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The only thing more beautiful than Beyoncé is God, and God is a black woman sipping rosé and drawing a lavender bath, texting her mom, belly-laughing in the therapist’s office, feeling unloved, being on display, daring to survive. Morgan Parker stands at the intersections of vulnerability and performance, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence.
Unrelentingly feminist, tender, ruthless, and sequined, these poems are an altar to the complexities of black American womanhood in an age of non-indictments and déjà vu, and a time of wars over bodies and power. These poems celebrate and mourn. They are a chorus chanting: You’re gonna give us the love we need.
Morgan Parker is the author of Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback Books 2015), selected by Eileen Myles for the 2013 Gatewood Prize.
Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in numerous publications, as well as anthologized in Why I Am Not A Painter (Argos Books), The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (Haymarket Books), and Best American Poetry 2016.
Winner of a 2016 Pushcart Prize and a Cave Canem graduate fellow, Morgan lives with her dog, Braeburn, in Brooklyn, New York. She works as an editor for Little A and Day One, co-curates the Poets With Attitude (PWA) reading series with Tommy Pico, and with poet Angel Nafis, she is The Other Black Girl Collective.
A TIME Magazine Best Paperback of 2017
A Paris Review Staff Pick
A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
A Buzzfeed “Most Exciting Book of 2017”
A VICE Most Anticipated Book
NPR.org’s “Poetry to Pay Attention To”
“[A] tremendous new collection.” VICE
Morgan Parker
There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé
Tin House Publisher
ISBN 978-1-941040-53-9
paperback, 96p,
2017, $14.95
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More in: - Book News, Archive O-P, Art & Literature News
Oscar Wilde
(1854 – 1900)
The Master
Now when the darkness came over the earth Joseph of Arimathea, having lighted a torch of pinewood, passed down from the hill into the valley. For he had business in his own home.
And kneeling on the flint stones of the Valley of Desolation he saw a young man who was naked and weeping. His hair was the colour of honey, and his body was as a white flower, but he had wounded his body with thorns and on his hair had he set ashes as a crown.
And he who had great possessions said to the young man who was naked and weeping, ‘I do not wonder that your sorrow is so great, for surely He was a just man.’
And the young man answered, ‘It is not for Him that I am weeping, but for myself. I too have changed water into wine, and I have healed the leper and given sight to the blind. I have walked upon the waters, and from the dwellers in the tombs I have cast out devils. I have fed the hungry in the desert where there was no food, and I have raised the dead from their narrow houses, and at my bidding, and before a great multitude of people, a barren fig-tree withered away. All things that this man has done I have done also. And yet they have not crucified me.
Oscar Wilde, 1894
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More in: Archive W-X, Wilde, Oscar, Wilde, Oscar
Fjodor Tjoettsjev
(1803 – 1873)
Een skaldenharp
O skaldenharp, zo ruw terzij gelegd,
in stof, in duisternis kwam jij terecht!
Maar straalde daar de toverende maan
met blauw-azuren schemerlicht jou aan,
dan werd jouw levendige klank gehoord,
een ziel was jij wier stilte werd verstoord.
Wat werd er in zo’n wonderlijke nacht
niet aan verleden aan het licht gebracht!
Klonk niet uit lang vervlogen tijden daar
de zang van een voorbije meisjesschaar,
in tuinen vrolijk bloeiend keer op keer
het trippelen van tienervoetjes teer?
Fjodor Tjoettsjev, Арфа скальда, 1838
Vertaling Paul Bezembinder, 2016
Een skald is een oud-Noorse hofdichter
Paul Bezembinder: zijn gedichten en vertalingen verschenen in verschillende (online) literaire tijdschriften. Zie meer op zijn website: www.paulbezembinder.nl
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More in: Archive S-T, Tjoettsjev, Tjoettsjev, Fodor
Sérgio Monteiro de Almeida
Poema visual: Presentation 10 (from the kaleidoscope series)
Sérgio Monteiro de Almeida cv:
Curitiba, Brazil (1964). Intermedia visual poet and conceptual artist. – He has published in numerous anthologies and specialized magazines in Brazil and outside; participated in exhibitions of visual poetry as International Biennial of Visual and Alternative Poetry in Mexico (editions from 1987 to 2010); Post-Art International Exhibition of Visual / Experimental Poetry, San Diego State University-USA (1988); 51 and 53 Venice Biennial (2005 and 2009). – He published in 2007 the book Sérgio Monteiro de Almeida with a global vision about his work as a visual artist and poet. – This book was incorporated into the “Artist Books” collection of the New York City Library (USA). – Author of the CD of kinetic visual poems (EU) NI/IN VERSO (still unpublished). – He presented urban interventions in Curitiba, San Diego, Seattle, New York, Paris, Rome. – In 2014 and 2015 visual poems published in the Rampike experimental literature magazine of the University of Windsor, Canada. – He recently had his poems published in Jornal Candido (n. 64) and Relevo (2015 and 2016).
More about his work:
Livro eletrônico http://issuu.com/boek861/docs/sergio_monteiro_libro;
Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural de artes visuais www.itaucultural.com.br;
Videos no Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/SergioMAlmeida
Sérgio Monteiro de Almeida
Curitiba – PR – Brazil
email: sergio.ma@ufpr.br
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More in: *Concrete + Visual Poetry K-O, Archive M-N, Sérgio Monteiro de Almeida
Concreted, Unli/oving
They lack in their memories, their being:
Thesmellofasummereveningwalking
downtotheriverwherefishareleaping
&theairisfullofmayfliesandfluff
fromtallreedsalongtheditches
withthesundazzlingingoldenslant;
Thefeeloficywindblastingacross
floodedlevelsbeforedawnwhenstars
aredimmingandtheeastbeginstobrighten
crunchingthroughfrozenpuddlesfeet
sinkingintothesoftnessofthemudbelow;
Thecoloursofbrowningleavesonbranches
alongtheridgeinhighchalkcountry
thevalleyspreadingoutinfront
withitslinesofhedgeautumncopses
&hereandtherehomesteadsincrystallight;
And because of this lack their every action
Brings a world concreted, unli/oving, one
Ending and not to be grasped in loss.
John Leonard
John Leonard lives in Canberra, Australia.
More poetry on website: www.jleonard.net
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More in: Archive K-L, Leonard, John
Ton van Reen
Het Oor van de Maaier
Sjuu sjuu, het is de zeis
sjuu sjuu, het is de zeis door het koren
sjuu sjuu, het is de zeis
sjuu sjuu, het is de zeis door het koren
sjuu sjuu, het is de zeis
sjuu sjuu, het is de zeis door het koren
sjuu, het is de zeis
sjuu, het is de zeis door het koren
sjuu, het is de zeis
sjuu sjuu, het is de zeis
sjuu sjuu, het is de zeis door het koren
sjuu sjuu, het is de zeis
Ton van Reen: Het Oor van de Maaier
Uit: De naam van het mes. Afrikaanse gedichten
In 2007 verschenen onder de titel: De straat is van de mannen bij BnM Uitgevers in De Contrabas reeks. ISBN 9789077907993 – 56 pagina’s – paperback
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More in: Archive Q-R, Reen, Ton van, Reen, Ton van, Ton van Reen
Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875 – 1926)
Schlußstück
Der Tod ist groß.
Wir sind die Seinen
lachenden Munds.
Wenn wir uns mitten
im Leben meinen,
wagt er zu weinen
mitten in uns.
Rainer Maria Rilke Gedichte
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More in: Archive Q-R, Rilke, Rainer Maria
Romandebuut van Lieke Marsman:
Het tegenovergestelde van een mens
Waar het op neerkomt is dat de mensheid als geheel ook eenzaam is. We kunnen er niet tegen dat er niemand iets terugzegt, dat we nog altijd geen dieren hebben horen praten – ja, misschien zo nu en dan in de vorm van het schrille gegil dat onze slachthuizen vult, maar niet met woorden, niet met een oplossing voor de dingen waar we al tijden mee zitten. Zelfs de hemel is leeg. En dus zetten we ons af door al die zwijgende natuur om ons heen te vernietigen, als een wanhopige geliefde die maar niet wordt terug ge-sms’t en het in het café op een zuipen zet.
Nog nooit verscheen er een roman als Het tegenovergestelde van een mens. Lieke Marsman kantelt onze ideeën over klimaatverandering en identiteit op een manier die duizelig maakt.
Lieke Marsman (’s-Hertogenbosch, 1990) is filosoof en een van de populairste en meest gelauwerde dichters van haar generatie. Ze is een graag geziene gast op podia als Lowlands en De Nacht van de Poëzie en haar gedichten en essays verschenen onder meer in De Gids, Tirade en Vrij Nederland. Voor haar meermaals herdrukte debuutbundel Wat ik mijzelf graag voorhoud ontving Marsman in 2011 onder meer de C. Buddingh’-prijs en de Lucy B. en C.W. van der Hoogtprijs. In 2014 verscheen haar tweede bundel De eerste letter. Met Het tegenovergestelde van een mens maakt Marsman haar debuut als prozaschrijver.
Lieke Marsman
Het tegenovergestelde van een mens
Roman, pag. 176
Gepubliceerd 22-06-2017
Uitgeverij Atlas-Contact
Paperback, 19,99
ISBN 9789025446345
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More in: - Book News, Archive M-N, Art & Literature News, Marsman, Lieke
John Donne
The Flea
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny’st me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st and say’st that thou
Find’st not thyself, nor me the weaker now;
‘Tis true, then learn how false fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee
John Donne (1572 – 1631)
Poem: The Flea
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More in: Archive C-D, Donne, John
Aleksandr Blok
(1880–1921)
Wat is het zwaar
Ginds is een mens verbrand. (Fet)
Wat is het zwaar om hier op aard te zijn,
te doen alsof je niet al omgekomen bent,
steeds dit tragisch spel van angst en pijn
te zien voor wie het leven nog niet kent,
en steeds in boze dromen, nacht na nacht,
te vragen naar wat vragen niet verdraagt,
opdat hun in der schone kunsten pracht
de weerschijn van een vurig leven daagt!
Aleksandr Blok, Как тяжело ходить среди людей, 1910
Vertaling Paul Bezembinder 2016
Paul Bezembinder: zijn gedichten en vertalingen verschenen in verschillende (online) literaire tijdschriften. Zie meer op zijn website: www.paulbezembinder.nl
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More in: Archive A-B, Blok, Blok, Aleksandr
Sibylla Schwarz
Die Lieb ist blind, und gleichwohl kan sie sehen
Die Lieb ist blind, und gleichwohl kan sie sehen,
hat ein Gesicht, und ist doch stahrenblind,
sie nennt sich groß, und ist ein kleines Kind,
ist wohl zu Fuß, und kan dannoch nicht gehen.
Doch diss muß man auff ander’ art verstehen:
sie kan nicht sehn, weil ihr Verstand zerrint,
und weil das Aug des Herzens ihr verschwindt,
so siht sie selbst nicht, was ihr ist geschehen.
Das, was sie liebt, hat keinen Mangel nicht,
wie wohl ihm mehr, als andern, offt gebricht.
Das, was sie liebt, kan ohn Gebrechen leben;
doch weil man hier ohn Fehler nichtes find,
so schließ ich fort: Die Lieb ist sehend blind:
sie siht selbst nicht, und kans Gesichte geben.
Sibylla Schwarz (1621 – 1638)
Gedicht: Die Lieb ist blind, und gleichwohl kan sie sehen
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More in: Archive S-T, SIbylla Schwarz
Vincent Berquez©: Drawing Nr. 11
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 magazine worldwide. Vincent Berquez was requested to write a Tribute as part of ‘Poems to the American People’ for the Hastings International Poetry Festival for 9/11, read by the mayor of New York at the podium. He has also been commissioned to write a eulogy by the son of Chief Albert Nwanzi Okoluko, the Ogimma Obi of Ogwashi-Uku to commemorate the death of his father. Berquez has been a judge many times, including for Manifold Magazine and had work read as part of Manifold Voices at Waltham Abbey. He has recited many times, including at The Troubadour and the Pitshanger Poets, in London. In 2006 his name was put forward with the Forward Prize for Literature. He recently was awarded a prize with Decanto Magazine. Berquez is now a member of London Voices who meet monthly in London, United Kingdom.
Vincent Berquez has also been collaborating in 07/08 with a Scottish composer and US film maker to produce a song-cycle of seven of his poems for mezzo-soprano and solo piano. These are being recorded at the Royal College of Music under the directorship of the concert pianist, Julian Jacobson. In 2009 he will be contributing 5 poems for the latest edition of A Generation Defining Itself, as well as 3 poems for Eleftheria Lialios’s forthcoming book on wax dolls published in Chicago. He also made poetry films that have been shown at various venues, including a Polish/British festival in London, Jan 07.
As an artist Vincent Berquez has exhibited world wide, winning prizes, such as at the Novum Comum 88’ Competition in Como, Italy. He has worked with an art’s group, called Eins von Hundert, from Cologne, Germany for over 16 years. He has shown his work at the Institute of Art in Chicago, US, as well as many galleries and institutions worldwide. Berquez recently showed his paintings at the Lambs Conduit Festival, took part in a group show called Gazing on Salvation, reciting his poetry for Lent and exhibiting paintings/collages. In October he had a one-man show at Sacred Spaces Gallery with his Christian collages in 2007. In 2008 Vincent Berquez had a solo show of paintings at The Foundlings Museum and in 2011 an exposition with new work in Langham Gallery London.
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More in: Berquez, Vincent, FDM Art Gallery, Vincent Berquez
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