I have hard work behind me and hard work ahead of me still. Nonetheless, I’m blessed to be able to bring this book to y’all. Thank you to
@marisasaystweet
,
@parneshia
and
@northwesternup
for their belief in and partnership on this collection!
Don't be dejected in thinking that the protests, the letters, the boycotts, all forms of dissent meant to end the genocide of Palestinians aren't working. They are working. Not quickly enough, not as fast as we want or need them to, but they are. The only choice is to continue.
Look: I graduated from high school in the top 1% of my class with standardized test scores in the top 1% and a roster of extracurricular involvements. And I still needed affirmative action, because while I merited admission anywhere on paper, my Blackness has restricted ACCESS!
What Mamie Till did back then by having Emmett's open casket photographed and what we're doing now, posting videos after every lynching and (mass) shooting, are not the same thing. The context is different. The frame ain't the same. We aren't bearing witness, we're watching.
Whiteness, the construct, doesn't allow shame. If you are white and feel shame at learning history, you are having a human reaction to an inhumane thing, but they want to legislate human concern out of you. That shame is a fork in the road and they want you on a certain path.
A teacher in South Carolina was reported by her students for teaching Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me.”
The students explained that the book made them ashamed to be White, violating a clause forbidding teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might not have had the resources to lock down a living space in D.C. immediately, but damn, gotta love the way she lives rent free in the right-wing's heads.
If Junot Díaz, singularly, is that essential to the cause of diversity at BR that you're willing to dismiss testimony from women he's harmed as "not that bad," then you have been failing in your supposed mission for years despite what your metrics say. This is sad, sad, sad.
My poem "I'm Rooting for Everybody Black" is today's Poem-A-Day from the Academy of American Poets (
@POETSorg
)! Thank you to
@KavehAkbar
for lifting up this poem of celebration/affirmation and to
@IssaRae
for speaking the real on the red carpet that night.
Let's keep it a buck about what this Supreme Court decision is about: the objective is to keep the most "prestigious" academic institutions for social elites who are primarily and overwhelmingly white and wealthy (and male) those demos even more so than they already are today.
There are simply certain "tables" that Black and brown (and Asian!) folks are not supposed to sit at and this court decision bolsters a racist order that had been strongly challenged. That Asian(-American) students were used as the shield for this is the saddest thing to me.
People are killed in language before being killed in body. Words are weighty things that actions carry forth from, why silence is moral failure. Against the backdrop of public massacre, we must language shields because others language swords. We sanctify life by speaking boldly.
If racism was simply belief, it'd be much easier to fight. The problem is that racism is, by definition, backed by power. It is institutional. It is systemic. It is a machine that hums along as we tend to our lives; it hums so rhythmically, by design, it puts too many to sleep.
Some quick news:
1. Starting this month,
@The_Rumpus
will begin publishing Original Poetry features on a weekly basis. You all have been such great supporters of the poetry section and we're excited to give you more!
2. Poetry submissions are currently open for a short time! 😎
Somebody in the on the CNN production team didn't properly research their guest, but I'm so glad they didn't. What a thoughtful, measured, honest and unshakeable articulation of the Palestinian cause.
Announcement:
@The_Rumpus
will be having our first-ever open submissions period for poetry in January 2019!!! I,
@CarolinaEbeid
and our wonderful new team of readers look forward to all of your poems. Please submit, please share with others. 😊
Admission: I have an ambition to be a *great* poet, by which I mean, I have an ambition to be a relentless truth-teller, a safe and honest broker, a generous lover who is not a fool. Where there is a silence that shouldn't be there, I want to be a sound. This, I strive for.
President Warren isn't going down this cycle, but how about Senate Majority Leader Warren working with a President Sanders or President Biden in the White House? We'd all be so fortunate. Sen. Warren has so much she's capable of. We'd be foolish to waste her gifts.
Poets, I know you have your ambitions and that's a healthy thing. We all do. But I believe it should be balanced out with generosity―unyielding generosity―and celebration of the success of others.
In moments where I may feel overlooked, which all poets/writers/artists feel at some point, a helpful frame I've used to (re)commit to the work is to tell myself the work I have ahead of me eventually leads people to the work I have behind me. Your work will take care of itself.
Hey, y'all! Who are poets you're rooting for? It could be for *any* reason: maybe you hope for a greater audience for their work, or for them to be more confident in their voice, or to overcome something.
I'll start:
@xandriaphillips
is the truth and folks need to recognize!
Mosab Abu Toha, an award-winning poet and essayist, has committed no crime, but nonetheless has been seized by the IDF and separated from his family while fleeing the bombardment of northern Gaza. He must be released immediately. Praying that it's so.
I often surprise people when I say I don't teach poetry/creative writing. I know many poets do to make ends meet, but it's important to note that many, many do not and it makes them no less committed. The shapes of our lives as poets can be so different; it makes the art richer.
Some of my 2018 goals:
1. Take up more space in both voice and body.
2. Don't be afraid to be happy or joyful in public.
3. Give myself permission.
4. Love better, not harder.
5. Don't just stay alive, but live.
6. Write true, write as much as possible.
7. Be generous.
I have a kind of homecoming coming up in Fall 2020: my second full-length poetry collection, DOPPELGANGBANGER, will be hitting shelves by way of Chicago's
@haymarketbooks
! I've been quiet on things for a while, but hey, it's happening!
I'd like to occasionally wake up without learning people had been killed in mass in America as I slept. This might be frequent occurrence, but that doesn't mean any of this is normal. We are sick in our souls in this country and it shows through every day.
Too few White Americans see our grace. After Indigenous removal and chattel slavery; after Jim Crow, Chinese exclusion, Japanese internment; now after Muslim bans, family separation, bigoted mass shootings, we remain, work, build up the country we love rather than burn it down.
Also, if you're a non-Muslim who is choosing "love" today: every time a crime like this is committed against vulnerable people, and you choose love, you are choosing to act, to protect because that's what love requires of you. Either do so, or don't diminish the word.
I'm an incoming Poetry Editor at
@The_Rumpus
!!! Excited to get to know the team and work with them to get The Rumpus Original Poetry even more poppin'! Also, I do have some forthcoming poems there that had been accepted earlier and slated for January 2018, so keep an eye out. 😊
Don't know what poets need to hear this, but what you perceive as someone's unrelenting productivity is likely more a coincidence of publication cycles being long or unpredictable across different mags/journals. Sure, some really are prolific, but you're not failing to keep pace.
We really need to stop saying things like "women aren't going to stand for this" in relation to Kavanaugh's SCOTUS appointment.
Black women, Latinas, Asian American, Native women generally won't stand for it. White women... are a question mark always.
After 2020, I hope I never hear "militia" again. Call them terrorists. That's what they are. Quit trying to make them sound honorable because of what they look like.
My most mind-blowing poetry moment yet probably wasn't any fellowship or publication (believe it or not) but the time I found out a cousin of mine got assigned some of my work in their college class. Such a possibility had never occurred to me.
Tomorrow,
@The_Rumpus
will launch our annual National Poetry Month project! That's 30 days with new work from the 30 poets below. Throughout April, I'll add their works to this thread to make things easy to follow. We hope their words offer you comfort in these uncertain times.
A drunk driver took away someone very special yesterday that I and so many others knew. She was loved and respected. She was an earth-mover. I hope she knows, even with a short time here, she made her mark. I'll remember her always.
I see on here that POETRY's February 2021 issue features the work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated poets. I'm always here for that. More of that everywhere, please.
What have I been writing lately? Absolutely nothing. And, not gonna lie, it feels pretty good. I used to get anxious about dry spells. I'm learning to trust in the process more and feed myself with other things in the meantime that bring me joy. I'll get back to the page.
My poem written after Jordan Neely's murder on the NYC subway quietly slid into the world this week. I hesitated to share it as I wish no distraction from ending the siege of Gaza, and yet the struggles of Black Americans and Palestinians very much rhyme.
Me: "Can y'all stop writing all these books so I can catch up? Damn."
Also me: "Never stop writing please, I love your work too much."
My wallet: "I hate you all."
My bookshelf: "I can't fit into these pants anymore."
Re: Hicok's essay―
1. If white men still dominate publishing, they're not "disappearing."
2. Your house/awards/publishing contracts are all safe. Your only cost has been to ego.
3. It's weird to write about diversity's inevitability when white supremacists run D.C. right now.
Announcement:
@The_Rumpus
will be having our first-ever open submissions period for poetry in January 2019!!! I,
@CarolinaEbeid
and our wonderful new team of readers look forward to all of your poems. Please submit, please share with others. 😊
@LucasBrownEyes
@steffantriplett
1000%. Mamie had agency and a hope for what her decision could mean in that specific moment which, while similar to ours, was importantly different. I can't imagine those left after the violence today choosing as Mamie did. Instead, we choose and traumatize and think it "help".
In other news, today is my 30th birthday. I don't know what that means, but it means something. It's hitting different. Normally my birthday is a gloomy day, when I feel especially disconnected from family and friends, because there's a disconnection in myself.
The people I've encountered in life whose intelligence/insight I'm most impressed by, I've noticed, tend to move through the world not from the assumption they are right, but from the awareness they can always be wrong. I try to let this guide me as well.
One of the things I loathe more than anything is going into work and getting on like nothing happened this weekend, like dozens and dozens weren't slaughtered. This leaves limited room for collective grief. Limited room for righteous anger. Limited time for action. All a plan.
My first poem ever in POETRY and there's my granddaddy right there at the beginning of it. This was always a special poem to me. I think it's even more special now.
It's been hard to embrace my upcoming book in excitement with all that's going on, but I'm leaning into it for a brief moment to share the cover. Big thank you to
@fptheshit
for supplying this gorgeous artwork.
DOPPELGANGBANGER / ETA: 02.09.21
courtesy of
@haymarketbooks
What in the fresh hell is this response? Look, y'all tried to do a positive thing but are showing, yet again, that what readers and contributors have been asking for is not being understood on a deeper level. Let's explore a bit...
@HeyLimLim
People in prison have been sentenced & are serving/have served those sentences; it is not our role to further judge or punish them as a result of their criminal convictions. As editors, our role is to read poems & facilitate conversations around contemporary poetry. 2/4
THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER was an important read for me precisely because the protagonist's relationship to women was entirely unhealthy and pathological. I truly thought that was the point, but this thread underscores what was really up. Misogyny is a hell of a drug.
So, one really cool thing that happened over the weekend is that
@SaturnaliaBooks
let me know that the first poem in TELEPATHOLOIGES, "How Do You Raise a Black Child?," won a Pushcart Prize.
Who else goes through one of those stretches where you're like "everything I've ever written is hot garbage"? Who else is going through that right now?
National Poetry Month is a week away and we're gearing up for a great one at
@The_Rumpus
!!! Read up on everything we're up to at the link () and preview our featured poets for our annual National Poetry Month series below. Get hype!
#ShareYourRejections
? Well let's see... * opens up Submittable *
72 accepts/202 rejects (35.6 % acceptance rate)
First submission logged Sep. 2013
These numbers are damn good, but there's definitely more rejections not captured here. It's a practice, y'all. Submit, submit!
Just let me know if, after the verdict, the United States is still racist to its core and if state-sanctioned violence is still permissible and relentless, particularly when levied against Black people and other minorities as well. The real verdict is not coming today.
This COVID-19 business is wild, y'all. It's almost like the government should play a fundamental role in securing, protecting and promoting the health of its citizens or something.
We are proud to announce THE SLOWDOWN, a new poetry podcast and radio feature hosted by U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith! Learn more and listen on November 26.
I've long held anxiety that I don't always have the tools to articulate the anatomy of a good poem, but I do tend to know a good poem when I see one; it's one that always keeps me coming back, even if I don't know why. There's some mystery to attraction, I guess, and that's okay.
What are the poems you're turning to right now? I'm interested not in poems that are about "hopeful", but more so that have resolve. Steadfastness. Courage. Poems that aren't afraid to be as ugly as the world they indict. What comes to mind for you? Share 'em here.
This will be a long thread. I've been taking in last night's vote returns, and people's comments and responses to it, and I've got some things to get off my chest. My friends on the left, after last night, I'm concerned about your spirits. Our spirits. We gotta set 'em right.
The most awkward part of writing a book is having to be like, "hey, go buy my book, check it out, tell somebody." Yes, the words deserve that, the labor that you and your collaborators have put behind the book deserve that, but it's still awkward.
Detroit showed out. Thank y'all! But, damn, it would be nice if Black people (women in particular) didn't have to be the last line of defense for American democracy ALL THE TIME.
Poets, I know it can feel like we're fighting for visibility, but that's a lie. I feel we're fighting to be seen, and it's the poem that sees us, ultimately is the only one that matters. An audience *can* see you, most surely, but it can just as easily look through or past you.
I'll say this: if you're going to focus on "healing" the nation of all nations, you're going to have to focus on those of us who have been hurt. Those communities are the first priority.
One very affirming thing about AWP this year was people coming up to me about both my written work and my editorial work for The Rumpus. I see what I do there and on the page as inextricably linked, so that made me really happy. Thanks for putting a smile on my face, y'all!
I hate this talk. Restricting access is not the same thing as taking away ownership rights for law-abiding citizens. We put more barriers in front of people for the vote than we do for owning deadly weapons. That's how a nation loses its soul and then loses its bodies.
But... how do poets and other writers get fellowships and residencies (and and and) when they don't have professors to write those recommendation letters or advocate for them?