Thanksgiving Prayer by William Burroughs

    To John Dillinger and hope he is still alive.
     
    Thanksgiving Day November 28 1986

 
Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shat out through wholesome
American guts.
 

Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.
 

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.
 

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.
 

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.
 

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.
 

Thanks for the KKK.
 

For nigger-killin’ lawmen,
feelin’ their notches.
 

For decent church-goin’ women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.
 

Thanks for “Kill a Queer for
Christ” stickers.
 

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.
 

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.
 

Thanks for a country where
nobody’s allowed to mind their
own business.
 

Thanks for a nation of finks.
 

Yes, thanks for all the
memories– all right let’s see
your arms!
 

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.
 

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

 
 
0012-william-burroughs-

Poems of Pablo Neruda

Pablo_Neruda
 
 
I am not an expert on the works of the late Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. He is regarded by some as one of the greatest Latin American Romantic poets of the 20th Century. An insightful commentary can be found in Forest Gander, whose critically acclaimed translations of the Chilean Nobel Laureate appear in The Essential Neruda. Selected Poems. 2004.
 
My own view is that a great deal of myth mongering surrounding his name due to his political beliefs and sudden death just after the Pinochet coup, may contribute considerably to his present fame.
 
Certain writings from the late Julieta Gomez Paz, an emiminent Argentinean eassayist, feminist critic and poet in her own right, argue that in much of Neruda’s love poems, the female role is depicted more as an object than a personality. In other words an archaic machisimo attitude is very much present in his works. An opinion that i am not altogether unsympathetic towards.
(Robin Ouzman Hislop)
 
 
[tubepress mode=”tag” tagValue=”Pablo Neruda Poet Translation” resultsPerPage=”24″ resultCountCap=”96″ orderBy=”relevance” perPageSort=”relevance” ]
 
 
robin@artvilla.com
PoetryLifeTimes
Poetry Life & Times

editor@artvilla.com
www.artvilla.com
Artvilla.com

75 at 75 92Y Poetry

92Y Unterberg Poetry Center’s 75th anniversary and beyond

POETRY_SLIDES_Strand-Brodsky


75 at 75: Grace Paley Reads From "The Used-Boy Raisers"

75 at 75: Allen Ginsberg, February 26, 1973

75 at 75: Czeslaw Milosz

92Y Dance: 1994 – Present

92Y Parenting Conference: Why Fathers Matter

75th Ranger Regiment: Join the Military Intelligence Battalion

W. G. Sebald | 92Y Readings

David Brooks and Mark Shields with Jeff Greenfield

Neil Gaiman Helps Margaret Atwood Celebrate Her 75th Birthday!

E. E. Cummings: Selected Poems | 92Y Readings

Elizabeth Bishop: Selected Poems | 92Y Readings

Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Poems and Prose | 92Y Readings

Spirit of 92nd Street Y: The Harkness Dance Center at 75

Orhan Pamuk: The Museum of Innocence | 92Y Readings

V. S. Naipaul: The Masque of Africa | 92Y Readings

92Y Teen Modern Dance Class

75 at 75: Mark Strand on Joseph Brodsky

75 at 75: Pico Iyer on Leonard Cohen | 92Y Readings

75 at 75: W. H. Auden: "Bucolics" and "Horae Cononicae"

75 at 75: James Schuyler Reads "Salute" and other poems

75 at 75: Marianne Moore: Her Poems and Translations of La Fontaine

75 at 75: William Trevor Reads "Kathleen's Field"

P.D. James and S.J. Rozan: Mysterious Conversations

75 at 75: Amy Clampitt Reads From A Silence Opens

 
 
robin@artvilla.com
PoetryLifeTimes
Poetry Life & Times

editor@artvilla.com
www.artvilla.com
Artvilla.com

Nathaniel Mackey Poetry

Nathaniel Mackey Poetry
Nathaniel Mackey

Nathaniel is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University

Here is a find! From the University of Pennsylvania, Mp3 readings by Mackey Penn Sound. include the excellent recordings from Song of the Andoumboulou

Nathaniel Mackey has won Yale’s 2015 Bollingen Prize for Poetry. Past winners includes Marianne Moore, ee e cummings, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens.

[tubepress mode=”tag” tagValue=”nathaniel mackey reads” resultsPerPage=”24″ resultCountCap=”96″ orderBy=”relevance” perPageSort=”relevance” ]

Roger McGough Liverpool’s Poet

Roger McGough
 
McGough was born in Litherland, Lancashire, to the north of Liverpool, the city with which he is firmly associated, and was educated at the University of Hull at a time when Philip Larkin was the librarian there. Returning to Merseyside in the early 1960s, he worked as a teacher and, with John Gorman, organised arts events. After meeting Mike McGear the trio formed The Scaffold, working the Edinburgh Festival until they signed to Parlophone records in 1966. The group scored several hit records, reaching number one in the UK Singles Chart in 1968 with their version of “Lily The Pink”. McGough wrote the lyrics for many of the group’s songs and also recorded the musical comedy/poetry album McGough and McGear.
 
McGough was also responsible for much of the humorous dialogue in The Beatles’ animated film, Yellow Submarine, although he did not receive an on-screen credit. At about the same time a selection of his poems was published, along with work from Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, in a best-selling paperback volume of verse entitled The Mersey Sound, first published in 1967, revised in 1983 and again in 2007.
 
McGough won a Cholmondeley Award in 1998, and was awarded the CBE in June 2004. He holds an honorary MA from Nene College of Further Education;[citation needed] was awarded an honorary degree from Roehampton University in 2006; as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool on 3 July 2006. He was Fellow of Poetry at Loughborough University (1973-5) and Honorary Professor at Thames Valley University (1993).
 

[tubepress mode=”tag” tagValue=”Roger McGough Liverpool Poet” resultsPerPage=”20″ orderBy=”relevance” perPageSort=”viewCount” ]