And yet more Pride Month poetry

From the American Academy of Poetry:

Please join us in celebrating the 36th annual Lambda Literary Award winners and finalists by reading a selection of the work on Poets.org:

“From Xibalba [You want to know where you come from.]” Stephanie Adams-Santos “Two strangers” Kimberly Alidio “What We Lost in the Swamp”  Grant Chemidlin “In the Wild” Jennifer Conlon “I Asked Why Have You Denied Yourself Love”  Sierra DeMulder “Reversal” Danielle Cadena Deulen “Invasive” Robin Gow “fragments salvaged from the oracles of mama-n-em” Destiny Hemphill “Family of Origin Content Warning”  K. Iver  “In the Middle of the Pandemic I Keep Typing Powerflu When I Mean to Type Powerful” Alyse Knorr “Garden State” Margaret Ray “Trace Evidence” Charif Shanahan

“No more compulsion to hide. In a hilly west coast city, you will know the bodies of other women with bodies akin to yours and, as the cliché goes, it will all feel like home.” From Dawn Lundy Martin’s letter to her younger self, inspired by the anthology The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to their Younger Selves (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2012).

more at poets.org

Some more Pride Month poetry

Our friends at the American Academy of Poetry have been quite busy selecting LGBTQ poetry for this month's Poem-a-Day newsletters!

Te Utu O Te Ika a Maaui                    by Essa May Ranapiri 

Preserving an Ecosystem                    by Christina Olivares

Before Parting                                    by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Solstice Re-pot                                    by Shailja Patel

Twilight                                                by Fitz-Greene Halleck

Greenness                                            by Angelina Weld Grimké

Niche                                                    by Anthony Vahni Capildeo

 

Covering Clovis

During last week's Zoom discussion of Saki's The Chronicles of Clovis, Mike Mazza shared these two images of the covers to two different editions:

The first illustration is certainly true to the period, but the latter one is more intriguing--and earns bonus points for the depiction (presumably) of the notorious Tobermory. Thanks, Mike!

Some Pride Month poetry... 🌈

These poems were disseminated in May and June via the American Academy of Poetry's Poem-a-Day newsletter.  Enjoy!

When the World Falls in Around You...             by Lehua M. Taitano

Duplex for the Sick & Tired                          by Kay Ulanday Barrett

Kaonon                                                          by Kathy-Jentil-Kijiner

Water-Owl, Cuvier's Beaked Whale             by Rajiv Mohabir

Praise Poem in the Key of Diaspora             by Terisa Siagatonu

Miracles Welcome                                        by D. Keali'i MacKenzie

[O But My Delicate Lover]                          by Sappho

In the Forest                                                 by Oscar Wilde

On the Wing                                                by Christina Rossetti

"Song of My Softening"

Although Washington Post book critic Ron Charles doesn't explicitly say he selected this poem in honor of Pride Month for the newest edition of his weekly Book Club newsletter, that's a reasonable interpretation. Whatever his reason(s), I'm glad he chose it.

(Alice James Books)

At the start of 2023, I spotted a pair of impressive poems in Poetry Magazine by someone named Omotara James. Who was this remarkable writer? 

I had to wait more than a year to read her first full-length collection, “Song of My Softening”; it was entirely worth it. 

Her poems explore the experiences of a Black queer woman whose life and body are routinely dismissed and disparaged. But she persists until she can sing in full-throated celebration, “Today we are alive / in summer. Unencumbered.” This is an intimate, vulnerable and ultimately triumphant collection.  

a little tenderness

my first word was not mama, but cookie
i don’t make a lot of money
could be more beautiful
remain fat
my mother doesn’t understand my friends
the aesthetics of my expanding flesh
she might understand why i don’t love men
but not how i’ve come to love women
or why i cry
my mother, never taught me to understand her 
in her native language of Yoruba, her language
was providing a better life, she stays busy
surviving what we took without thinking
twice, my mother avoids complexities

from my writing chair i can still hear her
the length of her befuddlement is as long
and winding as all my years, heavy as hardship
private as disappointment, the distance of her arm’s
length is precisely how much she loves me
i imagine her, often, as a girl
denied the outstretched arms of a mother
to keep her safe, or someone to convince her —
while the window was still open, while
she was a soft child with unblemished hope,
countenance still as palm oil, before it’s fired 
—that she was perfect

Perfect.

i spend my nights on the internet, looking
up words in the dark, practice my pronunciation
i know i’m not doing it right, i give up, this
is not how you learn a language, i catch
a reflection of myself on the dark screen,
left to cope with the facts of life and a loving God
on my face, the look of bewilderment,
she’s worried for my heart while i’m worried
for my heart

“a little tenderness” (poem) is excerpted from “Song of My Softening,” by Omotara James (Alice James Books, 2024). Used by permission of the author and publisher. All rights reserved.  

Some unCluttered photos

Back in 2017, Robert Muir made a pilgrimage to Holcomb, Kansas--the little town made (in)famous by Truman Capote in the book we discussed last night, In Cold Blood. Here are four photos he took, along with commentary:

"Holcomb lies about seven miles west of Garden City, which is where the Valley View Cemetery and Finney County Courthouse are located. 

Holcomb's Main Street is a left off old Route 50. With just four blocks, it is a very small town, with small houses on the streets to the left and right off Main. The only building on Main Street that seems to have survived from the 1950s is El Rancho Authentic Mexican Food (I wonder if this could have been the cafe that Capote mentions?).

At Oak Street, I turned right. After a few blocks, there was a "Private Drive" sign, but the gates were open. So I drove in. It's a long, dirt driveway that runs about 200 yards down to the Clutter home; that is on the right and seems to be very well-kept. The Chinese elms on the drive are very picturesque; I wonder if they were replaced at some point, because in the pictures of the drive from 1993, the trees look quite old and frail. 

I did have an eerie feeling when I stopped in front of the home."

Background on "In Cold Blood"

As a lead-in to tonight's discussion of In Cold Blood, Mark Osele, who nominated the book, has kindly shared two short, interesting articles about Truman Capote and his experience writing the book: "How Truman Capote Was Destroyed by His Own Masterpiece" and "'In Cold Blood: Truman Capote's Achievement and Undoing." Thanks, Mark!