Okay, I’ll be honest—this week’s poems featuring representatives from the Black Mountain School of poetry largely perplexed me. In my defense, I have Covid Brain, and anything that requires more intensity of thought than measuring a dose of nasal spray is a bit tricky at the moment. But when I stepped back and looked at […]
Poetry often puts me ~in my feels~ but reading this selection of Anne Waldman’s “Fast Speaking Woman” produced such a strong response in me that I felt like I had to write a poem! I’m not just trying to imitate Anne Waldman’s style here, but also a respond to the poem. Now what do I […]
In the introduction to his book Diane Di Prima: Visionary Poetics and the Hidden Religions, David Stephen Calonne outlines the many influences present in Diane Di Prima’s body of work. Di Prima, whose poetry is typically classified as part of the Beat school, resisted the title, as Calonne points out, […]
Gregory Corso’s “Marriage” is a comic, yet tragic poem about the speaker’s rambling thoughts on the institution of marriage, and whether he should get married or not. We as readers witness his personal fantasies, anxieties, and idealizations that all eventually lead back to a harsh and lonely reality, but even this turns into a quick […]
Hanna Reynolds Accepting The Sunflower Within Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Sunflower Sutra” explores how identity is put into crisis through the perversion of self and how it can be recovered by accepting a more complex outlook of one’s own identity. Ginsberg achieves this through a bombardment of direct and impassioned language and imagery; by paralleling pastoral […]
Bob Kaufman wrote and recited poetry often associated with The Beat Poets (Nelson 216). The Beat Poets existed as a group of poets who questioned mainstream politics and culture. They expressed this opposition towards popular culture through unconventional and abstract writing styles in hopes of “changing consciousness and defying conventional writing” (A Brief Guide). Alongside […]
Poems typically take time to polish. I am an MFA student at College of Charleston, a fiction writer, and I would not dare call myself a poet. I have, however, written many poems, starting back in middle school many years ago. Until college, though, I sat and wrote a poem, felt […]
Dead Bill in the Trunk of an El Camino 1 I found it worthwhile to lie about that dead man decaying Inside the trunk of my abandoned El Camino. On a lost corner of my property cloaked by sylvan majesty A body lay bound by the finest Saffiano calfskin leather— Because even dead bitches got […]
Muzzled -Erin Larsen 1. We’re all medicated here! Or at least I don’t know anyone in this gig who is not defanged muzzled castrated by the opiates of the middle classes— fluoxetine, sertraline, venlafaxine, citalopram, imipramine, voritoxetine can’t cry anymore, can’t come, can’t feel but at least we won’t lose our jobs, right? or we […]