The intro and outro were played from a tape, For the Stomach, Robert Bly, 1978. With Dolby noise reduction actually! I think it sounded quite good.
But the poem in question was an early draft of his Teeth Mother Naked at Last. The JCard says this was recorded from an antiwar rally at the University of Maryland, May 1968. There is an archive of his tapes in Minnesota that I’m thinking of visiting this summer perhaps. In any case, it is the poem that got me into poetry.
I also added a snap track which I play after I read each poem. It’s so fun :) I think it helps segment the transition.
And poetry continues this week on substack with a series of new poems.
and continued their series with sonnets about There will be Blood.
But there was also a nice joint effort when
did a voice over for ‘s poem:
Which lead me into a bit of a heated monologue about the medium of poetry here and online.
Following that up was
‘s poem:
Which just immediately made me smile when I read it and I tried to provide some comments about why we write poetry and how, especially here, I feel a need to constantly one-up myself whereas that’s not always the best framing.
And finally, a very special back-to-back poem series by
. In what I’m now calling Dead Drop Dedications (not to be confused with Drop Dead Dedications, maybe I need a better name haha) where people write in and dedicate songs to people — just like people used to do with Casey Kasem. I think this is a nice segment idea. You can write in and dedicate a poem for me to read for someone, perhaps your own or maybe just one that you like.Blace here wrote these two poems to celebrate his two year anniversary, Congratulations Blace and Jorja-Rae! And thanks for including me on your special day.
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