April 24, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Major Jackson By Major Jackson 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. “Coral” by Kamau Brathwaite Issue no. 231 (Winter 2019) Read More
April 20, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Carl Phillips By Carl Phillips 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. Read More
April 16, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Mary Szybist Reads Amy Woolard By Mary Szybist 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. “If By You You Mean We” by Amy Woolard Issue no. 230 (Fall 2019) The apples are early this year, & the grass is late. The taxi is Early & the past is late. The fist is late. The tooth—like the news Of the tooth—broke both early & late. I’m telling you: this all Really happened. I had a love I ripped through like it was bread. I had bread & cheese, apples & sugar on my every plate. A sugar rose on my every cake. A love like a water Ring soaked into the grain of my kitchen table. Sugar, I don’t need it Refinished. The way it happened, I was my own witness. When we was Together / everything was so grand. I love you like the fifty-two bones of the feet, The fifty-four of the hands, the hell & the fast foam from a high-water wave Smoothing itself toward me like a flu passed through a kiss. I couldn’t Keep anything down. So happened it was my bread & butter for years To turn the tables of this town. I didn’t know a morning That wasn’t the end of my night. I came in through your basement Bedroom window. I brought a love like two forkless fists stuffed With lemon cake. A love like the house spider that crawls in & then out of your open mouth during sleep, leaving only your waking Tongue & its hustled memory of caught snowflakes from an early flurry. Mary Szybist is the author of Incarnadine, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry.
April 13, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Shane McCrae Reads Lucie Brock-Broido By Shane McCrae 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. “Periodic Table of Ethereal Elements” by Lucie Brock-Broido Issue no. 154 (Spring 2000) for Harry Ford I was not ready for your form to be cold Ever. Even in life You did not inhabit, necessarily, a form, But a mind of Rarer liquid element. It had not occurred to me You would take Leave and it will be winter from now on, not only Here, in the ordinary, But there too, in the extraordinary elegance Of calcium and finery And loss. Keep me Tethered here, breathtakingly awkward and alive. If you had a psyche it was not known to me. If you had a figure it would be heavy ivory. If you were a man, you would be An autumn of black carriages filled red with leaves From sycamore; trees, Not scattering. I was not ready for such Eanhward and unease. Good-bye to the imperium, the rinsing wind. You, cold As God and the great Glassed castle in which I’ve lived, simply Now a house. A girl ago, a girlhood gone like a vial of ether Thrown on fire—just A little jump of flame, like grief, or, Like a penicillin that has lost its skill at killing Off, it then is gone. Shane McCrae’s most recent books are The Gilded Auction Block and Sometimes I Never Suffered, both of which are published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.
April 10, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Timothy Donnelly By Timothy Donnelly 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. “Rain Moving In” by John Ashbery Issue no. 90 (Winter 1983) The blackboard is erased in the attic And the wind turns up the light of the stars, Sinewy now. Someone will find out, someone will know. And if somewhere in this great planet The truth is discovered, a patch of it, dried, glazed by the sun, It will just hang on, in its own infamy, humility. No one Will be better for it, but things can’t get any worse. Just keep playing, mastering as you do the step Into disorder this one meant. Don’t you see It’s all we can do? Meanwhile, great fires Arise, as of haystacks aflame. The dial had been set And that’s ominous, but all your graciousness in living Conspires with it, now that this is our home: A place to be from, and have people ask about. Timothy Donnelly’s most recent publications include The Problem of the Many (Wave, 2019) and The Cloud Corporation (Wave, 2010), winner of the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is currently director of poetry in the writing program at Columbia University School of the Arts and lives in Brooklyn with his family.
April 8, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Monica Youn By Monica Youn 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. Read More