April 1, 2021 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Cheswayo Mphanza Reads Gerald Stern By Cheswayo Mphanza National Poetry Month has arrived, and with it a second series of Poets on Couches. In these videograms, poets read and discuss the poems that are helping them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances. “Leaving Another Kingdom” by Gerald Stern Issue no. 90 (Winter 1983) I think this year I’ll wait for the white lilacs before I get too sad. I’ll let the daffodils go, flower by flower, and the blue squill go, and the primroses. Levine will be here by then, waving fountain pens, carrying rolled-up posters of Ike Williams and King Levinsky. He will be reaching into his breast pocket for maps of grim Toledo showing the downtown grilles and the bus stations. He and I together will get on our hands and knees on the warm ground in the muddy roses under the thorn tree. We will walk the mile to my graveyard without one word of regret, two rich poets going over the past a little, changing a thing or two, making a few connections, doing it all with balance, stopping along the way to pet a wolf, slowing down at the locks, giving each other lectures on early technology, mentioning eels and snakes, touching a little on our two cities, cursing our Henrys a little, his Ford, my Frick, being almost human about it, almost decent, sliding over the stones to reach the island. throwing spears on the way, staring for twenty minutes at two robins starting a life together in rural Pennsylvania, kicking a heavy tire, square and monstrous, huge and soggy, maybe a 49 Hudson, maybe a 40 Packard, maybe a Buick with mohair seats and silken cords and tiny panes of glass—both of us seeing the same car, each of us driving our own brick road, both of us whistling the same idiotic songs, the tops of trees flying, houses sailing along, the way they did then, both of us walking down to the end of the island so we could put our feet in the water, so I could show him where the current starts, so we could look for bottles and worn-out rubbers, Trojans full of holes, the guarantee run out— love gone slack and love gone flat— a few feet away from New Jersey near the stones that look like large white turtles guarding the entrance to the dangerous channel where those lovers—Tristan and his Isolt, Troilus and you know who, came roaring by on inner tubes, their faces wet with happiness, the shrieks and sighs left up the river somewhere, now their fingers trailing through the wake, now their arms out to keep themselves from falling, now in the slow part past the turtles and into the bend, we sitting there putting on our shoes, he with Nikes, me with Georgia loggers, standing up and smelling the river, walking single file until we reach the pebbles, singing in French all the way back, losing the robins forever, losing the Buick, walking into the water, leaving another island, leaving another retreat, leaving another kingdom. Cheswayo Mphanza’s debut poetry collection is The Rinehart Frames (University of Nebraska Press). His poems “Frame Six” and “At David Livingstone’s Statue” appeared in the Fall 2020 issue.
August 5, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Reading Max Jacob By Suzanne Buffam and Srikanth Reddy In this series of videograms, poets read and discuss the poems getting them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances. “Ravignan Street” by Max Jacob, translated by Elizabeth Bishop Issue no. 226 (Fall 2018) “One never bathes twice in the same stream,” the philosopher Heraclitus used to say. However, the same people always turn up again! They go by, at the same time, gay or sad. You, passers-by in Ravignan Street, I have given you the names of Historical Defuncts! Here’s Agamemnon! Here’s Madame Hanska! Ulysses is a milkman! Patrocles is at the foot of the street while a Pharaoh is near me. Castor and Pollux are the ladies on the sixth floor. But you, old rag-picker, you who, in the enchanted morning, come to get the garbage, the garbage which is still fresh when I put out my nice big lamp, you whom I do not know, poor and mysterious rag-picker, you, rag-picker, I have named you a noble and celebrated name. I have named you Dostoyevsky. Srikanth Reddy’s latest book of poetry, Underworld Lit, will be published by Wave Books in August 2020. He is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago. Suzanne Buffam is the author of three books of poetry, the most recent of which is A Pillow Book (Canarium, 2016). She teaches at the University of Chicago.
May 21, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Saskia Hamilton By Saskia Hamilton In this series of videograms, poets read and discuss the poems getting them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances. “From the ‘Aeneid,’ Book VI” by Virgil, translated by David Ferry Issue no. 201 (Summer 2012) Read More
May 13, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Eliza Griswold By Eliza Griswold In this series of videograms, poets read and discuss the poems getting them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances. “After Our Planet” by Mark Strand Issue no. 125 (Winter 1992) Read More
May 7, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Jake Skeets By The Paris Review In this series of videograms, poets read and discuss the poems getting them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances. “Horses, Which Do Not Exist” by Alberto Ríos Issue no. 101 (Winter 1986) The strong horseshoe shape of a horse’s mouth Of his teeth, set that way of a suitcase handle And the way a bit, in just that way, pulls him: Come here to where it is I say. Like that A horse’s mouth, and so his manner, broken Those horses no longer running along the far Distance visible from a Tucson highway thirsty Stopping for water, making one of those paintings Living rooms wear as pendants. Those paintings Too unreal, laughed at and finger-poked And so these horses too must be unreal, A bad painting of nine, A pond of browning water. Birds, two kinds. Grass too green—spring has come this year, And water—mountains too blue, too many shades, In the distance. And so they are, this all is‚ As children say, like a dream, Laughing hard at how good it seemed at the moment. Winner of a 2020 Whiting Award for Poetry, Jake Skeets is Black Streak Wood, born for Water’s Edge. He is Diné from Vanderwagen, New Mexico. He is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers (Milkweed Editions, 2019), a National Poetry Series–winning collection of poems. He holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Skeets is a winner of the 2018 Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Contest and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Skeets edits an online publication called Cloudthroat and organizes a poetry salon and reading series called Pollentongue, based in the Southwest. He is a member of Saad Bee Hózhǫ́: A Diné Writers’ Collective and currently teaches at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona.
May 1, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Tess Taylor By Tess Taylor In this series of videograms, poets read and discuss the poems getting them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances. “Musical Interlude” by Eamon Grennan Issue no. 154 (Spring 2000) Through the voice, the soul’s work is done. Janet Baker Cragflower. Music of the sea. The flower still standing in its tormented place. Morning full of voices. Mourning too. Mahalia singing On My Way and making it to Cay-nen Land. On a rock, sit, listen to Bjorling sing Only a Rose over your friend’s ashes. Chaffinch on the clothesline— rosy biscuit breast aglow— will any minute confirm himself in song. And listen, the thin single note of the sandpiper in lakedusk: beige and bright white, precise bill opening, closing: only the one note but enough to cut across the whole valley as a nightwind shakes the stiff green reeds to whispering. Pain, even a single grain of it anywhere in the body is a kind of stop and focus, turning us to pure attention, as may happen with some small invisible winged thing singing in the thick of hedges. Tess Taylor is the author of the chapbook The Misremembered World, The Forage House, and Work & Days. In spring 2020 she published two books of poems: Last West, part of Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and Rift Zone, from Red Hen Press.