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Master Suffering pendulates between yield and command; the bodies of this book are supplicant yet seething—they want nothing more than to survive.
But how does a woman survive?
One’s own healthy body helps, but illness is one of the masters of this book.
Faith can be a salve for the inscrutable ailments of the body, but God is unreliable in these poems.
The female bodies of Master Suffering want power; they want to control and to correct the suffering they witness and withstand.
CM Burroughs is Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. She is the author of two collections: The Vital System (Tupelo Press, 2012) and Master Suffering (Tupelo Press, 2020.) Burroughs has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Cave Canem Foundation. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. Burroughs’ poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies.
Master Suffering
Poems
by CM Burroughs
Format: Paperback
Published: Jan. 2021
Tupelo Press, Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-946482-38-9
$18.95
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Grey Eyes
She glanced across the path to me,
Grey eyes!
Her looks were kisses plain to see.
I gave her glances back to her —
Glad eyes!
She saw the lifting of despair.
From memory a face looked out,
Dim eyes!
No years could sour that love to doubt.
My soul would nevermore be lone —
Bride’s eyes!
Hearts still were waiting for my own.
Our souls uncurtained then, perchance —
Deep eyes!
Each built an epoch in a glance.
Out of her fellowship so free
Light eyes!
She gave some gladness unto me.
And I gave? As we turned apart —
Dead eyes!
I saw the shudder in her heart.
Arthur Adams
(1872-1936)
Grey Eyes
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Deze bundel, vrucht van een verblijf in Death Valley, is een verzameling van veranderlijke landschappen en de wisselende lichamen die zich erin voortbewegen.
De gedichten zelf zijn evenzovele oefeningen in waarneming.
In de ruimten tussen aanblik en uiterlijke verschijning ontstaan beelden, onderhevig aan kleuren, texturen en zintuigen.
En deze beelden rijgen zich aaneen tot wat misschien wel feministische natuurgedichten kunnen worden genoemd over zaken als erotiek, bloei, geweld en kwetsuur:
‘de woestijn woelt en sleept haar laken mee
er ontwaakt
een vrouw zonder beschadigingen, ze kleedt zich
voor een dagtocht, ze zeult geen geesten’.
Charlotte Van den Broeck (1991) maakte op overdonderende wijze haar entree in de Nederlandse literatuur. Haar eerste twee dichtbundels werden overladen met lof en bekroond met de Herman de Coninck Debuutprijs en de Paul Snoeckprijs. Haar prozadebuut Waagstukken, een bestseller met 15.000 verkochte exemplaren, viel eveneens in de prijzen.
Aarduitwrijvingen
Gedichten
Auteur: Charlotte Van den Broeck
Uitgeverij: De Arbeiderspers
Publicatiedatum: 14-09-2021
Paperback
NUR: 306
ISBN: 9789029539722
Prijs: € 19,99
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Covid poem
Working in ITU Dept at a time of Covid 19
You cried for those eyes that felt no warmth,
for the afterthoughts of conversations yet to be finished.
The utter confinement gave little comfort in the dying cold
of pipes and masks, the smacking of latex gloves
trapping hands in sweaty health, the fear of a closing down.
The complete violation of sleep’s healing process,
static and dispassionate, mechanical air forced through.
The healthy milling around big bodies on small beds,
in plastic bubbles, lying on their bellies with loved ones far away.
Vincent Berquez
Vincent Berquez is a London–based artist and poet. He has published in Britain, Europe, America and New Zealand. His work is in many anthologies, collections and magazines worldwide (f.i. fleursdumal.nl).
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Monolietjes
Boven hun tijd zijn ze uitstekend gebleven, die
vele monoliedjes uit de transistorradio. Er was
geen stereo nog maar deze oren hoorden wel al
in een taal die ze verstonden hoe ze zouden blijven
hangen. Fijn afgedaald terug naar blij verlangen,
halsstarrig glanzend als muntjes in een fontein.
Bert Bevers
Monolietjes
Gedicht
Ongepubliceerd
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A Washington Post Style editor’s fascinating and irresistible look back on the Miss America pageant as it approaches its 100th anniversary.
The sash. The tears. The glittering crown. And of course, that soaring song. For all of its pomp and kitsch, the Miss America pageant is indelibly written into the American story of the past century.
From its giddy origins as a summer’s-end tourist draw in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, it blossomed into a televised extravaganza that drew tens of millions of viewers in its heyday and was once considered the highest honor that a young woman could achieve.
For two years, Washington Post reporter and editor Amy Argetsinger visited pageants and interviewed former winners and contestants to unveil the hidden world of this iconic institution.
There She Was spotlights how the pageant survived decades of social and cultural change, collided with a women’s liberation movement that sought to abolish it, and redefined itself alongside evolving ideas about feminism.
For its superstars—Phyllis George, Vanessa Williams, Gretchen Carlson—and for those who never became household names, Miss America was a platform for women to exercise their ambitions and learn brutal lessons about the culture of fame. Spirited and revelatory, There She Was charts the evolution of the American woman, from the Miss America catapulted into advocacy after she was exposed as a survivor of domestic violence to the one who used her crown to launch a congressional campaign; from a 1930s winner who ran away on the night of her crowning to a present-day rock guitarist carving out her place in this world. Argetsinger dissects the scandals and financial turmoil that have repeatedly threatened to kill the pageant—and highlights the unexpected sisterhood of Miss Americas fighting to keep it alive.
Amy Argetsinger is an editor and writer for The Washington Post. “There She Was” is her first book.
There She Was:
The Secret History of Miss America
by Amy Argetsinger
Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers
September 7, 2021
Language : English
Hardcover : 384 pages
ISBN-10 : 1982123397
ISBN-13 : 978-1982123390
$ 23.49
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Just A Woman
You ask me why I love her;
Not a charm can you discover!
Would you see
The heart that a shut rose is,
And whose beauty ne’er uncloses
Save for me?
She is not rich or clever,
But her speeches thrill me ever,
And with bliss
My heart her whisper flutters,
Though the wisest word she utters
Is a kiss.
All evil things have shunned her,
And with a wide-eyed wonder
Is she tasked,
What lavish god has given
In her earth so much of heaven
All unasked?
She has no gifts or graces,
But the gladness in her face is
Sought of kings;
She cannot chant a measure,
But her heart with a grave pleasure
Ever sings.
Her gown is of the whitest
But the hem is soiled the slightest:
Little worth,
She has no wings to fly with,
And she prefers to hie with
Me on earth.
There is no hint of heaven
Or glimpse of deep thought even
In her eyes;
She is warm and she is human,
Just a weak and wilful woman —
Not too wise.
Her thousand beauties singing,
I have not said how clinging
Are her arms;
But, not loved and not the lover
Dare you ever hope discover
Half her charms?
Arthur Adams
(1872-1936)
Just A Woman
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Een vader is een man die kinderen verwekt,’ antwoordde je toen ik er eens naar vroeg.
‘Wie heeft mij dan verwekt?’ wilde ik weten. Je pakte me bij mijn kin en keek me indringend aan.
‘We zijn niet op zoek naar een vader,’ zei je. ‘We zijn op zoek naar een prins.’
Hier komen wij vandaan –
Leonieke Baerwaldt
Een moeder en dochter leiden een zwervend bestaan, een fabrieksarbeider droomt erover een tropische-vissenwinkel te beginnen, twee geliefden besluiten samen een huis te bouwen en de kleine zeemeermin wordt geconfronteerd met de harde werkelijkheid.
In dit verhaal over diermensen en mensdieren vinden de sprookjes van Andersen en Grimm hun eigentijdse weerklank. Hier komen wij vandaan is een intens en bijzonder debuut van een verrassende nieuwe stem in de literatuur.
Auteur: Leonieke Baerwaldt
Titel: Hier komen wij vandaan
Vorm Paperback
Uitgever Querido
Druk 1e
Verschenen 24-08-2021
Taal Nederlands
Pagina’s 224 pp.
Genre Literaire fictie
NUR: 301
ISBN 9789021421278
Prijs: € 20,00
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Kaveh Akbar’s exquisite, highly anticipated follow-up to Calling a Wolf a Wolf.
With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar’s second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict?
And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body’s question, “what now shall I repair?” Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance―the infinite void of a loved one’s absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation―teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness.
Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell’s linguistic rigor is tuned to the register of this moment and any moment. As the swinging soul crashes into its limits, against the atrocities of the American empire, and through a profoundly human capacity for cruelty and grace, these brilliant poems dare to exist in the empty space where song lives―resonant, revelatory, and holy.
Kaveh Akbar founded and edits Divedapper, where he interviews major voices in contemporary poetry. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, APR, PBS NewsHour, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry Press, January 2017) and full-length collection Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books, September 2017). Akbar has received a Pushcart and a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2016, Akbar was a recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He was born in Tehran, Iran, and is currently a professor in the MFA program at Purdue University and in the low-residency program at Randolph College.
(. . .)
Corporeal friends are
spiritual enemies, said
Blake, probably gardening
in the nude. Today I’m trying
to scowl more, mismatch
my lingerie. Nobody
seems bothered enough.
(. . .)
Pilgrim Bell
Poems
by Kaveh Akbar
Publisher: Graywolf Press
August 3, 2021
Language: English
Paperback
80 pages
ISBN-10 : 1644450593
ISBN-13 : 978-1644450598
$13.70
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Little Red Riding-Hood
If you listen, children, I will tell
The story of little Red Riding-hood:
Such wonderful, wonderful things befell
Her and her grandmother, old and good
(So old she was never very well),
Who lived in a cottage in a wood.
Little Red Riding-hood, every day,
Whatever the weather, shine or storm,
To see her grandmother tripped away,
With a scarlet hood to keep her warm,
And a little mantle, soft and gay,
And a basket of goodies on her arm.
A pat of butter, and cakes of cheese,
Were stored in the napkin, nice and neat;
As she danced along beneath the trees,
As light as a shadow were her feet;
And she hummed such tunes as the bumble-bees
Hum when the clover-tops are sweet.
But an ugly wolf by chance espied
The child, and marked her for his prize.
“What are you carrying there?” he cried;
“Is it some fresh-baked cakes and pies?”
And he walked along close by her side,
And sniffed and rolled his hungry eyes.
“A basket of things for granny, it is,”
She answered brightly, without fear.
“Oh, I know her very well, sweet miss!
Two roads branch towards her cottage here;
You go that way, and I’ll go this.
See which will get there first, my dear!”
He fled to the cottage, swift and sly;
Rapped softly, with a dreadful grin.
“Who’s there?” asked granny. “Only I!”
Piping his voice up high and thin.
“Pull the string, and the latch will fly!”
Old granny said; and he went in.
He glared her over from foot to head;
In a second more the thing was done!
He gobbled her up, and merely said,
“She wasn’t a very tender one!”
And then he jumped into the bed,
And put her sack and night-cap on.
And he heard soft footsteps presently,
And then on the door a timid rap;
He knew Red Riding-hood was shy,
So he answered faintly to the tap:
“Pull the string and the latch will fly!”
She did: and granny, in her night-cap,
Lay covered almost up to her nose.
“Oh, granny dear!” she cried, “are you worse?”
“I’m all of a shiver, even to my toes!
Please won’t you be my little nurse,
And snug up tight here under the clothes?”
Red Riding-hood answered, “Yes,” of course.
Her innocent head on the pillow laid,
She spied great pricked-up, hairy ears,
And a fierce great mouth, wide open spread,
And green eyes, filled with wicked leers;
And all of a sudden she grew afraid;
Yet she softly asked, in spite of her fears:
“Oh, granny! what makes your ears so big?”
“To hear you with! to hear you with!”
“Oh, granny! what make your eyes so big?”
“To see you with! to see you with!”
“Oh, granny! what makes your teeth so big?”
“To eat you with! to eat you with!”
And he sprang to swallow her up alive;
But it chanced a woodman from the wood,
Hearing her shriek, rushed, with his knife,
And drenched the wolf in his own blood.
And in that way he saved the life
Of pretty little Red Riding-hood.
Hark, hark
The dogs do bark
Beggars are coming to town;
Some in jags,
Some in rags,
And some in velvet gowns.
Clara Doty Bates
(1838 – 1895)
Little Red Riding-Hood
Versified by Mrs. Clara Doty Bates
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Writing
A man who keeps a diary, pays
Due toll to many tedious days;
But life becomes eventful then
His busy hand forgets the pen.
Most books, indeed, are records less
Of fullness than of emptiness.
William Allingham
(1824 – 1889)
Writing
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The Fairies
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We darent go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owls feather!
Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.
William Allingham
(1824 – 1889)
The Fairies
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