quiet lightning

submission-based reading series/publisher based in san francisco. quietlightning.org

[quietlightningbooks]

Some love coming from one of our featured artists Cheney Beshara, whose dog portraits appeared on our latest sParkle & bLink. Read the whole book here http://quietlightning.org/sparkle-blink-67/

[observando]

We walked through night until there was a poem.

Brenda Hillman (via observando)

[waiataaroha-deactivated20200524]

For the lover of poetry, there is a disequilibrium between himself and the world that nothing satisfies but poetry.

Brenda Hillman (via Damon McLaughlin @ Best American Poetry–Thank You, Brenda Hillman | Present Everywhere, Visible Nowhere)

[fluttering-slips]

Dream of the Rood

   “I saw a tree, more wonderful than any other, reach high aloft,     bathed in light.”                                           The Dream of the Rood

You should follow your dream, whispered the rude  young yoga instructor, earnest, and bent  on proving that pain could, at its heart, be good,

and that I ached from more than the hardwood  against my spine’s misalignment. I’d signed  up to follow my dream, but now I rued

the day I moved to this crazy state, loaded  with cord-stack—the family tree felled  by blood, smoke, and gin. Mom-and-Dad died

years before they each died. Light was divided  from light in every small window, so I went  west. Burnt was the dream-shape of home, root

shaft, and crossbeam. In my first year of dead  and no weather, I wanted winter; I pined  for trees with no leaves and for any word

spoken in tongues. Stand, she said, on your head,  and it began to rain. Outside, upside down,  a tree bled. I dreamt blurred redbud, the rood,  pane-pierced light, deadwood in luminous bloom. REBECCA FOUST

[therumpus]

There’s a great Toni Morrison quote, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,” and that’s what happened with me. I was a voracious reader growing up and, as a post-colonial child, I read Enid Blyton and then Little House on the Prairie, that kind of material, and so I did not see myself in print. As I grew older I started coming in contact with South American writers like Gabriel García Márquez and the Europeans and then graduated to the Indian writers… I didn’t start writing ’til years later but this was a very important moment of self-discovery in that I realized that families like mine can also be the subject of fiction.

The Rumpus Interview With Nayomi Munaweera (via therumpus)

[blackskintrillmask]

We are used to water without cease, water that stretches warm and endless to the very rim of the world.

Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors  (via blackskintrillmask)

[salttigerpress]

Rejected Script from the Six O'Clock News by Jill Kolongowski

In the plane’s window seat, I’m reading a book so dirty I angle it so no one can see. I read about women who like being spanked until their asses bloom red, and men who like stealing women’s unwashed underwear.

[bijoubaby]

“You said something once that I can’t let go: that you could tell exactly how much you loved a guy by how many words you had to write about him to survive after it was over. What number are you on?”

The Letter I Wanted From You (via bijoubaby)

[losertakesall]

I have to go with ironic detachment on this one, maybe cleverness as a whole. We’ve gone all third-person and third-person twice removed. We make jokes about ourselves while we’re sitting in the same room, and we call bullshit on the hint of earnestness. Our filters have gotten so muddy that we mistake the clogged filters for accurate representations of the world just past them. Just saying, is all.

The Write Stuff: Write Club Co-Founder Casey Childers on Digressions and Ironic Detachment - San Francisco - Arts - The Exhibitionist

Casey Childers is my favorite person, and you should read this interview with him. We’re working on a competitive erotic fanfiction event series together!

(via losertakesall)

[forgottengenres]

No one ever says what they want to say. We all say what feels comfortable at the time.

Alexandra Naughton (via thatlitsite)

[positivexposure]

AN INTERVIEW WITH ALEXANDRA NAUGHTON

Alexandra Naughton’s ghost can be found hovering over the skeleton of the East Bay extension, or sometimes in a forest tracing the rings of a cut redwood. Here she was born (South Philly, 1985), and there she died (in your arms).

Elizabeth Foster: I know you currently reside in Oakland, CA, but where are you from originally?

Alexandra Naughton: Philadelphia. I moved here (Oakland) in 2008. I was born and raised in Philadelphia. I lived there until I was 22 and it felt super stagnant, you know? It’s not a small city, but it felt really small to me. Especially, you know, going there all four years of college and high school. I just wanted to get out and I had a friend who lived out here, (we’re not friends anymore) but I was like “yeah, I want to come visit you!” So, I came out and I visited her. I was like “oh yeah, I’m moving here,” so I kinda just made a jump and moved, but it’s been good. I think if I hadn’t done that I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now, at all.

EF: If you hadn’t moved to Oakland what do you think you would be doing?

AN: I’d be living with my parents or trying to be a criminal. Which… Who wants to do that? Like, I feel like I’m too old to even find that idea romantic.

EF: How long have you been writing for? Seriously or otherwise.

AN: Oh, I mean… Since I was a little kid. Like writing stories or like writing songs in my head and like, you know, singing them out. I used to be on the softball team and I hated it; my dad made me do it. I just remember standing in the outfield picking weeds out of the grass and like, making up songs about why I hated softball.

EF: Have your parents read your writing?

AN: Yeah, they follow my blog. They know what I’m doing… It’s weird. My mom would say like, “Oh, these poems are like, really depressing… Are you like, okay?” and I’m like “I’m fine, it’s just a poem mom. Ya know? Don’t have a cow,” but… They’re pretty cool. They’re supportive. I think I’m lucky. My dad’s an artist. He’s a commercial artist. He always encouraged me to draw and stuff… you know, be creative when I was younger. I owe a lot to him. I am happy that that was the case. I think it would totally suck to grow up in a household where that wasn’t encouraged, like, it wasn’t permitted. I can’t imagine that.

EF: What feelings, what people, what state of mind do you feel influences your writing the most?

AN: I don’t know if other people do this, but… I wrote this thing for htmlgiant about how like I have to write I have to get my thoughts down because if I don’t I’m just going to go crazy, blah blah blah. And some guy was like “you know, that’s not writing, that’s an addiction, so congratulations on your addiction,” but that’s how I feel. If I’m confused about something or I’m trying to understand something, writing it out and analyzing it from different view points is the best way for me to understand a situation or a feeling, or something. So, I feel like confusion is typically the motivation factor when I write.

EF: How do you deal with negative criticism from strangers on the internet, such as the person you just mentioned? 

AN: Yeah, that was funny because I didn’t even see that until I… I Google my name every once and a while, just to see if there’s links up about me or something. Someone reviewed something that I didn’t know about and that’s how I found that. That was just a tweet on Twitter that guy wrote about like “congrats on your addiction,” but… uhm… I haven’t gotten that much negative feedback, so far. I mean with this book I haven’t. Or my online writing… Not really, but uhm, when I make music videos, those get a lot of negative attention from 4chan people and stuff like that. Like, just idiot teenage boys, who because I don’t fit into their, you know, idealized version of a woman, like I don’t have big tits and I don’t brush my hair the way I’m supposed to or whatever, they just like to comment on my appearance or the fact that I’m not really that great at rapping or whatever… Which is fine. I don’t really care, but I don’t know. I think it’s just interesting to see what people have to say and I don’t really take it too much to heart because I think I am doing good work and I think the people that I care about think I am doing good work. I don’t think I’m hot shit. I always want to improve. I just hate that attitude, like that smug attitude that I feel like is prevalent with a lot of people who are big names in the lit scene. I’m really not crazy about that and I wouldn’t want to perpetuate that in any way

EF: Do you believe there is a limit to what can and can’t be considered poetry?

AN: Poetry is like porn. I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it. Not really. Anything could be poetry, but not anything could be good poetry. And of course it’s always up to the individual. My favorite thing is talking with a friend and hearing them use a new turn of phrase or a funny sentence and saying, “That right there was a poem.”

EF: How do you imagine Billy Corgan would react if he were to get his hands on a copy of I Will Always Be Your Whore/Love Songs for Billy Corgan?

AN: I don’t know. I hope he would be into it, but I’m not sure how he would take it. If he already knows about the book, he probably thinks I’m some crazed fan making crazed fan art. But that’s not what it is at all. I’d like to send him the book so he could see that.

EF: You’re going to be going on a book tour for I Will Always Be Your Whore/Love Songs for Billy Corgan this summer. What are your strongest feelings about that?

AN: I’m excited, and really nervous, and also kind of dreading it. I don’t dread the readings or meeting people and all the fun stuff that will happen, but we are going to be on the road for a hella long time. I’m talking like, taking a bus from Boston to Washington D.C., and bussing from Baltimore to Atlanta then to Nashville. Thankfully, I am traveling with my friend and fellow writer, Jesse Prado, so I will have someone to have talk to and have adventures with while riding on Greyhound.

EF: Do you have any advice for writers looking to publish their first book?

AN: I want to say that if you are writing something and you think it’s good and it’s something you’ve been working on for a while and truly believe is amazing, don’t be shy to just send a message to someone you know in indie publishing, or some place you’ve heard of. Just do it. 

EF: How do you feel when someone approaches you to tell you that they find your work easy to relate to?

AN: It is seriously the best feeling. I think it’s not an easy thing to do to approach someone whose writing you’ve read, like it’s kind of anxiety-inducing for me when I walk up to some writer I admire, but it’s such a reward to know that someone likes your work and gets it. 

EF: Do you think you’ll be writing for a substantial amount of your life?

AN: I can’t imagine doing anything else. I can’t imagine not writing. I would die.

—

You can purchase Alexandra’s book I Will Always Be Your Whore/Love Songs for Billy Corgan from Punk Hostage Press  here. 

To find more of her work follow her personal blog and check her out on Facebook. As well as the blog and Facebook page for her zine BE ABOUT IT.

[tracydimond]

I don’t have feelings. I’m in love with you and I’m writing poems for you. I write these poems and put your name on them because I feel like you should probably know how much I think about you but I can’t even say it to you directly. I mean, I say all the time, but not directly, like everything I do, and showing you these poems is kind of a cop out but I feel like that is how I have to do it. Maybe call in sick tomorrow.

from I Will Always Be Your Whore by Alexandra Naughton

Oh heyyyy she will be in Baltimore tomorrow with Jesse Prado, Barbara DeCesare, Andrew Keating, Carabella Sands, & Timmy Reed!

(via tracydimond)

[spiltinkpoetry-blog]

Maybe I Was Made This Way (by Cassandra Dallett)

When I was little I spent afternoons on my parent’s bed looking through Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler before I could read I studied the pictures clicked my tongue wetly.

Our neighbor’s family had six boys I rode to school in their green station wagon went home to straddle and hump my pillow think about fucking them all smother my face breathless imagining us in the woods on a frayed cot of slippery plaid above the mossy rocks them taking turns with my body doing all the things I saw in the magazines all the hollering I heard in the night.

© by Cassandra Dallett

About the Poem:

1. How long have you been writing poetry? I started writing poetry sometime around 2007, so about seven years. I was never into poetry at all, until I realized the freedom of it, the way I could write whatever I wanted, in the style I felt comfortable with, the way I speak and I could call it poetry. It feels like there are less rules in poetry than prose, and I hate rules.

2. Who are some of your favorite poet(s) and poem(s)? I’m afraid it sounds cliché to say I was hugely influenced by Charles Bukowski but actually when I discovered him as a teenager I felt like my life had been saved, suddenly my drunken life was no worse or no less interesting than his. I read a huge variety of poetry now and I have so many favorites. I like the style of Bob Hickok and Terrance Hayes. I read a poem the other day by Claudia Rankine that knocked me out. I am totally inspired by my friends MK Chavez, Joel Landmine, and SB Stokes.

3. What draws you to poetry? What is your reason for writing poetry? Like I said I haven’t been writing that long really. I always wanted to be a writer but having no education, I didn’t feel confident it was something I could do. I went to an alternative inner city high school and then went to vocational schools. I was always just trying to survive. Finally in 2006 I took a creative writing class. When the first assignment was to write a poem I wanted to quit. I hated poetry. My friend’s mom growing up was a poet, a friend of Ginsberg, and I never knew what they were talking about. It was gross stuff about sex and we were supposed to sit still and listen. I am not very good at sitting still so it never occurred to me I would like poetry. When I started reading Bukowski I was reading his prose. I wanted to write a memoir but once I wrote that first poem, once I saw how much I could say with so few words, I found it was a way to tell my stories with a lot of freedom and I got hooked. I am a huge Hip-Hop head too so it kind of makes sense I had the Beat parents and I grew up listening to rap so when I finally put pen to paper it started to flow.

4. Tell us the inspiration behind this particular piece. A lot of my pieces, particularly a lot of what has been published, are about sex. I am not, I don’t think, more sexual than most people I know. But I do have some issues I’m working out by writing about them. I grew up fast, and I looked mature and had sex at a young age. Inside, I was a kid who wanted to be loved and parented, and I kind of hurled my body around in the world. There was a lot of drinking sex and physical abuse. There was a lot of shame, a lot of being the “slut”, I went through a bad break up where my ex really tried to shame me all over again, and I just rebelled. I just started writing more and more about sex without shame. I was thinking about my first thoughts, my first fantasies and I wrote this piece. I grew up around hippies in a sexually charged environment.

About Cassandra Dallett:

Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra writes of a counter culture childhood in Vermont and her ongoing adolescence in San Francisco Bay Area. She has been published widely online and in print magazines. A full-length book of poetry Wet Reckless will be released from Manic D Press in the spring of 2014.

[beaboutitpress]

OCTAVIA KNEW, by Cassandra Dallett

Language is changing and the grammar Nazis

(they call themselves that I never would)

are having fits, even as they peck away at plastic keypads.

In this new language of technology cookies might not be something you eat.

Face book isn’t how you sometimes fall asleep while reading.

Face meeting book, drool meeting pillow.

It will all change.

Things like he and she won’t be preferred,

like telephones and booths

wireless and wired.

One of these days “ain’t”, ain’t gonna be left to the haters.

It will become word cause we say it, and we say it is,

and so it will be.

Marketing changes the words for things.

Music changes slanguage.

A million and one poems written about Jazz ,

rhyme and beat brings street to ear,

pen and a paper, a stereo a tape.

it will change, it will change,

and someday the word for God might be Change

cause it might be the one thing we know is true.

EXCERPT FROM PEARL TONGUE, a new print chap by Cassandra Dallett 

forthcoming from BE ABOUT IT PRESS

ALSO!! don’t forget to see Cassandra read live, this week in Oakland!

E.M. Wolfman 410 13th street, Oakland CA : this TUESDAY Wednesday at 6:00 pm

[disembodiedpoetics]

raise the dead

where were we before all this? in eden drinking from streams slipping in and out of each other’s bodies sipping the nectar that dripped from the edges of our unconscious being whoever we wanted we weren’t waiting on the miracle we were the miracle before the flowers and the dinosaurs turned to oil before the sun and the moon split up with shared custody of the sky alimony payments to bartenders and tax deductible charity organizations night and day used to be the same thing before the divorce before the taxis ran across my feet before my eyes turned to blanks before the fiery crash that left us in pieces pieces that we are looking for without even knowing it we are searching for something that’s on the tip of our tongues a word that gets stuck in the back of our throats that hides in the back of our minds and weighs at the bottom of our hearts the maps we made won’t help us the rules we follow won’t guide us there is no direction home because we are already there burn your thoughts in the temple and then burn the temple

[quietlightningbooks]

our founder, Evan Karp

[sekunde-blog]

[quietlightningbooks]

photo by artist and photographer Gianna Badiali, who recently co-curated one of our shows