poetry

Waterblasting

John Sweden Portside
Amid “the caked-on lies” of our political leaders and corporate aggressors, New Zealand poet John Sweden offers no remedies, only an imagined hope.

poetry

Waiting for the End

Peter Neil Carroll Jewish Currents
Fifty-some years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, we are still waiting for the end--not necessary of the world, but the US embargo. Poet Peter Neil Carroll recalls an October day when Paul Simon, relatively unknown, sang for a class of nervous students at Queens College and how a young Cuban today looks back at that moment.

poetry

Suffer the Children, Forbid Them Not

J. David Cummings Portside
"a mirror/ if our eyes are strong enough," so the poet J. David Cummings evokes the death of children: at Hiroshima, on the Mediterranean today.

poetry

Call Me By My Name

Jamaica Baldwin Rattle
The poet Jamaica Baldwin writes, “This piece was written in response to the daily lies espoused by the new president and his administration, the emergence of the phrase ‘alternative fact’ in the political lexicon, and the simple fact of Trump’s presidency.”

poetry

Borderland

Amy Meier portside.org
Worried about the Great Wall separating Mexico from the USA? California poet Amy Meier offers a mild antidote to your fears.

American Poets, Refusing to Go Gentle, Rage Against the Right

Alexandra Alter The New York Times
There seems to be a growing audience for poetry that speaks to the anxieties of our era. Traffic to the academy’s online poetry archive has surged in recent months. Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise,” has been viewed nearly 470,000 times since Nov. 8, compared to about 280,000 times in that period the previous year, while Langston Hughes’s poem, “Let America Be America Again,” has been viewed some 280,000 times, up from about 88,000 times.

film

Fast, Loose and Lyrical: Pablo Larraín's 'Neruda' Anti-Biopic

Adam Feinstein The Guardian
Director Larraín has stated that the way Latin Americans think is shaped by poetry, by metaphor, and that his film is partly concerned with the power of poetry to move and influence. We are shown Neruda’s huge influence, as a communist poet, over his natural constituency: the ordinary working man... But what we do not see in the film is the immensely moving capacity of poetry to break down barriers between people of diametrically opposed political beliefs.

books

Derek Walcott: Poet of Twilight, Poet of the Caribbean

Gabrielle Bellot Literary Hub
Derek Walcott, one of the finest poets of our times, died March 17 in St. Lucia, where he was born. He was 87 years old. His poetry helped illuminate the interconnections between the natural and the social worlds. Gabrielle Bellot, a staff writer for Literary Hub who grew up in the Commonwealth of Dominica, offers this appreciation.

Friday Nite Videos -- October 14, 2016

Portside
Michelle Obama Calls Out Donald Trump. A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall (Live at Town Hall 1963). The Trump Electoral Drag. The Universe: Now With 10 Times More Galaxies. will.i.am as Donald Trump.
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