#fuck man i used to be a poet! i like even won national awards and stuff and i STOPPED because people made fun of me

[despite-everything]

sick and tired of being so fucking depressed i need to make art again

[yespoetry]

Monica Rowley: #NotTrump Series

Some Advantages of a Nervous Breakdown When The Nation State is Turning Corporate Feudal in Front of Your Eyes and the Debate is Now Kleptocracy or Kakistocracy or Both

                                                “I have lived in important places, times

                                                When great events were decided…

                                                     Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.

                                                He said: I made the Iliad from such

                                                A local row. Gods make their own importance.”

                                                                                     Patrick Kavanagh

See you in the holes of America. Poetry must be written.

But also be sure to read the writing on the red hats

MOTHERFUCKERS, this is

the death of THE NATION STATE, which let’s face it:

good for the imperialists and colonizers and the rich, but the rest of the world

NOT SO FUCKING MUCH.

You can write with abandon.  You can fuck meter.  You can sit your fat ass prepositions all over the white space of this page because covering the white is turning out to be preferable and maybe even necessary. 

Eat hallucinogens. 

Epic poetry is now back in — you’ll need your imagination. 

The Poets must be verbose now. The current leader, the spearhead of this 9-5 serfdom, is winning brevity with his 140 character ruling decrees. 

Terseness is something to leave behind. 

(A lot of my male friends will not like this stance,  but you and I both know those men that object

still resist a female lead; and you’ll take this longwinded bitch

in a foxhole over their sparse verse any day—

well not any day— actually not most days, 

but you will on the day the shit hits the fan). 

WE ARE GOING TO BE IN CRISIS. 

I am one shitty poet,  but turns out I am also a good-ole-fashioned,  write-that-new-Amendment,  type of suffragist,

civil rights teacher-reader

poet of a patriot.

Seems politics are starting to loop back around to needing my type of poetry. 

I am with you in the holes of America.  I read too much history.  I have too many facts

to not WARN you, 

that this time—  actually— it is different. 

Things won’t really ever be the same again:

And I, for one, blame it on white women

who cared more about marriage than democracy.

 November 9, 2016: Some Thoughts For My Students and My Niece Annabelle

Today your mother, my sister, texted me.  Your mother told us, all six of her siblings,  when you woke to hear the news:

Hillary lost, Trump was King,  you cried your eyes out, and she told us when she assured you it would change in four years, you asked if you would live to be seventeen. 

*

My beloved sophomores, so bright and young and new, I am sorry I missed our classes today. 

You see, I have been waiting for a woman president all my life. 

My mother likes to tell the tale of my first feminist moment:

riding in the back of a brown-paneled station wagon,  I argued with a minister’s son,  I was all of five. 

I told him God didn’t have to be a man.  My mom recalls I then yelled up to her for support. She said, she hadn’t 

really thought of it until then. There are more stories of how 

I got to be waiting for a woman to be president all my life. 

Suffice it to say, I thought it would happen this time. So, on Tuesday, at five p.m.,  I let work know 

I would not be in on Wednesday.  Surely, I would be too hung over from shots of whiskey victory. I wasn’t.  

The sexual assailant won,  not the woman with thirty years experience. 

I was not hung over from booze,  but I was battered in grief. 

*

I am so sorry to all of my Muslim students, friends,  and their families. I thought, 

knowing the Know-Nothings and Nativists the way I do, that history 

could not repeat itself again. I, being raised Catholic and part of an Irish clan, 

assumed we were past those days when we elected the first non-Wasp man. 

I am sorry I did not know better.  I am sorry I believed in everyone so much.  I really should have guessed this.  I mean, that Catholic president, was shot in Dallas dead, cold, assassinated and such. 

*

I know most of my black friends, co-workers,  and past lovers aren’t shocked. I was so sure this moment, 

the suffragists’ moment was coming,  I did not want to listen to your worry about this Tuesday— your doubt and anger. 

I assumed there simply was no way the evening’s winner would be

endorsed by the KKK.

My naivety and privilege let me think this could never be true; it was as if I believed

my own experience was the thing that would drive voting that day and I am so sorry I did not listen to you. 

*

I want to speak to all the victims of sexual assault. 

Yet again, you are not believed and we had another lesson in how rape culture is taught. 

I wish this were not the case,  what will it take for people to believe that powerful men do rape? 

*

I think about all the workers in Nevada, the Latinx hotel employees I do not know.  You showed up in numbers and turned

that swing state blue. 

We all should have followed your warning, you know Trump all too well— You work in his establishments and cannot

unionize in his hell.

I have a sad message to the Syrian children hoping to come here. 

We elected a man who is scared of you,  and I regret to say, there is no chance you will be allowed in. 

*

I suspect almost all of the indigenous people fighting for water could say how they knew this was coming, if I really think about it,  quite frankly, this is nothing new:  de rigueur actions from Americans’ politics and politicians, even Obama is slow in helping you.

*

This bigoted assailant will now try to regulate love, and who can marry whom; but don’t worry too much:  we all can go buy guns. 

Dear would-be Madam President, I apologize to you.  I’m sorry you won the popular vote but not the electoral too. 

I apologize to all my white friends who warned me that Trump could be our fate. 

I argued with your profusely, I did not take your stance. 

If you knew this was the outcome, why did you do nothing to stop it?

(I wonder how you cast your ballot, which of them are you)

To all the American white people.  I hope you don’t rule again for years.

* 

But, I am mostly sorry to my sophomores, so sorry I did not make it to school November 9th.

I did not come to let you know it would be okay.  I’m not one for lying to children anyway.

I am sorry I was missing.  I will be there tomorrow. 

We will read Tagore and Yeats. 

Will you please forgive me? 

I am still crying, as ridiculous as that might be, and although an adult, it feels like I am still riding in the back of that station wagon on my way to preschool

very unsure about the rules of this world

and wondering when women will have their shot.

Okay, Annabelle, my tenth graders? 

I leave it now to you.

Monica Rowley teaches amazing high school students in Brooklyn, noting that they are far better than she is at trigonometry and pentameter. She loves sharks and tigers, Gilgamesh, and Ramprasad Sen's poetry to the Goddess Kali. She is the oldest of seven, and her siblings are her best friends. She considers this turn of sibling luck the best fortune she could have.  Monica has been the recipient of several grants and awards, including one from the National Endowment for the Humanities. If you would like to read more of her poems, check them out on Brooklyn Poets’ The Bridge or in the upcoming issue of the Irish literary journal, The Ogham Stone.

[shuabert]

Top 50 Albums of 2016

Despite all the ways 2016 was terrible (Brexit, the Syrian humanitarian crisis, extremist violence worldwide, Donald Trump, the deaths of so many of our heroes), one area where 2016 was a success was in terms of the quality of music released. Many of this year’s best albums were a direct response to the state of the world, some angry, some resolved, and some comforting. And others just allowed us to tune it all out and get lost in the sounds. Here is my 2016 year in review. 

Best Soundtrack/Score: Stranger Things Soundtrack (Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein)

Best Soundtrack/Compilation: Jack White - Acoustic Recordings: 1998-2016 (runner up goes to Carly Rae Jepsen for Emotion Side B, which is catchier than any b-sides record should be)

Best Live Album: (It was probably that massive Kate Bush box set, but I didn’t listen to that yet, so let’s go with...) Lissie - Live at Union Chapel

Best EP: Dan Mangan - Unmake

Worst Comeback Attempt: Blink-182 - California

The Carly Rae Jepsen Emotion Award for Most Bangers for your Buck: The Weeknd - Starboy (runners up: Kaytranada - 99.9% and Ariana Grande - Dangerous Woman)

And, my top 50 albums of the year (out of the 134 I listened to)

50 - 41

50. Savages - Adore Life 49. Sarah Neufeld - The Ridge 48. Loretta Lynn – Full Circle 47. Låpsley - Long Way Home 46. Kendrick Lamar – Untitled.Unmastered 45. Crystal Castles - Amnesty (I) 44. Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial 43. James Blake - The Colour in Anything 42. Swans - The Glowing Man 41. Swet Shop Boys - Cashmere

40 - 31

40. Mitski – Puberty 2 39. Laser - Night Driver 38. PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project 37. River Tiber - Indigo 36. Dolly Parton - Pure & Simple 35. Jessy Lanza - Oh No 34. Drake – VIEWS 33. Angel Olsen – My Woman 32. Gord Downie -  Secret Path 31. Andy Shauf -  The Party

30 - 21

30. Santigold - 99¢ 29. Wintersleep -  The Great Detachment 28. Michael Kiwanuka -  Love & Hate 27. Majid Jordan - Majid Jordan 26. Blood Orange – Freetown Sound 25. Rihanna - Anti 24. Danny Brown -  Atrocity Exhibition 23. Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool 22. Lissie - My Wild West 21. Alicia Keys - Here

20 - 11

20. Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels 3 19. Pup - The Dream Is Over 18. Case/Lang/Viers - Case/Lang/Viers  17. Kanye West - The Life of Pablo 16. Kaytranada - 99.9% 15. Hannah Georgas - For Evelyn 14. A Tribe Called Red - We Are the Halluci Nation 13. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree 12. Solange - A Seat at the Table 11. The Weeknd - Starboy

10 - 01

10. Anohni – Hopelessness

“I wanna burn the sky, I wanna burn the breeze / I wanna see the animals die in the trees / Ooh, let’s go, let’s go, it’s only four degrees”

Lines like “Let me be the one…you choose from above,” sound painfully romantic until they come in a song about drone warfare. And that’s only one example of the way Anohni’s Hopelessness blends the beautiful and the horrific. The album reads as the love letter to state-sanctioned violence (geopolitical, environmental, physical) that most of us won’t admit we’re living. Ahnohni’s dizzy croons over blissful electronics are more beautiful than something called “Hopelessness” has any right to be. 

09. A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service

“You bastards overlooking street art / Better yet, street smarts, but you keep us off the charts / So motherfuck your numbers and your statisticians / Fuck y’all know about true competition?”

This never-expected final album from ATCQ exemplifies the phrase, “rolling in their graves,” like a legend resurrected (literally, in the case of Phife Dawg, who appears here posthumously) by a dark present. Making explicit reference to the campaign rhetoric of Donald Trump (even going as far as to sample the Oompa Loompa song from Willy Wonka), the album was timed as a middle finger to a candidate expected to lose. That he won makes it is a necessary balm to the political lesions of the next term. Effortless and full of life, We Got It… shows a group that feels like they never left at all. Legends never die.  

08. Leonard Cohen -  You Want It Darker

“I heard the snake was baffled by his sin / He shed his scales to find the snake within / But born again is born without a skin / The poison enters into everything”

The opening title track on Leonard Cohen’s final album feels prescient, a potent exploration of God and death from a poet who saw both on the horizon. “Hineni, Hineni, I’m ready my Lord,” he sings wearily, but it feels ambivalent. Shit, who wouldn’t be? The instrumentations from Cohen’s son Adam act as a guide for Cohen’s minimalist vocals, here at their most powerful and tired. The blending of romance and religion, the physical and the spiritual are classic Cohen. “I’m leaving the table / I’m out of the game” he says on “Leaving the Table.” You can’t help imagine him tip that iconic fedora with a subtle grin on the way out. You Want It Darker is a stellar album to cap off an unassailable legacy. 

07. Thrice - To Be Everywhere Is to be Nowhere 

“Would you stay with me / if you thought the war was over / and everything made right? / Would you still believe in us? / And would your love for me grow colder / with no one left to fight?”

Thrice’s first album in five years after announcing an indefinite hiatus in 2012 couldn’t have come at a better time. Steeped in politics and apocalyptic imagery, TBEITBN recalls some of the band’s best work while sounding like a perfect encapsulation of the tumult and fear of the past 18 months. With songs about drone bombing, whistleblowing, and foreign policy, this is an album wholly concerned with the state of geopolitics today, though not without its songs of love and hope, however tenuous. It is a blues-rock-meets-post-hardcore manifesto exploring reluctant complicity in state-sanctioned terror, abuse of power, and the fear of self-destruction. All of this with the tight creative energy of a band of best friends who have played together for almost two decades. 

06. David Bowie - Blackstar

“Just like that bluebird / oh, I’ll be free / Ain’t that just like me?”

It is difficult to separate Blackstar from David Bowie’s death, because the album was calibrated and timed so much to be a part of it, a final confrontation to mortality and the legacy of fame. For the first few days it almost felt like his alleged death might be part of some grand performance art piece — that’s so Bowie. A year later Blackstar feels, as it should, like a David Bowie album, full of cryptic imagery, bewildering lyrics, inspired musical flourishes, and emotional resonance. “Blackstar” is the best Radiohead song of the year, jazz inflections and unexpected absurdist turns of lyrical phrase demand repeated, concentrated listening, and the haunting “Lazarus” perfectly  denotes the way in which Bowie’s consistent reinvention has made him an artist outside of time and beyond death. “Everybody knows me now,” he sings on Lazarus. And they always will. 

05. White Lung - Paradise

“I’ve got a basic need / Kiss me when I bleed / They say I split my pride in two / when I became a bride for you / But what do they know?” 

 As deliriously melodic and powerful a punk rock racket as you’ll ever find, Paradise finds Vancouver’s White Lung sharpening their skills and their teeth. Mish Barber-Way’s vocals are more refined but no less sneeringly powerful as she spits over meticulously-arranged and elegantly-produced instrumentations that average under 3 minutes in length. Clocking in at 28 minutes, “Paradise” is the tightest and most purposeful rock record of the year, which is impressive considering how deeply the record explores the body horror inherent in being a woman in a patriarchal society. 

04. Frank Ocean - Blonde

“You showed me love / Glory from above / Regard, my dear / it’s all downhill from here.” 

 Frank Ocean’s long-anticipated follow up to Channel Orange is a challenging first listen, less immediate and more thoughtful than its predecessor. “RIP Trayvon. That nigga look just like me,” Ocean sings on the album opener “Nikes,” a disarmingly down-tempo number whose bittersweetness creeps up and sets the tone for a contemplative and deeply personal album of tonal lethargy and spare instrumentations. References to “pink and white” skies and “black and yellow” streets are prescriptive: this is an album for the fading days of summer, the fading hours of the day, when a twilight drive brings pains of nostalgia and regret to light. 

03. Beyonce - Lemonade

“They say true love’s the greatest weapon / to win the war caused by pain / But every diamond has imperfections / But my love’s too pure to watch it chip away”

Lemonade is the stuff of great drama, a kitchen sink story by way of an epic as it spins out a relationship story without a neat conclusion. It is a master-work of rage and heartbreak and, ultimately, hope, blind as it may be. But that pain is more alive for how Lemonade makes the personal political. This is about more than just Beyoncé and Jay Z, it is about fathers making their daughters tough and setting them up to be betrayed by men just like them. It is about survival and resilience in a world that doesn't care about you. It is a testament to the vision and production that Lemonade mines so many disparate genres (pop, blues, country, r&b, reggae) yet feels so cohesive. Beyoncé was a career milestone, a pop album about the thrills and joy of marriage, but Lemonade is transcendent, a genre-defying album about betrayal and the challenges of marriage as a metaphor for the ways relationships of all kinds destroy and sustain us. 

02. Tanya Tagaq - Retribution

“Sacrifice / Our blood goes back into the earth / In. Out. Womb. Core.” 

 If Mother Earth groaned in pain on Tanya Tagaq’s 2014 album, Animism, then she delights in the destruction of humanity on Retribution, an album that finds the Inuk throat singer croon with a trickster’s smirk that “Gaia likes it cold.” Here, at her most metal, she asserts that “the retribution will be swift” if humanity continues down a path of ecological devastation. Her most sonically-diverse album in vocal and collaborative terms (featuring producer Jesse Zubot’s haunting strings, Christine Duncan and the Element Choir, a cover of Nirvana’s “Rape Me” and a collaboration with rapper Shad), Retribution is a career milestone and the most stunning work of Indigenous art of the year. 

01. Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book

“I don’t make songs for free, I make ‘em for freedom.”

Coloring Book plays like the kind of album that could only have been written by someone experiencing the life-changing miracle of childbirth for the first time. Gospel choirs and horns back an album of ebullient joy that in sound and title suggests a blank space full of possibility. The religious fervor of Chance’s unabashed positivity was just what we needed in 2016. Chance’s desire to “give Satan a swirlie” reminded us not to take ourselves too seriously while fighting evil, and “All Night” might be the year’s hardest banger this side of Drake’s “One Dance.” Coloring Book was like a big hug in the face of a cruel year, an invitation for us all to be with family, to remember the good times and to help one another through the bad. By the time the album closes with the refrain “are you ready for your blessings; are you ready for your miracle?” it feels like both a challenge and a plea. Bring on 2017.