#evening will come

[bostonpoetryslam]

I am interested in what activism can learn from poetry.

Solmaz Sharif, “The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure,” published in Evening Will Come

[bostonpoetryslam]

Every poem is an action. Every action is political. Every poem is political.

Solmaz Sharif, “The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure,” published in Evening Will Come

[thevagabondexpress]

There's something intricately painful about hearing Clymer & Kurtz's Evening Will Come for the first time on Wessa Anniversary Day

[bostonpoetryslam]

When writing a poem, instead of thinking about what you can do to get this image, or this narrative, or subject or sound, safely and soundly into the wanting and capable hands of the reader, think instead about what you can do to enact violence, to dismantle, complicate, deconstruct, so that you’re not communicating but being communicated with.

Zachary Schomburg, "Poetry as Violence," published in Evening Will Come

[bostonpoetryslam]

Poetry, like photography, is a testimony of time’s relentless melt. To write a poem is to admit, confess, testify in mortality. Because it can be looked back upon as it always existed from its moment of manifestation. A poem, like a photograph, doesn’t age.

Zachary Schomburg, "Poetry as Violence," published in Evening Will Come

[bostonpoetryslam]

One thing you can do while writing a poem is ask yourself if Ronald Reagan would find this poem to be of value. Another thing you can do while writing a poem is ask yourself if Ronald Johnson would find this poem to be of value. Think of the most violent thing you can possibly think of. Now empty your mind of it entirely. Now write a line about a cloud.

Zachary Schomburg, "Poetry as Violence," published in Evening Will Come

[likespunglass]

A poem is a confrontation. So often I encounter young poets who have limited their range of motion, of what is possible in their poem, unwilling to shake it and spill it in order to find beauty, find something that frightens. They’re unwilling to discover something they don’t already feel, or know. They’re unwilling in the same ways that we are all unwilling to consider our own inevitable decompositions. We just keep carrying on with our eyes on the same safe things, out of fear, the things we already thoroughly understand. These young poets are like a young river carving out its own bed, its own grave, down the mountain. It knows no other way down. But the violence in the poem is when that poet sees it can flood the mountain, make it float away into a new sea. -Zachary Schomburg, “Poetry as Violence,” published in Evening Will Come