#michael laux

[rwpohl]

richy guitar, michael laux 1985

[einliebesmensch]

Starte in den Herbst mit deinem Basenbad

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[april-is]

April 24, 2024: How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This, Hanif Abdurraqib

How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This Hanif Abdurraqib

dear reader, with our heels digging into the good mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown & lord knows I have been called by what I look like more than I have been called by what I actually am & I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics arrive to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out grandfather clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning, you could scatter his whole mind across a field.

--

From the poet:

“I was at a reading shortly after the [2016] election, and the poet (who was black) was reading gorgeous poems, which had some consistent and exciting flower imagery. A woman (who was white) behind me—who thought she was whispering to her neighbor—said ‘How can black people write about flowers at a time like this?’ I thought it was so absurd in a way that didn’t make me angry but made me curious. What is the black poet to be writing about ‘at a time like this’ if not to dissect the attractiveness of a flower—that which can arrive beautiful and then slowly die right before our eyes? I thought flowers were the exact thing to write about at a time like this, so I began this series of poems, all with the same title. I thought it was much better to grasp a handful of different flowers, put them in a glass box, and see how many angles I could find in our shared eventual demise.” —Hanif Abdurraqib

Today in:

2023: Lit, Andrea Cohen 2022: Meditations in an Emergency, Cameron Awkward-Rich 2021: How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River, Barbara Crooker 2020: Ash, Tracy K. Smith 2019: Under Stars, Dorianne Laux 2018: Afterlife, Natalie Eilbert 2017: There Are Birds Here, Jamaal May 2016: Poetry, Richard Kenney 2015: Dreaming at the Ballet, Jack Gilbert 2014: Vocation, Sandra Beasley 2013: Near the Race Track, Brigit Pegeen Kelly 2012: from Ask Him, Raymond Carver 2011: Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord, John Rybicki 2010: Rain Travel, W.S. Merwin 2009: Goodnight, Li-Young Lee 2008: Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje 2007: Meditation at Lagunitas, Robert Hass 2006: Autumn, Rainer Maria Rilke 2005: On Turning Ten, Billy Collins

[toavoidtherush]

THERE'S NO JUSTICE, THERE'S JUST ME

frances molina, o' death / michael creese, grim reaper / silas denver melvin, poem in which the vulture flees / dorianne laux, death comes to me again, a girl / hugo simberg, the garden of death / haruki murkami, hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world / markus zusak, the book thief / ethel cain, ptolemaea / emile jean-horace vernet, the angel of death / emily dickinson, because i could not stop for death / margaret atwood, roominghouse winter / albert pinkham ryder, the race track (death on a pale horse) / ken chen, you may visit the cosmos but you may not speak of it / charlie kaufman and iain reid, i'm thinking of ending things / neil gaiman, the sandman / a. hering, death and the maiden / neil gaiman and terry pratchett, good omens / phoebe bridgers, i know the end / michel voogt, reaper / terry pratchett, reaper man.

[solipseismic]

2022 poetry rec list

wrapping up this year w another poetry rec list! this year i’ve leaned a lot more into actively reading and writing much more poetry and hope to be publishing a compilation of my work (hopefully!) this time next year as well :) once again, i’ve tried to link what i could back to original sources + authors but a few of these link to tumblr posts / screenshots. this one is MUCH longer so i’ve organized it into my fav 15 + the rest below the cut!

top fifteen:

desert hymns no.2 (@/prophetfromthecrypt)

despite my efforts even my prayers have turned into threats (kaveh akbar)

erishkigal specializes in butchery (joan tierney)

for the dogs who barked at me on the sidewalks in connecticut (hanif abdurraqib)

fricatives (eric yip)

hammond b3 organ cistern (gabrielle calvocoressi)

let your father die energy drink (daniel lavery)

morning prayer with rat king (kaveh akbar)

not even this (ocean vuong)

on coming back as a buzzard (lia purpura)

the swan (@/tinyghosthands)

sometimes i wish i felt the side effects (danez smith)

song of the insensible (andrew kozma)

space boy wearing skirt (lee jenny)

the stars are warm (chung ho-seung)

everyone else:

14 lines from love letters or suicide notes (doc luben)

blood makes the blade holy (evan knoll)

border patrol agent (eduardo c corral)

carpet bomb (kenyatta rogers)

death comes to me again, a girl (dorianne laux)

desert (john gould fletcher)

do you consider writing to be therapeutic? (andrew grace)

dust (dorianne laux)

first will and testament + missing persons (sam sax)

fish (richelle buccilli)

for the feral splendor that remains (caconrad)

glitter (keaton st james)

gravedigger (andrew thomas huang)

heart condition (jericho brown)

it is maybe time to admit that michael jordan definitely pushed off (hanif abdurraqib)

leaves (lloyd schwartz)

letter to s, hospital (emily skaja)

metaphors for my body on the examination table (torrin a greathouse)

miss you. would like to grab that chilled tofu we love (gabrielle calvocoressi)

my brother, asleep (steven espada dawson)

my brother out of rehab, points, (ron riekki)

my cat is sad (spencer madsen)

notes from jonah's lecture series (tanya olsen)

publick universal friend contends with orthgraphy & meditates in an emergency (day heisinger-nixon)

red stains (allen tate)

red shift (david baker)

salvage (hedgie choi)

shoulders (naomi shihab nye)

social skills training (solmaz sharif)

the 17-year-old & the gay bar (danez smith)

the desert dispels this hallowed ground of coarse insinuations (julia wong kcomt)

the twelfth day (rosanna warren)

two-mom energy drink (daniel lavery)

two poems (rachel nelson)

two times i loved you the most in a car (dorothea grossman)

un [naming] / trans (after golden) (angelic proof)

valentine for ernest mann (naomi shihab nye)

vi. wisdom: the voice of god (mary karr) 

WAITING (keaton st james)

what mary magdalene said to the young transsexual (elle emerson)

wild geese (mary oliver)

worms (shyla hardwick)

[alightinthelantern]

Books read and movies watched in 2024 (January-June): Should you watch/read them?

Poetry:

In the Next Galaxy (Ruth Stone): No

Selected Poems (Mark Strand): No

In the Dark (Ruth Stone): Yes!

Response (Juliana Spahr): Yes

The Unicorn (Anne Morrow Lindbergh): No!

Everything Else in the World (Stephen Dunn): Yes

Words Under the Words (Naomi Shihab Nye): Eh

On Love and Barley (Matsuo Basho, trans. Lucien Stryk): Yes!

The Transformation (Juliana Spahr): No

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Matsuo Basho, trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa): No

The Book of Taliesin (anon., trans. Gwyneth Lewis & Rowan Williams): No

What Love Comes To: New and Selected Poems (Ruth Stone): Eh

Face (Sherman Alexie): NO

No Surrender (Ai): Eh

The Summer of Black Widows (Sherman Alexie): Yes!

The Afflicted Girls (Nicole Cooley): Yes!

Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande (Jimmy Santiago Baca): No

American Smooth (Rita Dove): No

Elegy (Mary Jo Bang): No

Angel (Giles Dorey): NO

Collected Poems (Paul Auster): Eh

June-Tree (Peter Balakian): Yes

We Must Make a Kingdom of It (Gregory Orr): Eh

Only as the Day is Long (Dorianne Laux): No

Grace Notes (Rita Dove): Yes

Bathwater Wine (Wanda Coleman): Yes

My Soviet Union (Michael Dumanis): No

American Milk (Ruth Stone): Yes

The Drowned Girl (Eve Alexandra): No

A Worldly Country (John Ashberry): No

The Complete Poems of Hart Crane: No

One Stick Song (Sherman Alexie): Yes

If You Call This Cry a Song (Hayden Carruth): No

Doctor Jazz (Hayden Carruth): No

The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (Gabrielle Calvocoressi): No

And Her Soul Out of Nothing (Olena Kalytiak Davis): No

Prisoner of Hope (Yvonne Daley): No

The Other Man Was Me (Rafael Campo): No

My Wicked Wicked Ways (Sandra Cisneros): No

On Earth (Robert Creeley): Eh

Genius Loci (Alison Hawthorne Deming): Eh

Science and Other Poems (Alison Hawthorne Deming): Eh

Voices (Lucille Clifton): Yes

A New Path to the Waterfall (Raymond Carver): Eh

Where Shadows Will (Norma Cole): No

The Way Back (Wyn Cooper): No

A Cartography of Peace (Jean L. Connor): No

Minnow (Judith Chalmer): Yes!

Postcards from the Interior (Wyn Cooper): Yes

Natural History (Dan Chiasson): Eh

The Ship of Birth (Greg Delanty): Eh

Madonna anno domini (Joshua Clover): NO

The Terrible Stories (Lucille Clifton): No

The Flashboat (Jane Cooper): Eh

Book of Longing (Leonard Cohen): No

Streets in Their Own Ink (Stuart Dybek): Eh

Different Hours (Stephen Dunn): Yes

I Love This Dark World (Alice B. Fogel): Eh

Baptism of Desire (Louise Erdrich): Yes!

The Eternal City (Kathleen Graber): Eh

Monolithos (Jack Gilbert): Yes

Crown of Weeds (Amy Gerstler): No

Blue Hour (Carolyn Forché): No

Place (Jorie Graham): No

Meadowlands (Louise Gluck): Yes!

Dearest Creature (Amy Gerstler): No

Loosestrife (Stephen Dunn): No

Little Savage (Emily Fragos): Yes

The Living Fire (Edward Hirsch): No

On Love (Edward Hirsch): No

Human Wishes (Robert Hass): NO

Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (B. H. Fairchild): No

Sinking Creek (John Engels): No

Alabanza (Martín Espada): Yes

Saving Lives (Albert Goldbarth): No

All of It Singing (Linda Gregg): No

Green Squall (Jay Hopler): No

Tender Hooks (Beth Ann Fennelly): No

After (Jane Hirshfield): Eh

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (Tony Hoagland): NO

These Are My Rivers (Lawrence Ferlinghetti): No

Fruitful (Stephanie Kirby): No

Jaguar Skies (Michael McClure): No

Song (Brigit Pegeen Kelly): No

Roadworthy Creature, Roadworthy Craft (Kate Magill): No

Life in the Forest (Denise Levertov): No

Viper Rum (Mary Karr): No

Questions for Ecclesiastes (Mark Jarman): No

Brutal Imagination (Cornelius Eady): Yes

Alphabet of Bones (Alexis Lathem): No

Handwriting (Michael Ondaatje): No

Sure Signs (Ted Kooser): No

Sledding on Hospital Hill (Leland Kinsey): No

Between Silences (Ha Jin): Yes

House of Days (Jay Parini): No

Bird Eating Bird (Kristin Naca): Yes

Orpheus & Eurydice (Gregory Orr): Yes

Another America (Barbara Kingsolver): Yes

Candles in Babylon (Denise Levertov): Yes

The Clerk's Tale (Spencer Reece): Eh

Still Listening (Angela Patten): Yes

A Thief of Strings (Donald Revell): No

Wayfare (Pattiann Rogers): No

The Niagara River (Kay Ryan): No

The Bird Catcher (Marie Ponsot): No

Easy (Marie Ponsot): No

Human Dark with Sugar (Brenda Shaughnessy): No

Chronic (D. A. Powell): No

Novels/Fiction:

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Yiyun Li): No

The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories: Yes

Movies:

What Dreams May Come (1998, Vincent Ward): Yes

The Cat's Meow (2001, Peter Bogdanovich): Yes

The Birdcage (1996, Mike Nichols): Yes

The Color of Pomegranates (1969, Sergei Parajanov): No

The Eve of Ivan Kupalo (1969, Yuri Ilyenko): Yes

And here's my 2023 list!

[abellinthecupboard]

List of poets whose work I've posted:

Poetry Magazine selections

The Adroit selections

Diode Poetry selections

Sixth Finch selections

Ada Limon

Adam Zagajewski

Adonis

Allen Ginsberg

Amy Clampitt

Andrea Cohen

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Swir

Anne Sexton

Ben Johnson

Billy Collins

Cathy Linh Che

Carolyn Marie Rodgers

Chard deNiord

Christina Rossetti

Czesław Miłosz

Dalton Day

Denise Levertov

Dian Million

Donika Kelly

Dorianne Laux

Edward Hirsch

Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth “Sister Goodwin” Hope

Ellen Bryant Voigt

Gloria Bird

Gregory Orr

Gwendolyn MacEwen

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Jack Gilbert

James Hayford

James Longenbach

Jenny George

Jim Harrison

Joanna Newsom

John Berryman

John Dowland

John Keats

Jorie Graham

Joy Harjo

Kitchen McKeown

Kuhu Joshi

Langston Hughes

Linda Pastan

Lisel Mueuller

Louise Glück

Mary Karr

Mary Oliver

Mary Tallmountain

Matt Hohner

Matt Rasmussen

Matthew Arnold

Michael Gray Bulla

Miles Walser

Morag Smith

Natalie Diaz

Ocean Vuong

Penny Shutt

Phil Ochs

Phillip B. Williams

Robert Hedin

Roberta Hill Whiteman

Ronald Wallace

Ruth Stone

Sayat Nova

Sherman Alexie

Stephen Kampa

Sugawara no Michizane

Thomas Lux

T.S. Eliot

Wanda Coleman

W.H. Auden

William Carlos Williams

Will Alexander

Wisława Szymborska

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry

[embossross]

2023 in books: non-fiction edition

memoirs

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

🔁The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Linea Nigra by Jazmina Barrera (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Happening by Annie Ernaux (⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America by Julia Lee (⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan (⭐⭐⭐)

The Skin Is the Elastic Covering That Encases the Entire Body by BjØrn Rasmussen (⭐⭐⭐)

Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith (⭐⭐)

essays

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

A Guest at the Feast: Essays by Colm Tóibin (⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (⭐⭐⭐⭐)

Intimations by Zadie Smith (⭐⭐)

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby (⭐⭐)

Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros by Michael Chabon (⭐)

I Don’t Want to Die Poor: Essays by Michael Arceneaux (⭐)

poetry - no ratings because i am a poetry novice lol

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Bread and Circus by Airea Dee Matthews

Jane: A Murder by Maggie Nelson

Haiti Glass by Lenelle Moïse

Customs: Poems by Salmaz Sharif

The Tradition by Jericho Brown

Something Bright, Then Holes by Maggie Nelson

The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Guillotine: Poems by Eduardo C. Corral

The Book of Men by Dorianne Laux

Our Rarer Monsters by Noel Sloboda

Other

Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction by Patrick Gardiner (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)

The Great Derangement: Climate and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh (⭐⭐⭐⭐)

The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World by Patrik Svensson (⭐⭐⭐)

Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton (⭐⭐⭐)

Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy by Margaret Sullivan (⭐⭐⭐)

Descartes: A Very Short Introduction by Tom Sorell (⭐⭐⭐)

Tokyo: A Biography by Stephen Mansfield (⭐⭐)

[metal-sludge]

I’ve never heard of Stevie Rachelle and his band what happened

HI!!!

TUFF is an American glam-metal band originally formed in Arizona! The line-up prior to Stevie Rachelle joining consisted of drummer Michael Raimondo (later known as Michael Lean), singer Jimmy L'Mour (later, Jim Gillette), guitarist Jorge DeSaint, and bassist Todd Chaisson in 1985!!

Jim Gillette left the band in 1987 to form Nitro and Stevie Rachelle (known as Steve Lauxes back then, read that backwards!) became the new lead singer.

They put out about 2 original material albums WITH Stevie, not including the debut album with Gillette (Knock Yourself Out, 1986):

What Comes Around Goes Around (1991)

Fist First (1994)

which were followed by:

3. Religious Fix (1995) - a compilation of their previous songs

4. Regurgitation (1996) - a compilation of their previous songs

Nothing really "happened" with the band per say-- they enjoyed reasonable success; at their peak, their ballad I Hate Kissing You Good-Bye reached #3 on MTV behind bigger names like GNR and Metallica. But, since this all happened in the 90s, they, like many other bands, fell victim to the rise of grunge metal on the scene.

TUFF today still tours sometimes, though I am yet to hear of any new material. I believe they are on the Monsters of Rock Cruise 2024 in March!

Stevie Rachelle began the metal news outlet/gossip board metalsludge.tv in the 90s i think which is a hilarious and awesome and outrageous page ^-^ He also runs tuffcds.com where you can get official TUFF merch and get it signed by Stevie for free <3

NOT many people have heard of TUFF but honestly they are sooo awesome and have really great music!! i thoroughly recommend them if you're looking for someone new to listen to! and Stevie also has some bangers on his solo discography and is a generally funny guy.

if you want to know more about Tuff and Stevie, i recommend browsing through his TUFF Diaries which explains everything about the band, the rise, the fall, and the strange coincidence of how Stevie Rachelle looks so damn similar to Poison frontman Bret Michaels.

[einliebesmensch]

Entsäuerung Entschlackung - echt jetzt?

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[april-is]

April 11, 2024: The Coffin Maker Speaks, Lisa Suhair Majaj

The Coffin Maker Speaks Lisa Suhair Majaj

At first it was shocking—orders flooding in faster than I could meet. I worked through the nights, tried to ignore the sound of planes overhead, reverberations shaking my bones, acid fear, the jagged weeping of those who came to plead my services. I focused on the saw in my hand, burn of blisters, sweet smell of sawdust; hoped that fatigue would push aside my labor's purpose.

Wood fell scarce as the pile of coffins grew. I sent my oldest son to scavenge more but there was scant passage on the bombed out roads And those who could make it through brought food for the living, not planks for the dead. So I economized, cut more carefully than ever, reworked the extra scraps. It helped that so many coffins were child-sized.

I built the boxes well, nailed them strong, loaded them on the waiting trucks, did my job but could do no more. When they urged me to the gravesite— that long grieving gash in earth echoing the sky's torn warplane wound— I turned away, busied myself with my tools. Let others lay the shrouded forms in new-cut wood, lower the lidded boxes one by one: stilled row of toppled dominoes, long line of broken teeth. Let those who can bear it read the Fatiha over the crushed and broken dead. If I am to go on making coffins, Let me sleep without knowledge.

But what sleep have we in this flattened city? My neighbors hung white flags on their cars as they fled. Now they lie still and cold, waiting to occupy my boxes. Tonight I'll pull the white sheet from my window. Better to save it for my shroud.

One day, insha'allah, I'll return to woodwork for the living. I'll build door for every home in town, smooth and strong and solid, that will open quickly in times of danger, let the desperate in for shelter. I'll use oak, cherry, anything but pine.

For now, I do my work. Come to me and I'll build you what you need. Tell me the dimensions, the height or weight, and I'll meet your specifications. But keep the names and ages to yourself. Already my dreams are jagged Let me not wake splintered from my sleep crying for Fatima, Rafik, Soha, Hassan, Dalia, or smoothing a newborn newdead infant's face. Later I too will weep. But if you wish me to house the homeless dead, let me keep my nightmares nameless.

--

Today in:

2023: Running Orders, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha 2022: April, Alex Dimitrov 2021: Dust, Dorianne Laux 2020: VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God, Mary Karr 2019: What I Didn’t Know Before, Ada Limón 2018: History, Jennifer Michael Hecht 2017: from Correspondences, Anne Michaels 2016: Mesilla, Carrie Fountain 2015: Dolores Park, Keetje Kuipers 2014: Finally April and the Birds Are Falling Out of the Air with Joy, Anne Carson 2013: The Flames, Kate Llewellyn 2012: To See My Mother, Sharon Olds 2011: Across a Great Wilderness without You, Keetje Kuipers 2010: Poem About Morning, William Meredith 2009: Death, The Last Visit, Marie Howe 2008: Animals, Frank O’Hara 2007: Johnny Cash in the Afterlife, Bronwen Densmore 2006: Anne Hathaway, Carol Ann Duffy 2005: Sleep Positions, Lola Haskins

[dungeonsanddragonsfifthedition]

Hi, sorry this is random. Do you have poetry/media in general recommendations and tips when it comes to coping with the loss of a lover and dealing with grief? Going through it atm and I'm trying to find things that could make this more bearable. I feel this giant hole in the centre of my chest. Coming to u because your taste is great and u seem like someone who's experienced a good amount of media kfhdkfh I hope ur well

i'm sorry for your pain, anon. here are some of the poems that helped me get through the losses i've dealt with this year.

PLEASE READ | MARY RUEFLE | I ate a heart. I turned my head.

CATALOG OF UNABASHED GRATITUDE | ROSS GAY | and thank you, too, this knuckleheaded heart, this pelican heart, / this gap-toothed heart flinging open its gaudy maw / to the sky, oh clumsy, oh bumblefucked

DEATH COMES TO ME AGAIN, A GIRL | DORIANNE LAUX | I sit beneath the staircase / built from hair and bone and listen / to the voices of the living.

IT IS MAYBE TIME TO ADMIT THAT MICHAEL JACKSON DEFINITELY PUSHED OFF | HANIF ABDURRAQIB (or any of hanif's poems. good lord). | & I am sorry that there is no way to describe this that is not about agony or that is not about someone being torn from the perch of their comfort

actually another hanif piece bc he's a fucking master. ODE TO ELLIOTT SMITH, ENDING IN THE FIRST SNOWFALL OF 2003 | it lands on my shoe & says WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE ALONE & I don't tell anyone the truth for a whole year.

THE TREES | PHILIP LARKIN (deployed beautifully in one of my favorite films of the year, fuckin marcel the shell) | their greenness is a kind of grief

MY DREAMS, MY WORKS, MUST WAIT TILL AFTER HELL | GWENDOLYN BROOKS | I am very hungry. I am incomplete.

THE WASP GRAVEYARD | ELLA STANDAGE | watch hollow wasps gather mouthfuls of dust like pollen / if pollen could exist in wasp-limbo between window panes.

i also recommended reading a book you loved years ago, vonnegut's letter to high school students, and whatever le guin calls your name first. make a playlist of songs to weep to. watch a classic movie you never got around to watching. draw or paint or sculpt or make something ugly and hold it in your hands and love it. eat a piece of fruit outside as the sun rises or sets. punch something. embrace warmth.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Title: Blankets: The Graphic Novel

Author: Dorianne Laux

Rating: 5/5 stars

Tagging @nostalgebraist because I had to tell him about this.

I've already liked two other Laux books, Dumb and Dumberer: The Graphic Novel (a "sibling book to Blankets" in many ways but a somewhat different sort of book) and Hating On The Same Side (which I just finished reading). I think I may have another Laux fix on the near horizon.

The Laux "tradition" of "mildly perverse romance and adventure stories" consists of (1) romance or adventure stories where a couple is in love but in some way odd, and (2) stories where the author writes the romance or adventure first and then sits back to write up the weird, "punching down at straight folks with bad taste" bits. The "tradition" of "Laux" is also known as the "Trinitarian" (i.e., Laux, Franzen, Franzen, Franzen, and Laux, in that order) and/or "Trinidian" (i.e. Laux, Franzen, Laux, Franzen, Franzen) traditions.

I don't actually know what I would have thought of this book a year ago -- a lot of the points made by this review sound like things I had thought on my own, before reading it. But I can't remember what I was thinking, and it's hard to put my finger on when it would have become clear to me that the Laux "tradition" and the book's "overriding mood" were related, or even if I ever thought there was such a thing.

For instance, it just comes over me that there's no good term in English for the "siblings" vs. "parents" or "sibling"/"adopted child" dichotomy of "adopted parent". Like, Laux is the adoptive mother of her boyfriend, the New York Times columnist Michael Lewis, and Lewis is her son (and, as I understand it, the protagonist of Blankets) and -- I'm getting mixed up here -- the protagonist of Lives of the New Poets.

So it's very important to this book that Lewis and Laux are, in a way, siblings, and that this is treated as a big theme and the heart of the book, even though we know this is actually a "trinitarian" family. I just don't have a word for it, and I don't remember ever having thought of it that way. I just get that.

And I think a lot of the "overriding mood" of the book is conveyed by a lot of the weirdness about Lewis and Laux being (seemingly) "normal" people, or at least "normal" in a certain very specific way, and it's easy to think of that as being "related to but distinct from" weirdness. You see this a lot, in the "Trinitarian" books (e.g. I was thinking of The Heart of Everything earlier) -- people make fun of the "mildly perverse romance" stuff, or the "overriding mood" of the book, but they do it in ways that seem like they themselves are "slightly perverted" in the "mildly perverse romance" way, or that assume that the reader is "slightly perverse" in that way too.

[wintryblight]

sort poems by themes/authors

note: most of these embedded links don’t work & i’m not tech savvy enough to fix it, but you can always use the search function on top of the page. alternatively, you can type /tagged/author’s name or tagged/theme to the end of the home address to find a specific author or theme. replace any space with a hyphen.

example:

wintryblight.tumblr.com/tagged/richard-siken

wintryblight.tumblr.com/tagged/lingering-love

themes

perseverance

nature

food

recovery/healing

the body

grief

death

pain/sickness

childhood

loneliness

nostalgia

freedom

relationships

queerness

lesbians

desire

depression

stagnation

perseverance

hope

love

lingering love

unloved

unrequited love

intense love

fear of love

doomed love

heartache

mothers

fathers

family

dysfunction

the mundane

rage

numbness

stagnation

monotony

paralysis

feeling too much

understanding and being understood

music

self-acceptance

self-compassion

self-reliance

forgiveness

the moon

space

rain

bodies of water

travel

writing

personal favourites

prose poetry

authors

Hanif Abdurraquib

Kim Addonizio

Anna Akhmatova

Rosa Alcalá

Elizabeth Alexander

Hala Alyan

Maya Angelou

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Derrick Austin

Cameron Awkward-Rich

Ellen Bass

April Bernard

Emily Berry

Wendell Berry

John Berryman

Elizabeth Bishop

Anne Boyer

William Brewer

Richard Brostoff

Jericho Brown

Anne Carson

Grace Cavalieri

K-Ming Chang

Jennifer Chang

Tina Chang

Victoria Chang

Hayan Charara

Chen Chen

Inger Christensen

Steven Chung

Christopher Citro

Lucille Clifton

Barbara Cooker

Wendy Cope

Conchitina Cruz

e. e. cummings

Marissa Davis

Meg Day

Lidija Dimkovska

Chelsea Dingman

Sean Thomas Dougherty

Russell Edson

T. S. Eliot

William Fargarson

Megan Fernandes

Nikky Finney

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

Richard Foerster

Vievee Francis

Clifton Gachagua

Ross Gay

Andrea Gibson

Aracelis Girmay 

Jenn Givhan

Louise Glück

Rodney Gomez

Oscar Gonzalez

torrin a. greathouse  

Linda Gregg

Jennifer Grotz

Jeff Hardin

Joy Harjo

Robert Hass

Rage Hezekiah

Neil Hilborn

Bill Holm

Marie Howe

Cynthia Huntington

A. Van Jordan

June Jordan

Donald Justice

Anna Belle Kaufman

Sarah Kay

Donika Kelly

Patricia Kirkpatrick

Joanna Klink

Nate Klug

Yusef Komunyakaa

Juliet Kono

Fortesa Latifi

D. H. Lawrence

Li-Young Lee

Joseph O. Legaspi

Alex Lemon

Jan Heller Levi

Robin Coste Lewis

Sandra Lim

Ada Limón

Sarah Lindsay

Timothy Liu

Audre Lorde

Dorianne Laux

Sally Wen Mao

William Matthews

Nathan McClain

Marty McConnell

Sjohnna McCray

Dunya Mikhail

Jennifer Militello

Tatsuji Miyoshi

Kamilah Aisha Moon

Tomás Q. Morín  

Robin Morgan

Gina Myers

Maggie Nelson

Pablo Neruda

Hieu Minh Nguyen

Frank O’Hara

Sharon Olds

Akilah Oliver

Mary Oliver

Meghan O'Rourke

Alicia Ostriker

beyza ozer

Shin Yu Pai

Pat Parker

Don Paterson

Octavio Paz

Catherine Pierce

Jon Pineda

Sylvia Plath

Meghan Privitello

Aleida Rodríguez

Claudia Rankine

Paisley Rekdal

Susan Rich

Max Ritvo

Sara Daniele Rivera

Kait Rokowski

Lee Ann Roripaugh

Muriel Rukeyser  

Erika L. Sanchez

Sappho

Nicole Sealey

Anne Sexton

Richard Siken

Jared Singer

Scherezade Siobhan

Emily Skaja

Carmen Giménez Smith

Danez Smith

Maggie Smith

Tracy K. Smith

Anne Stevenson

Mark Strand

Truong Tran

Wang Ping

Sanna Wani

Valerie Wetlaufer

Walt Whitman

Michael Wasson

Keith S. Wilson

C. D. Wright

James Wright

Diego Valeri

Jeanann Verlee

Laura Villareal

Ocean Vuong

Jenny Xie

Wendy Xu

John Yau

Emily Jungmin Yoon

Adam Zagajewski

Felicia Zamora

[soracities]

What do you think of Joseph Brodsky? I saw a passage he wrote about Venice city and I liked it. Do you have any fav modern day poets? I am sure you already recommend it before but I couldn't find the tag.

I think that passage is most likely from Watermark which is the only work of his I’ve really read so I don’t have much to go on regarding his work as a whole but I do remember that I enjoyed it immensely. 

as for favourite modern day poets, these are all worth a look:

Dunya Mikhail

Terrence Hayes

Ada Limón

Etel Adnan

Nathalie Handal

Khaled Mattawa

Jorie Graham

Ilya Kaminsky

Rita Dove

Li-Young Lee

Jeremy Radin

Naomi Shihab Nye

Dorianne Laux

Sinaan Antoon

Ocean Vuong

Natalie Diaz

Louise Glück

Kim Addonizio

Cecilia Woloch

Maram al-Masri

Anne Michaels