Discover Top Posts Tagged with #abecedarian

From the University of North Carolina at Charlotte's 1971 yearbook.

(via @danskjavlarna)

Milestone Monday: Robert Pinsky’s Birthday!

Today we celebrate the poet Robert Pinsky, who was born in Long Branch, New Jersey on October 20th, 1940. Pinsky has served as U.S. Poet Laureate three times, and has taught in the graduate writing program at Boston University since 1989.

The images are taken from two fine press editions of Pinsky’s work. The first, ABC, a brief and subtle abecedarian poem, was designed and printed in a limited edition of ten by Caryl Seidenberg of the Vixen Press in Winnetka, IL in 2003. Also by Seidenberg and Vixen Press is 1998’s The Rhyme of Reb Nachman, printed in an edition of 125. In her colophon to the latter text, Seidenberg explains that the book is “set in 16 point Eusebius, lightly spiced with Andromaque,” with Arches Cover paper, and handmade Nepalese Lokta endpapers. The Campbell-Logan Bindery bound the edition.

In an author’s note, Pinsky divulges that he invented Reb Nachman in order to impress two fellow poets, Gail Mazur and Lloyd Schwartz, and suggests that the poem is therefore, “is a kind of translation with no original.”

See other beautiful artist books of Robert Pinsky’s poetry.

Hear Robert Pinsky describe his process.

Watch Caryl Seidenberg discuss printing.

See more Milestone Monday posts!

--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

#Milestone Monday #milestone #robert pinsky #poetry #u.s. poet laureate #ABC #The Ballad of Reb Nachman #Vixen Press #Caryl Seidenberg #fine press printing #eusebius #Andromaque #campbell-logan bindery #abecedarian

Easter Witches: An Almost-Abecedarian

After eleven on Holy Saturday, I’m in bed, reading. A book about witches; women burning. Women burning while I am bleeding. Sloughing the unborn from my cunt; craving chocolate. Thinking of Christ. Bloody hands, feet, nailed to the cross. His fifth wound, lance-stab to confirm death. Sacred gash which birthed church. Doubting Thomas later stuck a finger in. Easter tomorrow. We celebrate by hunting eggs. My body does its monthly abortive egg drop, bloody thing, nothing like faberge. Not pastel-dyed hid in plastic grass for kiddies to find. Outside a coyote howls, a perfect piercing note. Mate replies. Holy canid communion. Holy, this: I am thinking of women, burning. Thinking of Jesus. Witch-man. Water to wine, walking just so across a sea. Healed the sick. They did kill him for it. And all those women, bodies kindling. Howling in the fires their innocence from lewdness, devil-lust. Some didn’t deny the magic of which they were accused. Jesus loved Mary Magdalene, woman of ill repute. He hung naked on that cross, atop the hill on Calvary. O, they will always hate the disrupters, find punishments fit for anyone caught. Women, queers, witches. Saints and Magdalenes—

Refuse to go down easy. Race like rabbits running fleetfoot through the burning fields. Resurrecting ourselves. No contrition, no sorry on our lips. What was done, those tortures, can’t be erased. Can’t be undone. They will invent new violences. But we wield scar-armor; wield lance and dagger and X-acto slashed gashes. Holy. Yes, they burn, ban, deport. Don’t yield. Not to those frightened zealots who’ve never had to bleed.

—Jessie Lynn McMains, NaPoWriMo 2026 (Day 4)

#jessie lynn mcmains #my writing #poetry #napowrimo #napowrimo 2026 #easter #witches #jesus #menstruation #resistance #abecedarian #almost

April 9, 2024: Physical Therapy, Franny Choi

Physical Therapy Franny Choi Ask, first, what your smallest body parts require to sing again: coconut oil for your hair’s dry ends, camphor for the earlobes, rosehip kneaded into fingertips with fingertips. Grapeseed will feed most hungers of the skin. But if even your bones cry January, dip your sharpest knife in a jar of raw honey. Lather it on your thighs, making circles, making certain not to confuse this ache for that other, the one that keeps pulling you to the earth, the one question you still can’t say out loud. Recite instead the names of trees: sumac, sweet birch, slippery elm. Take your palm to the wild place under your chin and count: vein, artery, chokecherry, weeping willow, until your xacto knife pulse slows, holds. Let your mouth fill with gold, almonds, zinneas. Then: soften.

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In an abecedarian poem, each line begins with successive letters of the alphabet.

Also: + VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God, Mary Karr + Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell, Marty McConnell + Heartbeats, Melvin Dixon

More by Franny Choi: + Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness + The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

Today in:

2023: Come Quickly, Izumi Shikibu 2022: Heretic That I Am, Tomás Q. Morín 2021: The World Has Need of You, Ellen Bass 2020: Annus Mirabilis, R. A. Villanueva 2019: This Page Ripped Out and Rolled into a Ball, Brendan Constantine 2018: Winter Stars, Larry Levis 2017: In That Other Fantasy Where We Live Forever, Wanda Coleman 2016: The cat’s song, Marge Piercy 2015: The Embrace, Mark Doty 2014: No. 6, Charles Bukowski 2013: A Schoolroom in Haiti, Kenneth Koch 2012: Track 5: Summertime, Jericho Brown 2011: Death, Is All, Ana Božičević 2010: Heaven, William Heyen 2009: April in Maine, May Sarton 2008: Making Love to Myself, James L. White 2007: Publication Date, Franz Wright 2006: Living in the Body, Joyce Sutphen 2005: Aberration (The Hubble Space Telescope before repair), Rebecca Elson

#self care #abecedarian #the body #trees #franny choi #queer poets #trans or nonbinary poet #poet with asian or pacific heritage