Sheila Donohue and Greg Scott believe so strongly in the power of art (and its ability to effect change) that they carved out a space in their home to support it. Center Portion is a salon, whose donations are used for direct support of the people who present their ideas.
Ashes, the dissonance of unicorns: the edges
of my written name begin to curl, the ink
still visible through the fire. In absence of stars,
my natality card remains safely in Washington.
This week, the magazine features “Determination,” by Stephen Dobyns. I had the chance to ask the author about the kindling and spark that fed this …
Groggy, sure, and in the midst of bad dreams,
it must have been a dispirited awakening–
expecting everything settled, the long night
without interruption suddenly interrupted,
In the spring of 1992, the Library of Congress broke precedent, naming Mona Van Duyn its first female Poet Laureate.
From a new peony,
my last anthem,
a squirrel in glee
broke the budded stem.
I thought, where is joy
without fresh bloom,
that old hearts’ ploy
to mask the tomb?
Thursday, March 12, 2015
with Sandra Marchetti
Chicago Cultural Center
Daylight perforates siding despite
the battered armor of license plates–
corroded colors, same state: decay,
their dates the only history
of whoever tilled the soil
Listen to Stuart Dybek’s 1994 Poetry Center reading with Mark Doty:
Stuart Dybek begins at 33:37 minutes.
On a brick street slicked
by a reddish, spiritual neon,
I thought I saw you again,
bareheaded in damp weather.
I recognized the shape
of your breath in the cold.
The garments worn in flying dreams
were fashioned there–
overcoats that swooped like kites,
scarves streaming like vapor trails,
gowns ballooning into spinnakers.
Listen to Stuart Dybek read his work with Sandy Marchetti at the Poetry Center of Chicago’s 2015 Six Points Reading Series:
Stuart Dybek begins at 16:42 minutes.
Stuart Dybek reading for the March installment of the Poetry Center of Chicago’s Six Points Reading Series.
It’s the metallic hour
when birds lose perfect pitch.
On a porch, three stories up,
against a copper window
facing the El,
a woman in a satin slip,
and the geraniums she waters,
turn to gold.
Stuart Dybek is the author of three books of fiction: “I Sailed With Magellan”, “The Coast of Chicago”, and “Childhood and Other Neighborhoods”. Both “I Sailed With Magellan” and “The Coast of Chicago” were New York Times Notable Books, and “The Coast of Chicago” was a One Book One Chicago selection.
My spectators loved my Orange County neighborhood
in the sluggish melt of summer:
avocados thudding to earth,
bougainvillea petals browning the asphalt,
the old woman with Aqua-net hair
hosing her Bermuda grass.
I don’t remember learning how. Only not knowing, then knowing. Before: lines chickens made in the dirt inside the coop; circles and triangles I drew in the garden mud with my fingers. The only meaning attributed these symbols, that of a child’s whimsy.
Kate Durbin reads from her “Kept Women” (Parrot Press, 2012), meanwhile Prof. Padu Paga does a pipe smoking performance to accompany. Broadcast live on 12/16/2012 from the Bureau of Experimental Speech and Holy Theses (BESHT), located at the Pomona College Museum of Art! https://www.facebook.com/BESHTx
The blue forest, chilled and blue, like the lips of the dead
if the lips were gone. The year has been cut in half
with dull scissors, the solstice still looking for its square
on the calendar…
The curtains belly in the waking room.
Sails are round with holding, horned at top,
and net a blue bull in the wind: the day.
They drag the blunt hulls of my heels awake
and outrigged by myself through the morning seas.
If I do land, let breakfast harbor me.
In winter a crow flew at my head
because her fledgling warmed
the brute nest of my fist. Ah,
the pear clipped in her yellow beak
fell from her cry of “Ransom,” and
I freed my bird for grace.
Suddenly the stairs seem to climb down themselves,
atomized plaster billowing: dust of 1907’s
rooming house, this year’s bake shop and florist’s,
the ghosts of their signs faint above the windows
lined, last week, with loaves and blooms.
