Archive by Author

Hongo, Garrett 1994

Wednesday, April 20, 1994

At six I lived for spells:
how a few Hawaiian words could call
up the rain, could hymn like the sea
in the long swirl of chambers
curling in the nautilus of a shell,

– Garrett Hongo, “What For”

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Read an interview with Garrett Hongo from Lantern Review:

A Conversation with Garrett Hongo

Garrett Hongo was born in the back room of the Hongo Store in Volcano, Hawai`i in 1951. He grew up in Kahuku and Hau`ula on the island of O`ahu and moved to Los Angeles when he was six, much to his everlasting regret.

No one knew the secret of my flutes,
and I laugh now
because some said I was enlightened.
But the truth is
I’m only a gardener

– Garrett Hongo, “Something Whispered in the Shakuhachi“

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Watch Garrett Hongo read and discuss his third book of poems, Coral Road, with the National Park Service:

Video (U.S. National Park Service)

No Description

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Hollo, Anselm 2004

Wednesday, November 10, 2004
with Ron Padgett

Ay, si: “The other place”
Where the most abstruse
(Intimate?)
Connections are made

– Anselm Hollo, “Mardi”

Broadside of “Mardi” by Anselm Hollo

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Listen to Anselm Hollo’s 2004 reading with Ron Padgett at the Poetry Center of Chicago:

Anselm Hollo begins at 6:08 minutes.

Mr. K said in times of great crudity
it is necessary to be subtle
so please wrap around me
with awkward grace

– Anselm Hollo, “Lost Original”

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Read this interview with Anselm Hollo from Poetry Society of America:

Q & A American Poetry: Anselm Hollo

Poets answer the question: “What’s American about American Poetry?”

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Ford, Charles Henri 1976

Friday, April 9, 1976
Charles Henri Ford, reading his poetry
Accompanied by Indra of Nepal, on guitar, and showing Johnny Minotaur, a new film by Ford

the blood grows, the hair flows, the river burns,
from the veins, from the skin, by the home of the child,
pulled and repelled by Bloody Bones;
renewal of the swoon

– Charles Henri Ford, “The Bad Habit”

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Read this interview with Charles Henri Ford from BOMB Magazine:

http://bombmagazine.org/article/868/charles-henri-ford

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Haviaras, Stratis 1981

Friday, October 30, 1981

I will take this chair apart and build a tree with it. I will stick new leaves on it, new nests new birds new insects. The sun will brush against its exquisite limbs…

– Stratis Haviaras, “Tree”

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Read this article about Stratis Haviaras’s work as curator of the Harvard Poetry Room:

Haviaras Retires After 26 Years as Curator of Poetry Room | News | The Harvard Crimson

When President James B. Conant ’14 sought to appoint a curator for the new college poetry room in 1932, he

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Hanafi, Amira 2014; 2017

Thursday, September 11, 2014
with Ladan Osman

Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Read/ Write Library

Today what makes me conspicuous? Is it my arrested sisters, my
beaten sisters? Is it the ten thousand of us who march in the walking prison of men’s arms?
I came here to be an Arab, and I found myself a woman.

– Amira Hanafi, “No Comment”

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Listen to Amira Hanafi, with Ladan Osman, read for the Poetry Center of Chicago:

Amira Hanafi begins reading at 26:47 minutes.

Read an interview with Amira Hanafi:

How To Get Lost in a City: An Interview with Amira Hanafi

Until very recently, Amira Hanafi lived in Chicago. Now she lives in Cairo. In both cities she makes a habit of walking, sometimes with others. It’s a deliberate kind of wandering, a determined getting lost-ness, and enough work comes out of her walking, that I have started to think of the city as her studio.

Watch Amira Hanafi present her work exhibiting art in the Artellewa Art Space in Ard El Lewa, Cairo, Egypt:

Making and Exhibiting Contemporary Art in an Informal Settlement – Amira Hanafi

March Meeting 2012

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Harper, Misty 2004

Monday, October 18, 2004
with Kristy Bowen and Katrina Vandenberg

I salute you with high-falutin’
salutations–Down to the Minutiae,
Postmarked,

– Misty Harper, “Dear General”

Broadside of “Dear General” by Misty Harper

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Listen to Misty Harper read her poetry for the Poetry Center of Chicago Reading Series, with Kristy Bowen and Katrina Vandenberg:

Misty Harper begins reading at 38:00 minutes.

The morning had been grimy
no dew pinched our ears
a persistent roughness ate at our cuffs
the afternoon we swore would be different
we would take pains we would see to it

– Misty Harper, “We Went Away”

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More info on Misty Harper⇒

Hardwick, Elizabeth 1984

Tuesday, December 4, 1984

Vintage poster of Elizabeth Hardwick’s reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

The language of the younger generation has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.

– Elizabeth Hardwick

Read an interview with Elizabeth Hardwick:

The Art of Fiction No. 87

Elizabeth Hardwick lives on the west side of Manhattan, on a quiet street near enough to Central Park to have heard the crowds and speakers at the great political demonstrations in Sheep’s Meadow. Her apartment is light and spacious. “Like modern architecture,” she says,…

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Hahn, Kimiko 2008

Wednesday, September 24, 2008
with Eugene Gloria

I wish I knew the contents and I wish the contents
Japanese –
like hairpins made of tortoiseshell or bone
though my braid was lopped off long ago,

– Kimiko Hahn, “The Dream of a Lacquer Box”

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Audio recording of the Poetry Center Reading Series featuring Tom Raworth, Diane di Prima, Kimiko Hahn, Eugene Gloria, Patricia Smith, Luis Rodriguez, Robert Bly, Brian Turner, Bruce Weigl, Tyehimba Jess, A. Van Jordan, Arielle Greenberg, Billy Corgan, Franz Wright, Czeslaw Milosz, Louise Glück, and Alicia Ostriker.

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Curious to see caverns,
we detoured in Tennessee
to ramble through Fat Man’s Misery,
past a ballroom and gun powder machine

– Kimiko Hahn, “The Sweetwater Caverns”

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Watch Kimiko Hahn read her work for the American Poets Reading:

Kimiko Hahn: American Poets Reading

Kimiko Hahn reads from her book, BRAIN FEVER, at the reception celebrating the release of American Poets (Vol. 47), the Academy’s biannual journal. Recorded at The New School in New York City on October 18, 2014. *For highest quality playback, change your YouTube settings (the gear icon) to 720p HD.

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Grotz, Jennifer 2003

Monday, November 3, 2003
with Simone Muench and Quraysh Ali Lansana

To love the world is what you try to do,
describe the trash, the bombs, the fisted greed
when it does not love back, does not love you.

– Jennifer Grotz, “Try”

Broadside of “Elegy for the Unsaid” by Simone Muench, “Try” by Jennifer Grotz, and “burdens” by Quraysh Ali Lansana

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Eyes wide like an owl’s, an aspirin-pale face
foretells in lamplight how it accumulates age.
Somewhat masked, somewhat naked, there’s no way
to know what others see when looking at it.
All five of the body’s senses crowd
on this small planet a weather of hair surrounds.

– Jennifer Grotz, “The Window at Night”

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Read this interview with Jennifer Grotz from Gotham Writers:

Jennifer Grotz

Jennifer Grotz is the author of poetry collections such as The Needle. Reading. Reading carefully twenty to thirty poems by two or three poets is always enough to provoke/inspire me into writing something. It gives me something to mimic or respond to or rage against or love.

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