, 2019
“My Mother at 19”
by John Guzlowski
079 March 10, 2019
“Paddling”
by Chera Hammons Miller
080 March 12, 2019
“Of Water and Echo”
by Gillian Cummings
081 082 083 March 14, 2019
“Little Political Sense” “Crossing Kansas with Jim
Morrison” “The Land of Sky and Blue Waters”
by Dr. Lindsey Martin-Bowen
084 March 15, 2019
“A Tune To Remember”
by Anna Evans
085 March 19, 2019
“At the End of Time (Wish You Were Here)
by Jeannine Hall Gailey
086 March 20, 2019
“Garden of Gethsemane”
by Marletta Hemphill
087 March 21, 2019
“Letters From a War”
by Chelsea Dingman
088 March 26, 2019
“HAT”
by Bob Heman
089 March 27, 2019
“Clay for the Potter”
by Belinda Bourgeois
#090 March 30, 2019
“The Pose”
by John Hicks
#091 April 2, 2019
“Last Night at the Wursthaus”
by Doug Holder
#092 April 4, 2019
“Original Sin”
by Diane Lockward
#093 April 5, 2019
“A Father Calls to his child on liveleak”
by Stephen Byrne
#094 April 8, 2019
“XX”
by Marc Zegans
#095 April 12, 2019
“Landscape and Still Life”
by Marjorie Maddox
#096 April 16, 2019
“Strawberries Have Been Growing Here for Hundreds of
Years”
by Mary Ellen Lough
#097 April 17, 2019
“The New Science of Slippery Surfaces”
by Donna Spruijt-Metz
#098 April 19, 2019
“Tennessee Epithalamium”
by Alyse Knorr
#099 April 20, 2019
“Mermaid, 1969”
by Tameca L. Coleman
#100 April 21, 2019
“How Do You Know?”
by Stephanie
#101 April 23, 2019
“Rare Book and Reader”
by Ned Balbo
#102 April 26, 2019
“THUNDER”
by Jefferson Carter
#103 May 01, 2019
“The sight of a million angels”
by Jenneth Graser
#104 May 09, 2019
“How to tell my dog I’m dying”
by Richard Fox
#105 May 17, 2019
“Promises Had Been Made”
by Sarah Sarai
#106 June 01, 2019
“i sold your car today”
by Pamela Twining
#107 June 02, 2019
“Abandoned Stable”
by Nancy Susanna Breen
#108 June 05, 2019
“Cupcake”
by Julene Tripp Weaver
#109 June 6, 2019
“Bobby’s Story”
by Jimmy Pappas
#110 June 10, 2019
“When You Ask Me to Tell You About My Father”
by Pauletta Hansel
#111 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Cemetery Mailbox”
by Jennifer Horne
#112 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Relics”
by Kate Peper
#113 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Q”
by Jennifer Johnson
#114 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Brushing My Hair”
by Tammika Dorsey Jones
#115 Backstory of the Poem
“Because the Birds Will Survive, Too”
by Katherine Riegel
#116 Backstory of the Poem
“DIVORCE”
“DIVORCE”
by Joan Barasovska
#117 Backstory of the Poem
“NEW YEAR”S EVE 2016”
by Michael Meyerhofer
#118 Backstory of the Poem
“Dear the estranged,”
by Gina Tron
#119 Backstory of the Poem
“In Remembrance of Them”
by Janet Renee Cryer
#120 Backstory of the Poem
“Horse Fly Grade Card, Doesn’t Play Well With Others”
by David L. Harrison
#121 Backstory of the Poem
“My Mother’s Cookbook”
by Rachael Ikins
#122 Backstory of the Poem
“Cousins I Never Met”
by Maureen Kadish Sherbondy
#123 Backstory of the Poem
“To Those Who Were Our First Gods”
by Nickole Brown
#124 Backstory of the Poem
“Looking For Sunsets (In the Early Morning)”
“Looking For Sunsets (In the Early Morning)”
by Paul Levinson
#125 Backstory of the Poem
“Tracy”
by Tiff Holland
#126 Backstory of the Poem
“Legs”
by Cindy Hochman
“Legs”
by Cindy Hochman
#127 Backstory of the Poem
“Anathema”
“Anathema”
by Natasha Saje
#128 Backstory of the Poem
“How to Explain Fertility When an Acquaintance Asks Casually”
by Allison Blevins
#129 Backstory of the Poem
“The Art of Meditation In Tennessee”
by Linda Parsons
#130 Backstory of the Poem
“Schooling High, In Beslan”
by Satabdi Saha
#131 Backstory of the Poem
““Baby Jacob survives the Oso Landslide, 2014”
by Amie Zimmerman
#132 Backstory of the Poem
“Our Age of Anxiety”
by Henry Israeli
#133 Backstory of the Poem
“Earth Cries; Heaven Smiles”
by Ken Allan Dronsfield
#134 Backstory of the Poem
“Eons”
by Janine Canan
#135 Backstory of the Poem
“Sworn”
by Catherine Zickgraf
#136 Backstory of the Poem
“Bushwick Blue”
by Susana H. Case
#137 Backstory of the Poem
“Then She Was Forever”
by Paula Persoleo
#138 Backstory of the Poem
“Enough”
by Kris Bigalk
#139 Backstory of the Poem
“From Ghosts of the Upper Floor”
by Tony Trigilio
#140 Backstory of the Poem
“Cloud Audience”
by Wanita Zumbrunnen
#141 Backstory of the Poem
“Condition Center”
by Matthew Freeman
#142 Backstory of the Poem
“Adventuresome Woman”
by Cheryl Suchors
#143 Backstory of the Poem
“The Way Back”
“The Way Back”
by Robert Walicki
#144 Backstory of the Poem
“If I Had Three Lives”
by Sarah Russell
#145 Backstory of the Poem
“Reservoir”
by Andrea Rexilius
#146 Backstory of the Poem
“The Night Before Our Dog Died”
by Melissa Fite Johnson
#147 Backstory of the Poem
“Pileated”
by David Anthony Sam
#148 Backstory of the Poem
“A Kitchen Argument”
by Matthew Gwathmey
#149 Backstory of the Poem
“Insulation”
by Bruce Kauffman
#150 Backstory of the Poem
“I Will Tell You Where I’ve Been”
by Justin Hamm
#151 Backstory of the Poem
“Comfort”
by Michael A Griffith
#152 Backstory of the Poem
“VAN GOGH TO HIS MISTRESS”
by Margo Taft Stever
“VAN GOGH TO HIS MISTRESS”
by Margo Taft Stever
#153 Backstory of the Poem
“1. Girl”
by Margaret Manuel
#154 Backstory of the Poem
“Trading Places”
by Maria Chisolm
#155 Backstory of the Poem
“The Reoccurring Woman”
by Debra May
#156 Backstory of the Poem
“Word Falling”
by Sheryl St. Germain
#157 Backstory of the Poem
“Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of 7,000 Jews Detained in an
Arena”
by Liz Marlow
#158 Backstory of the Poem
“Why Otters Hold Hands”
by William Walsh
#159 Backstory of the Poem
“The Invisible World”
by Rocco de Giacoma
#160 Backstory of the Poem
“Last Call”
“Last Call”
by Ralph Culver
#161 Backstory of the Poem
“ALIVE”
by David Dephy
#162 Backstory of the Poem
“Mare Nostrum”
“Mare Nostrum”
by Janice D Soderling
#163 Backstory of the Poem
“Winnipeg Noir”
by Carmelo Militano
#164 Backstory of the Poem
“Needlepoint Roses”
“Needlepoint Roses”
by Jason O’Toole
#165 Backstory of the Poem
“Singing, Studying on Whiteness, This Penelope Strings”
by Jeanne Larsen
#166 Backstory of the Poem
“How To Befriend Uncertainty”
“How To Befriend Uncertainty”
by Prartho Sereno
#167 Backstory of the Poem
“Shostakovich: Five Pieces”
“Shostakovich: Five Pieces”
by Pamela Uschuk
#168 Backstory of the Poem
“Bouquet for Amy Clampitt”
“Bouquet for Amy Clampitt”
by Peter Kline
#169 Backstory of the Poem
“Heartbroken”
“Heartbroken”
by Catherine Arra
#170 Backstory of the Poem
“Silence – a lost art”
by Megha Sood
#171 Backstory of the Poem/ May 09, 2020
“Horribly Dull”
by Mark DeCharmes
#172 Backstory of the Poem/ May 12, 2020
“Celebrating His Ninety-Second Birthday the Year his Wife Died”
by Michael Mark
#173 Backstory of the Poem/ May 14, 2020
“Night Clouds in the Black Hills”
by Cameron Morse
#174 Backstory of the Poem/ May 18, 2020
“I’ve Been In Heaven For Long”
by Evanesced Dethroned Angel
#175 Backstory of the Poem/ May 20, 2020
“Tutti-Frutti”
by Barbara Crooker
#176 and #177 Backstory of the Poem/ May 25, 2020
“My Small World” and
“My Mistake”
by Tina Barry
#178 Backstory of the Poem/ June 05, 2020
“Against Numbers”
by Andrea Potos
#179 Backstory of the Poem/ June 15, 2020
“Wish”
by Julie Weiss
#180 Backstory of the Poem/ June 20, 2020
“The Tree That Stood Beside Me”
by Carly My Loper
#181 Backstory of the Poem/ June 23, 2020
“Electric Mail”
by Julie E. Bloemeke
#182 Backstory of the Poem
June 24, 2020
“Her First Ten Days”
by Julieta Corpus
#183 Backstory of the Poem
June 26, 2020
“Outside My House Is A Guava Tree”
by Dr. Ampat Varghese Koshy
#184 Backstory of the Poem
July 2, 2020
“Torpor”
by Victor Enns
#185 Backstory of the Poem
July 5, 2020
“A Way of Life”
by Dan Provost
#186 Backstory of the Poem
July 6, 2020
“The Alabama Wiregrassers”
by Charles Ghigna
#186 Backstory of the Poem
July 6, 2020
“The Alabama Wiregrassers”
by Charles Ghigna
#187 Backstory of the Poem
July 7, 2020
“The Seer”
by Kathleen Winter
#188 Backstory of the Poem
July 11, 2020
“Stuck At Home”
by Valerie Frost
#189 Backstory of the Poem
July 13, 2020
“Between the Earth and Sky”
by Eleanor Kedney
#190 Backstory of the Poem
July 14, 2020
““ΜΕΡΕΣ ΥΠΟΜΟΝΗΣ/ Days
of patience”
by Eftichia Kapardell’
#191 Backstory of the Poem
July 15, 2020
“Threnody by the President for Victims of COVID-19, Beginning with a Line from Milosz”
by Ralph Culver
#192 Backstory of the Poem
July 16, 2020
“Will Be Done”
by Tom Hunley
#193 Backstory of the Poem
July 17, 2020
“The Love of Two Trees”
by Hussein Habasch
#194 Backstory of the Poem
July 18, 2020
“June Almeida”
by Lev RI Ardiansyah
#195 Backstory of the Poem
July 19. 2020
“After Grano Maturo”
by Matthew Gavin Frank
by Matthew Gavin Frank
#196 Backstory of the Poem
July 20, 2020
“Practice”
by Linda Neal Reising
#197 Backstory of the Poem
July 21, 2020
“Will Be Done”
by Tom C Hunley
#198 Backstory of the Poem
July 22, 2020
“Shroud”
by Ted Morrissey
#199 Backstory of the Poem
July 23, 2020
“Being In Love at Fifty”
by Anne Walsh Donnelly
#200 Backstory of the Poem
July 25, 2020
“Star pinwheel poem”
by Andrea Watson
#201 Backstory of the Poem
July 30, 2020
“Gentle Women, Adult Female Persons, and Housewives in Indonesia ♀”
by Kimberly Burnham
#202 Backstory of the Poem
July 31, 2020
July 31, 2020
“192”
by Don Yorty
#203 Backstory of the Poem
August 01, 2020
“I want to unfold the disease”
by Vanessa Shields
#204 Backstory of the Poem
August 06, 2020
“A Bone of Contention with the Ghost of John Lennon Over Strawberry Fields Forever”
by Ruth Weinstein
#205 Backstory of the Poem
August 07 2020
“Statement by the Pedestrian Liberation Organisation”
by Thomas McColl
#206 Backstory of the Poem
August 08 2020
“Un Poco Pequeño”
by Damon Chua
#207 Backstory of the Poem
August 10, 2020
“mary lou williams’s piano workshop (after Fred Moten)”
by Makalani Bandele