It began before I could speak, when speech was a thing that happened to me. The reverberations of my mother’s voice like a current, a timbre, my physical body existing in its wake. It began when I pretended to read, to write. I am two years old. I am reading, but I cannot yet read. I am writing with a stick through the dirt in my backyard. I know I am speaking with something very large and invisible by doing this.
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from the book EDGES & FRAY / Wesleyan University Press
"Across 'Edges & Fray,' I gather bright strands of language matter, meticulous, nearly abstract photographs of bird’s nests, and swathes of page-silence. With these materials, which are evidence both of building and unravel, I ask language to hold us as we scatter. Here, I offer a thread of memory to be taken up by the reader, plaited through the book and, perhaps more importantly, the reader’s own breath and remembering"
"Morton’s poems achieve the impression of speed, if only the speed with which thoughts and impressions flit by. This speed is one of their pleasures. If the journey matters more than the arrival, perhaps that’s part of what an improvisation is: impromptu, fragmentary."
Resources for Supporting and Uplifting the Black Community
Required Reading on Race: Black-owned indie bookstores recommend readings "which discuss racism, and the violent and complicated history between black and white people in America, using inventive storylines and moving prose."
Campaign Zero: "We can live in a world where the police don't kill people by limiting police interventions, improving community interactions, and ensuring accountability."
Black AIDS Institute:The mission of the Black AIDS Institute is "to stop the AIDS epidemic in black communities by engaging and mobilizing black institutions and individuals in efforts to confront HIV."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"Early in my encounter with poetry 'The Fish' taught me that description has the ability to consecrate and even transubstantiate what’s being looked at, especially if it’s an object or thing, like a fish. In Bishop’s poem, the moment of consecration takes place as the speaker considers his eyes and notices among other things how 'They shifted a little, but not/ to return my stare.'"
