Susan Landers @susanlanders - Tumblr Blog

John Wieners

WHEN MY BROTHER FELL (For Joseph Beam) When my brother fell I picked up his weapons and never once questioned whether I could carry the weight and grief, the responsibility he shouldered. I never questioned whether I could aim or be as precise as he. He had fallen, and the passing ceremonies marking his death did not stop the war. Standing at the front lines flanked by able brothers who miss his eloquent courage, his insistent voice urging us to rebel, urging us to not fear embracing for more than sex, for more than kisses and notches in our belts. Our loss is greater than all the space we fill with prayers and praise. He burned out his pure life force to bring us a chance to love ourselves with commitment. He knew the simple spilling of seed would not be enough to bind us. It is difficult to stop marching, Joseph, impossible to stop our assault. The tributes and testimonies in your honor flare up like torches. Every night a light blazes for you in one of our hearts. There was no one lonelier than you, Joseph. Perhaps you wanted love so desperately and pleaded with God for the only mercy that could be spared. Perhaps God knew you couldn't be given more than public love in this lifetime. When I stand on the front lines, now cussing the lack of truth, the absence of willful change and strategic coalitions, I realize sewing quilts will not bring you back nor save us. It's too soon to make monuments for all we are losing, for the lack of truth as to why we are dying, who wants us dead, what purpose does it serve? When my brother fell I picked up his weapons. I didn't question whether I could aim or be as precise as he. A needle and thread were not among his things I found. -- Essex Hemphill

From John Weiner’s “A Poem for Painters”

#john wieners #pulseshooting #America

Franklinstein in front window of @berlspoetry. #pride (at Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop)

#pride

queenmobs

Poem: Sue Landers

Fire

In her mansion Michelle Williams doesn’t know I said, let’s burn down the mansions. Even though I secretly want one. In her mansion Michelle Williams is part of a long line of land owners starting with the ones who took this land with their powder and blankets, their knives, shells, and beer. A long line of homeowners who go back to the turn of a century and a man who called his houses in Brooklyn an alternative to the cliff dwelling living of Manhattan. In her mansion Michelle Williams met a real estate agent who called her soon-to-be house “Tara.”

smallpressdistribution

UM WE’RE HAVING AN EVERYTHING 20% off SITE-WIDE SALE (w/ code SITE)

As your friendly local distributor, we at SPD think it’s very important that we keep up with the times. So we’ve been toiling away in secret, squirreling away in the office to harness the power of technology (as well as the web skills of people other than ourselves!)

And so, without further ado, we are very proud to present to you a new, and improved www.spdbooks.org, as well as a gigantic SALE to celebrate

It’s books for days over here at the brand new SPD website. Happy browsing!

susanlanders

Seems like a good time to pick up a copy of Franklinstein, if you don’t have one already...

#poetry #lit #sale #books

TFW Kevin Killian Reviews Your Book On Amazon

It’s this combination of lyric energy, and a dry-eyed look at the lumps and bumps society metes out to its underserved, that give “Franklinstein” its compulsive energy. Landers’ poetry doesn’t mind risking “bad taste” in the service of deep, painful beauty, and it makes hay out of conventions—not only the folk Federalism of Franklin, or Stein’s own extreme modernist chic, but the shibboleths of present-day mainstream (and “experimental”) poetry, for she knows what a good thing she’s got and she’s gonna keep on its back till the sun-chase is over. As I turn to the back of the book and scan the blurbs, I see that all of them use the same rhetorical trope to describe this richness—it’s this and it’s that—two different things occupying the same unthinkable space. Tyrone Williams wisely calls the book a “monstrosity,” I like that, for he means it as the highest accolade.

#Kevin killian #franklinstein #sue landers #lit #book review #btvs #Ben Franklin #gertrude stein #monsters #hybrid genre

Dodie Bellamy's books include When the Sick Rule the World, The Letters of Mina Harker, and Cunt-Ups. Susan Landers' latest book, Franklinstein, tells the story of one Philadelphia neighborhood wrestling with the legacies of colonialism, racism, and capitalism. Hear them both, together for the first time, this week.

#dodie bellamy #sue landers #NYC #poetry #lit

Roof Books, one of NYC’s important underground poetry presses for the past 40 years, is proud to celebrate two new titles at the fabled Gallery at LPR: Sue Landers’ Franklinstein channeling Ben Franklin and Gertrude Stein in Germantown, a mashup of history, poetry, and human heartbreak. And Plato’s Closet by Lawrence Giffin, a single long poem that treads indelicately yet with profound subtlety on the subject of community—the city and the hinterland it populates with idyllic shepherds to distract from the scapegoats, thieves, heretics, and wolves proliferating there.

#(le) poisson rouge #poetry #lawrence giffin #Sue Landers #National Poetry Month #roof books

#poetry #germantown #philly #Yolanda Wisher #trapeta mayson #Sue Landers

#National Poetry Month #npm16 #Sue Landers #m. nzadi keita #west philly #poetry

“All The Poetry of Living” performed live by Sue Landers at iMPeRFeCT Gallery in Germantown at the Franklinstein book release party. Book available here.

#sue landers #franklinstein #germantown #philadelphia #poetry #National Poetry Month #npm16