2009 – 2010 Readings and Talks
Mark McMorris
September 29, 2009
Seminar 5:30 PM | ICC 462
Reading 8:00 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
Prayer To Shadows On My Wall
— Mark McMorris
Soon the rushlights will go out in the flesh
of sympathetic bodies once close to my own hand
and I will go to my hammock, thinking of little
except the numbness that alone makes bearable
the wind’s twisting. I want atoms to separate
like hairs or dust onto the heads of my daughters.
I want to violate the edict that traps my hunger
in cages and away from her rough shoulder
and once to be enough for this and all the loves
that flicker through my bedroom before sleep.
They keep me awake, and tonight they are fierce
as whips or as needles to make the skin crawl.
I want to drift like the poui in a southerly wind
and settle where I need to before the faces erode,
my appetite of iron caulking the egg-shell heart.
—
From The Blaze of the Poui (University of Georgia Press, 2003)
Read more about Mark McMorris
Harry Clifton
October 27, 2009
Seminar 5:30 PM | ICC 462
Reading 8:00 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
Good Feral
— Harry Clifton
Only here, at the head of a pack of hounds
In a tenement room, on a patch of waste ground
Everything, man or animal, might share,
Did the humans, telling her she was not all there,
Abandon her forever or a while
To wander the forest of cities, like a child
Suckled on wolf’s milk, smelling of dog,
Unable to defend herself, or beg
In a common language. Knowing the Word
But no grammar. Panting in surds
At the packs of the concerned – the half-sisters,
Half-brothers, cloned from the masters,
Finding her where they left her, curled
In the forgotten corner of a lost, unfallen world.
Piotr Sommer
November 19, 2009
Seminar 5:30 PM | ICC 462
Reading 8:00 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
Of Course
— Piotr Sommer
he won’t tell you his whole life
in three hours or in three days, even
if he really wanted
to show you that he likes you
and trusts you. There’s just
no way to do it, because
whoever said sympathy
has to be sustained by detailed knowledge.
No one, of course. Perhaps that’s why one can
not hurry, and permit oneself
silence, and words
only when one wants.
And now try to trust him in this absence
of words and sentences and stories.
Margarethe von Trotta
December 3, 2009
Lecture and Discussion 8:00 PM | ICC Auditorium
John Ashbery
February 2, 2009
Seminar 5:30 PM | ICC Room 462
Reading 8:00 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
The New Higher
— John Ashbery
You meant more than life to me. I lived through
you not knowing, not knowing I was living.
I learned that you called for me. I came to where
you were living, up a stair. There was no one there.
No one to appreciate me. The legality of it
upset a chair. Many times to celebrate
we were called together and where
we had been there was nothing there,
nothing that is anywhere. We passed obliquely,
leaving no stare. When the sun was done muttering,
in an optimistic way, it was time to leave that there.
Blithely passing in and out of where, blushing shyly
at the tag on the overcoat near the window where
the outside crept away, I put aside the there and now.
Now it was time to stumble anew,
blacking out when time came in the window.
There was not much of it left.
I laughed and put my hands shyly
across your eyes. Can you see now?
Yes I can see I am only in the where
where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window.
Go presently you said. Go from my window.
I am in love with your window I cannot undermine
it, I said.
Nathaniel Mackey
February 22, 2010
Seminar 5:30 PM | ICC Room 462
Reading 8:00 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
From Day After Day Of The Dead
— Nathaniel Mackey
–“mu” forty-eighth part–
“While we’re alive,” we kept
repeating. Tongues, throats,
roofs of our mouths bone dry,
skeletons we’d someday
be…
Panicky masks we wore for
effect more than effect,
more real that we’d admit
No longer wanting to know
what soul was, happy to
see
shadow, know touch…
Happy to have sun at our
backs, way led by shadow,
happy to have bodies, block
light…
Afternoon sun lighting leaf,
glint of glass, no matter what
about to be out of body it
seemed…
Soon to be shadowless we thought,
said we thought, not to be offguard,
caught out. Gray morning we
meant
to be done with, requiem so
sweet we forgot what it lamented,
teeth
turning to sugar, we
grinned
–
Continue reading “Day After Day Of The Dead” on The Poetry Foundation’s website.
Read more about Nathaniel Mackey
Renee Gladman
March 16, 2010
Seminar 5:30 PM | ICC 462
Reading 8:00 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
From The Activist
— Renee Gladman
Officials pursue activists over rocky terrain in
search of answers. “We want to make sure anger
does not ruin these kids,” Daniel Sharpe of the
Brendan Seize Unit (BSU) confides, “but it’s like
pushing against water.”
Investigators combed shards from the collapsed
bridge for signs that it had been blown apart. “I
have a feeling that Monique Wally and her group
are behind this. What we have is a smell of iron
burning, but no visual evidence on site.” Sharpe
and his BSU team have joined with local police
and the FBI to solve the encrypted crime.
“Only the time of day distinguishes these so-
called dissidents from terrorists. Had they blown
that bridge an hour earlier or an hour later, we
would have had a lot of death on our hands.”
The bridge remains in tact today, despite reports
that it is long gone. A team of specialists from
the Institute of Explosive Applications in
Toronto, Ontario is expected to settle the mat-
ter by mid-week. “These scientists are the elite
among their field. We have every faith that they
will acknowledge the violence done to the
bridge,” the President assured viewers today.
Raúl Zurita
April 19, 2010
Reading 5:30 PM | New North 204
From Sunday Morning
— Raúl Zurita
trs. by Anna Deeny
XXXXVIII
Over the cliffs of the hillside: the sun
then below in the valley
the earth covered with flowers
Zurita enamored friend
takes in the sun of photosynthesis
Zurita will now never again be friend
since 7 P.M. it’s been getting dark
Night is the insane asylum of the plants
XLII
Enclose with the four wall of
a bathroom: I looked up at the ceiling
and began to clean the walls and
the floor the sink all of it
You see: Outside the sky was God
and he was sucking at my soul–believe me!
I wiped my weeping eyes.