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“Whatever comes to pass: the devastated world / sinks back into twilight,” reads Rita Dove from the poem “My Bird” by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated from the German by Mark Anderson, at her study in Charlottesville, Virginia in this installment of the Paris Review’s Poets on Couches series. Get more inspiration from a writing prompt based on this poem in The Time Is Now.
“Whatever comes to pass: you know your time, / my bird, you put on your veil / and fly through the mist to me,” writes Ingeborg Bachmann in her poem “My Bird,” translated from the German by Mark Anderson and published in the Summer 1984 issue of the Paris Review. In the poem, twilight passes into dawn as the narrator follows the owl through its many nightly transformations and their relationship is described by Bachmann in uncommon and evocative ways, such as “my nighttime ally,” “my ice-gray shoulder companion,” and “my weapon.” This week, write a poem about a bird that you think of as a companion. Try addressing the bird directly as Bachmann does in her poem.
“It’s a book about being present to the world and accepting the complexity of the world.” In this virtual event hosted by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Larissa Pham speaks about her new book, Pop Song: Adventures in Art and Intimacy (Catapult, 2021), and the subjects addressed in her essays, including relationships and the differences of expression through visual art and writing, in a conversation with R. O. Kwon.
In this video, poet Sarah Browning introduces an encore presentation of a 2016 reading and conversation with Sharon Olds at the Folger Shakespeare Library, part of the O. B. Harrison Poetry Series titled “Begin Again.”
On Elle.com’s books column Shelf Life, Ling Ma, author of Severance (Picador, 2019), answers a questionnaire about her favorite books, including the one that made her weep (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke), the one she would pass on to a kid (Jesus’s Son by Denis Johnson), and the one she considers literary comfort food (Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, among others). This week, answer the questionnaire for yourself, then write an essay that focuses on one of these questions and the book you recommended. What was happening in your life when you read this book and why are you still so deeply connected to it?
“There’s always going to be something to say about the push-pull that New York City exerts on its inhabitants,” says Sari Botton, editor of the revised edition of Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York (Seal Press, 2021), in this Books Are Magic virtual event with author Isaac Fitzgerald and contributors to the anthology Leslie Jamison, Lisa Ko, Emily Raboteau, and Rosie Schaap.
Last week I wrote about the finalists for the Motown Mic spoken word competition. This week I had the chance to connect with the 2021 Motown Spoken Word Artist of the Year, Kyle Mack. Born and raised in Novi, Michigan, he began exploring the city of Detroit after meeting his now fiancée, Ashley Adams. Adams is a poet who goes under the stage name Galaxy and Mack credits her for inspiring him to enter the contest. “I owe all the thanks to her because if it wasn’t for her pushing me to finish and submit my poem, especially when I was doubting myself, none of this would have been possible,” says Mack.
What’s even more impressive is that Mack’s winning poem is also the first spoken word poem he’s ever written. Mack is a musician and rapper (you can find his music on Spotify and Apple Music), and this was a new venture for his artistry. Mack eloquently reflected on the differences between these two genres: “To me, I feel spoken word is more raw compared to music. With music, you always have a beat or background instruments. With spoken word there is just your voice.”
For Mack, participating in the Motown Mic spoken word competition exemplifies how pushing yourself forward to try something new can be a great experience. “The competition allowed me to step outside of my comfort zone and indulge in a different form of art that I’ve always wanted to indulge in,” says Mack. It is often said that poetry and music go hand in hand. Mack has shown how these genres can connect and transition between each other.
As for the future, Mack has an album called Catholic School Bastard coming out on July 23. He is looking forward to sharing his artistry and performing once venues begin opening up. You can watch an interview with Mack on Motown Museum’s Facebook page.
Photo: Kyle Mack, winner of the 2021 Motown Mic Spoken Word Competition. Justin Rogers is the literary outreach coordinator for Poets & Writers in Detroit. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @Detroitpworg.“It seems to me that people undertake pilgrimages because they’re stuck; they’re in some kind of situation in their life, or their mind, where they don’t want to be the person they are, and they don’t know how to change that unless they change everything,” says Anne Carson in this conversation with her partner and collaborator Robert Currie and poet Sara Elkamel on the poetry and prose of pilgrimage and stasis that was recently published on Literary Hub. “Oddly enough, it’s a kind of freedom that is also a sort of bondage, because when you undertake a pilgrimage, you’re bound to everything about the road.” Write a story with a character who seeks change and undertakes a pilgrimage. How will the protagonist be challenged by the landscape surrounding them?
“I had written two books on slavery, and writing about slavery is to be in the center of a very difficult psychic territory, and so when I started doing the research for this project, I was very hungry for beauty—and I think I discovered it here,” says Saidiya Hartman about writing her book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (Norton, 2019), winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, in this 2019 reading at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.
The months of May and June mark the time when most schools and universities celebrate graduations, and poetry is oftentimes relied upon for commencement speeches and congratulatory messages to express feelings of hope and possibility. From Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” to Langston Hughes’s “Dreams,” poets offer timeless, thoughtful, and even funny responses applicable to this unique transition in a person’s life. Write a poem for a graduate that expresses your advice or some words of wisdom. For inspiration, browse the poems for graduation resource page from the Academy of American Poets.
