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American Poets Reading 2002

Wednesday, September 18, 2002
American Poets Reading
Jenny A. Burkholder, Deborah Cummins, Janice Harrington, and John Mann

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The patient was taken to the operating room
reliving 10th grade,
how they chased warm gin with milk.

– Jenny A. Burkholder, “Deconstructing the Right Breast”

Continue reading this poem⇒

He sits beside his wife who takes the wheel.
Clutching coupons, he wanders the aisles
of Stop & Save. There’s no place he must be,
no clock to punch. Sure,
there are bass in the lake, a balsa model
in the garage, the par-three back nine.
But it’s not the same.
Time the enemy then, the enemy now.

– Deborah Cummins, “At a Certain Age”

Continue reading this poem⇒

janice01

Evening, and all my ghosts come back to me
like red banty hens to catalpa limbs
and chicken-wired hutches, clucking, clucking,
and falling, at last, into their head-under-wing sleep.

– Janice Harrington, “Shaking the Grass”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Mann

The body captures the rhythm. A kind
of lilt to the step. Never a tread. You
are looking for ladders to the world.
Hooks. Sometimes it is like holding on
to the strap in a swaying subway.

– John Mann, “Mr. Mann Finds a How To Manual”

Continue reading this poem⇒

More info on Jenny A. Burkholder⇒

More info on Deborah Cummins⇒

More info on Janice Harrington⇒

More info on John Mann⇒

American Poets Reading 2003

Thursday, March 6, 2003
American Poets Reading
Traci DantDuriel Harris, Patricia McMillen, and Andrew Zawacki

Traci_Headshot_3.43110217_std

I come
from a family
that twice names
its own.
One name
for the world.

– Traci Dant, “A Twice Named Family”

Continue reading this poem⇒

duriel-e-harris-1

Gilded, the jaw forgets
fracture at the pointer’s tip
(red jaw, forgotten rings
inadvertent discord, picked up,
thrown into anger). To say
I feel like breaking something

– Duriel Harris, “self portrait in relief”

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Listen to Patricia McMillen read her poem, “Fill ‘Er Up” on GLT’s Poetry Radio⇒

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If it be warfare, let it be mistress
and midnight up that slope,
not reticent in a weather
of withdrawal, its salmon-roe tint,
the shabby grass it grazes

– Andrew Zawacki, “Any Other Eviction, Than The Frequent”

Continue reading this poem⇒

More info on Traci Dant⇒

More info on Duriel Harris⇒

More info on Patricia McMillen⇒

More info on Andrew Zawacki⇒

Dove, Rita 2009

Spring 2009

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Every god is lonely, an exile
composed of parts: elk horn,
cloven hoof. Receptacle
for wishes, each god is empty
without us, penitent
raking our yards into windblown piles….

– Rita Dove, “The Breathing, The Endless News”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview with Rita Dove from Modern American Poetry:

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dove/mwthomas.htm

What did he do except lie
under a pear tree, wrapped in
a great cloak, and meditate
on the heavenly bodies?

– Rita Dove, “Banneker”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch Rita Dove discuss the power of poetry with Bill Moyers:

Rita Dove on the Power of Poetry

Bill welcomes former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, who this very week received the National Medal of Arts from President Obama. Dove served two terms as Poet Laureate, the youngest and the first African American to be named to that prestigious position.

More info on Rita Dove⇒

Wolff, Rebecca 2001

Tuesday, October 30, 2001

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Half a day is dead already–
a lady with a baby in the shady graveyard
promenade not quite the idea
but the first idea to be impressed
so firmly– Grace to be born

– Rebecca Wolff, “Eminent Victorians”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview with Rebecca Wolff from Poetry Society:

Poet Novelist: An Interview with Rebecca Wolff

Conversations with poets, editors, and artists.

He died before we could honor
him correctly. Candied
impulse through the brain.
Your will subverted

– Rebecca Wolff, “Mamma didn’t raise no fools”

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Watch Rebecca Wolff read two of her poems at the Sue Scott Gallery:

Rebecca Wolff Reads Two Poems from ‘The King’

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More info on Rebecca Wolff⇒

Fammerée, Richard 2000

Tuesday, January 18, 2000

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I captured my daughter running
between water and violet
fire and viridian
emeralds and ancestors their green
day bed of reveries
a mythology of first days

– Richard Fammerée, “Camera obscura”

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Watch the video for “Silence in Your Eyes” from his album, “Fammerée & Eurydice:”

Richard Fammerée – Silence in Your Eyes c2008

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Her body is hillocks, pond and spring, long
planted and greener before. Her spine is
the trysting tree from the time of the
grandparents. It is where they meet
and court. Birds turn and return. Her girls
come back. The wind sails their hair
in three directions: light, silk, conifer.

– Richard Fammerée, “February-October”

Continue reading this poem⇒

More info on Richard Fammerée⇒

Corwin, Nina 1999; 2001; 2017

Thursday, April 19, 2001
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
with Mark Tardi
57th Street Books

Corwin-web

She learned the meaning of industry
From Sunday school sermons on
Protestant virtue,
the third little pig,
the spider not the fly,
and the squirrel putting up supplies
for the barren season–

– Nina Corwin, “Lady Sisyphus”

Broadside of "Lady Sisyphus" by Nina Corwin.

Broadside of “Lady Sisyphus” by Nina Corwin.

Buy this broadside in the Mixed Bags Series⇒

Conceived under a whore’s moon, no doors
on our seventh house, we wear our bodies uneasily
as if our skins shrunk in the drying cycle,
walk both sides of yellow lines
or sit at the edges of chairs, one tooth loose,
the new one pushing close behind.

– Nina Corwin, “Inhabitants of the Cusp”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this post-interview piece on Nina Corwin from Fifth Wednesday Journal:

http://www.fifthwednesdayjournal.com/an-interview-with-nina-corwin/

Incision to be scheduled in bull’s-eye red.
Enchanted scalpels side-by-side,
line up to make the cut un-kind.
They come to fetch (clip-clop) in step.

– Nina Corwin, “Ligamentary, My Dear”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch Nina Corwin read her poem “Variations on a Theme by Pablo Neruda” with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra:

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Original poem performed on a program with the Chicago Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. From The Uncertainty of Maps (2011). On this Sunday afternoon, I had the wonderful opportunity to perform 3 poems along with the narration for Benjamin Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.

More info on Nina Corwin⇒

Mann, John 2002

Mann

The body captures the rhythm. A kind
of lilt to the step. Never a tread. You
are looking for ladders to the world.
Hooks. Sometimes it is like holding on
to the strap in a swaying subway.

– John Mann, “Mr. Mann Finds a How To Manual”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview with John Mann from The McDonough County Voice:

Q&A with Poet John Mann

Poet John Mann was a English instructor at Western Illinois University and local resident for many years, and next week he’ll return to read his work. Mann, who retired from WIU in 2008 and current…

His plants are alive. They shelter
his head where he sits each
dawn. They are his friends.
They practice the speech of silence.

– John Mann, “Speak Now or Forever, Mr. Mann”

Continue reading this poem⇒

More info on John Mann⇒

Harrington, Janice 2002

Wednesday, September 18, 2002
American Poets Reading
with Jenny A. Burkholder, Deborah Cummins, and John Mann

janice01

Evening, and all my ghosts come back to me
like red banty hens to catalpa limbs
and chicken-wired hutches, clucking, clucking,
and falling, at last, into their head-under-wing sleep.

– Janice Harrington, “Shaking the Grass”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Read this interview with Janice Harrington from Ploughshares:

Hearing Voices: Women Versing Life presents Janice N. Harrington – The Ploughshares Blog

As a poetry editor at Prick of the Spindle, I find that poems about certain subjects, such as childhood, love, aging, and death, often lean too heavily on nostalgia, so that the language limps. In fact, I’ve been guilty of writing my own nostalgic poems now and again- and again.

if I purloin protons, all the negative numbers,
and seven of Cantor’s infinities,
if the world’s sweetness drips from my lips–
syrupy, nectareous, honey-wined cascades
of sweetness between full lips–

– Janice Harrington, “The Thief’s Tabernacle”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch Janice Harrington read her work for the River Styx Magazine:

River Styx at the Tavern: Janice N. Harrington & George Singleton

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More info on Janice Harrington⇒

Cummins, Deborah 2002

He sits beside his wife who takes the wheel.
Clutching coupons, he wanders the aisles
of Stop & Save. There’s no place he must be,
no clock to punch. Sure,
there are bass in the lake, a balsa model
in the garage, the par-three back nine.
But it’s not the same.
Time the enemy then, the enemy now.

– Deborah Cummins, “At a Certain Age”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch Wes McNair’s Maine Poetry Express video featuring Deborah Cummins:

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Wes McNair’s Maine Poetry Express with Deborah Cummins, Conductor: Are poets and local residents read the best of Maine poetry with Main’s poet laureate Wesly McNair

Once more, in their dumb unknowing,
sandhill cranes are pulled to a place
they must again and again get back to.

– Deborah Cummins, “Passage”

Continue reading this poem⇒

More info on Deborah Cummins⇒

Burkholder, Jenny A. 2002

Wednesday, September 18, 2002
American Poets Reading
with Deborah Cummins, Janice Harrington, and John Mann

713Burkholder_Jenny_HEADSHOT

Read Jenny A. Burkholder’s non-fiction work, “Boob Party,” from So to Speak Journal:

http://sotospeakjournal.org/boob-party/

In my new red high heels, a Rolex with a face of a hundred tiny diamonds, and my new black leather dress snuggled around my hips, I plan to smoke three cigarettes. First one I’ll light with a plastic Bic lighter, rough around the edges from opening too many beer tops, and inhale deeply.

– Jenny A. Burkholder, “Dorothy”

Continue reading this prose poem⇒

More info on Jenny A. Burkholder⇒