jordanstempleman

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Kate Greenstreet: Translations (from The End of Something)

(The Continental Review)

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Lewis Freedman: I want something other than time

(The Continental Review)

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Candice Wuehle: Pro-Ghost

(The Continental Review)

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A huge thank you to the Kenyon Review's Jeff Alessandrelli for taking the time to read and review my latest collection Wallop. Audience is always measured by the response and attention of one. Thanks again, Jeff, for your honest and articulate attention.

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Terry Reid - Bang Bang - (Groupies, USA, 1969)

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvdAcan0Po0)

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqa-HYihaZo)

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Vincent Gallo - Apple Girl

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7EGQzn8e1k)

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpWl_IsPneI)

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James Tate died today. I didn’t know him well, personally, but so many people I love very much did. Right now, the loss feels like a big hole, like time passing in that terrible way it does. His poems meant a lot to so many people, and they meant a lot to me. I can take solace in knowing they will always be there. With his life, he has done a very good thing. 

I taught myself how to read poems, write poems, and love poems, by reading James Tate’s poems. Nearly 20 years ago, he quickly became the poet who wrote the poems that vibrated at my frequency. 

Even this past week, I had the luxury of hearing him speak about poetry at the Juniper Institute. I wrote down a lot of what he said that day. I forget the questions exactly, but his answers were, “I know for certain that I don’t know,” and “I knew nothing,” and “I was amazed by my own naiveté,” and “I’m not a genius or anything,” and “You know, you don’t have to be a scholar,” and “I only had three keys, but there were 50 locked doors.” And of where his ideas for poems come from, he also said, “I was just trying to solve something that had been haunting me my whole life.” He continually reminds me, as I read him, and as I listened to him speak just last week, that poetry, for me, is a fun and necessary adventure.

Here is James Tate reading a poem called The New Mayor. I recorded him reading it just two weeks ago.

I hope you’ll all re-read your favorite James Tate book this week. And if you’ve never read him, I hope you’ll read your first. You can start with this poem, from one of my favorite books, Memoir of the Hawk. It is the poem after which I named this blog, when I started it way back in 2003. Its last lines now shake me up even more today. 

THE LOVELY ARC OF A METEOR IN THE NIGHT SKY

At the party there were those sage souls who swam along the bottom like those huge white fish who live for hundreds of years but have no fun. They are nearly blind and need the cold. William was a stingray guarding his cave. Only those prepared for mortal battle came close to him. Closer to the surface the smaller fish played, swimming in mixed patterns only a god could decipher. They gossiped and fed and sparred and consumed, and some no doubt even spawned. It’s a life filled with agitation, thrills, melodrama and twittery, but too soon it’s over. And nothing’s revealed because it was never known.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLfOjQRRL5g)

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Sprung Formal Issue 10: EX / CURRENT / ONWARD

featuring Casey Hannan, Tim Earley, Coco Owen, Annie Raab, Jillian Youngbird, Robert Gano, Christina Nobiling, Nathan Hoks, Emmitt Merrill, Marcus Myers,Cassie Allen, Siara ReNae Berry, Daiana Oneto, Christine Neacole Kanownik, Seth Landman, Zophia McDougal, Matthew Suss, Brian Clifton,Stella Corso, Lucy Chouquette, John Gallaher, Max Adrian, Crista Siglin,Matt Hart, Marshall Cargle, Troy James Weaver, Christopher Cheney, Phil Estes, Kit Robinson, Peyton Pitts, Caroline Manring, Paul Hanson Clark,Anna Kamerer, Michael Rose, Molly Dillon, Daniel Borzutzky, Suzanne Scanlon, James Sanders, Joseph Bradshaw, and Jonathan Bennett

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Here at MHP we love our authors and wish we could talk to them ALL THE TIME, FOR THE REST OF TIME. However, we understand that writers are BUSY and according to some physicists the universe is going to end in 5 billion years, so really, who has time for anything?

Thus, to balance our love...

[jordanstempleman]

Today is the official born on date of Wallop. If you buy a copy of my book, I'll make you a personalized mp3 mixtape that may just include a rare recording of Vin Diesel and DMX doing a duet of "Under Pressure."

http://magichelicopterpress.com/wallop.html