I wrote this poem at Target, not shopping, just wandering from floor to floor, looking at the scented candles and cotton rounds, loaves of bread and gaming consoles. I was writing about the building, this one particular Target on State Street in Chicago. They call it the Goth Target on TikTok, exuberant, foliate structure designed by the architect Louis Sullivan. You can go to Target and be in pain, exhausted, overwhelmed by desire: poetry is the art of going to Target badly.
Toby Altman on "One acquires an especially lush gender." |
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A Conversation With Derek Mong & Jesse Nathan
"At this point in my life, my relationship to Whitman is a lot like my relationship to the ocean. However far I stray from him—'I teach straying from me,' he writes, 'yet who can stray from me?'—I can usually close my eyes and find he’s still right there. With his capaciousness and his optimism. And the great fathoms of his empathy. And his direct address that feels, in the moment it washes over me, like it’s meant for my ears alone."
viaMCSWEENEY'S |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Peter Cole on Translation
"The Hebrew word tikkun means, simply, 'repair,' but it is best known beyond spoken Hebrew as a kabbalistic term that has seeped into the popular imagination. In that context it alludes to course corrections of consciousness that lead to tikkun olam—repair, mending, or even healing of a broken world. Rooted in the tradition of the biblical prophets, and critical to classic rabbinic considerations of social viability and harmony, tikkun has, arguably, become a core Jewish concept that calls for working toward a more compassionate social fabric, in part by identifying and combatting injustice." |
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