What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature in which we invite poets to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems. In Books We’ve Loved, our editorial board members reflect on a book that has been particularly meaningful to them in the last year. Each Monday's delivery brings you a poem from the book and an excerpt from the essay.
when I consider the great many things that disappoint me I start w/ myself & end in the stars & refresh in the nauseating glow of gaseous capacities. it's what you'd want, deep spring swimming all blooms are latent potential realized
running around & away
your hand at its heaviest is still a gentle wind ushering a sharp delivery sharp intellect sharp sensitivity to the order & disarray. you make me weep w/ the weather w/ the weathered w/ the mothered w/ the memory. a study of the particular, a study of the width of obsession, of play & the particular, a confidence in kind in colliery in culinary in respite in repose like blue eucalyptus like caspia
running around & away
bright & bold rhythm & boombat a touch of laughter too. bop & boo'd up. I write around what I can't say & get explicit in that, you just get explicit & I'm jealous in that way makes me so happy we're here in the greendome at the same time. so we giggle thru the gush thru the bitter greens thru the churning of thick milks the ooze & awes of the gelatinous the ritual of amaro easing the summer stomach in our finest cloths & Mary Janes in communion w/ our contemporaries counterparts counterpoints & the like
running around & away
it's never too late or too dark in our kitchen cinnamons & sansho in abundance the labour is all the herbs we can't describe in ease. a tasting menu of domestics, where the only payment is presence. the project of "What if This Time I Do Nothing but Watch" the project of "What if I Do Nothing" & after work after hours we embrace the nonnarrative the un-linear the rectangular & all that's all tangled in we fortify our plans to flee to our lovers & loved by any & all means running around & away
"The alliterative recursiveness whirls me in such succulent oceans. In my mind, each time I reread 'running around & away,' it’s as if the vibrant emotional urgency of a Twombly were rendered with the precision of a Seurat, an emotional pointillism blurring me into its renderings."
"The first half of the book deals with the pandemic as seen from the laundry room of the Hospital Punta Europa in the Andalucían city of Algeciras, where the 29-year-old poet has worked since 2019. The second, written before Covid hit, explores the unsung lives of the people who work in it and other laundries."
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.
