I’ve been having a killer week in books. I’m reading Bad Stories by Steve Almond (more on that soon), Registered of Illuminated Villages by Tarfia Faizullah, Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter by Elizabeth Powell and twice this week I read What the Living Do by Marie Howe.I’ve also gone ahead and ordered a new bookshelf for my bedroom. On Sunday I got to feature in the incredible Sunday Kind of Love series with Elizabeth Powell who was so generous and gracious and lovely. After the reading there’s an open mic, and Elizabeth sat with a notepad and scribbled affirming notes to pass to open mic performers whose work moved her. She was like that.

During the open mic, a familiar name was called and I looked up to see a person I knew standing on stage. He’d kind of hidden from me up to that point, but when he went up he said he was a Soldier who had begun writing with me and since then had written THREE books. Just kept writing and reading and performing once poetry got a hold of him. He didn’t even know that I’d be there Sunday night, he was just coming to try out/share some material, but hid out once he saw me. He gave me copies of all of his books (and they’re available on Amazon). He’s even helping people publish their own books. All of this to say, National Poetry Month has been awesome this year.

Today is the kick off Split This Rock’s biannual poetry festival, and each day are workshops and presentations (I get to read with some of my favorite poets on Saturday) and each night there are readings by a fucking astonishing line up of poets. I’m just going to copy and past the language from the festival site:

The 2018 festival lineup includes Elizabeth Acevedo, Kazim Ali, Ellen Bass, Sherwin Bitsui, Kwame Dawes, Camille T. Dungy, Ilya Kaminsky, Sharon Olds, Sonia Sanchez, Solmaz Sharif, Terisa Siagatonu, Paul Tran, Javier Zamora! Read their full bios on the Featured Poet page.

FEATURED READINGS – FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

All featured poet readings will be held at the National Housing Center (located within the National Association of Home Builders), 1201 15th St NW. Poets will be available to sign books after each reading. Busboys and Poets Books will be on site with books for sale. Readings are free & open to the public, wheelchair accessible & ASL interpreted.

Featured reading schedule:

Thursday, April 19 | 7-8:30 PM
Camille T. Dungy, Sharon Olds, Javier Zamora

2018 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest Winner Jonathan Mendoza

Friday, April 20 | 7-8:30 PM
Elizabeth Acevedo, Sherwin Bitsui, Kwame Dawes, Solmaz Sharif

Saturday, April 21 | 4:15-5:45 PM
Kazim Ali, Ellen Bass, Terisa Siagatonu

Saturday, April 21 | 7:30-9 PM
Ilya Kaminsky, Sonia Sanchez, Paul Tran

2017 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest Winner Keno Evol

I’m so excited I could burst. Don’t miss this.

Today’s poem is from the issue of Poetry magazine featuring festival poets. Here’s Solmaz Sharif:

The Master’s House

BY SOLMAZ SHARIF

To wave from the porch

To let go of the grudge

To disrobe

To recall Ethel Rosenberg’s green polka-dotted dress

To call your father and say I’d forgotten how nice everyone in these red states can be

To hear him say Yes, long as you don’t move in next door

To recall every drawn curtain in the apartments you have lived

To find yourself at 33 at a vast expanse with nary a papyrus of 
guidance, with nary a voice, a muse, a model

To finally admit out loud then I want to go home

To have a dinner party of intellectuals with a bell, long-armed, lightly-tongued, at each setting

To sport your dun gown

To revel in face serums

To be a well-calibrated burn victim to fight the signs of aging

To assure financial health

To be lavender sachets and cedar lining and all the ways the rich might hide their rot

To eye the master’s bone china

To pour diuretic in his coffee and think this erosive to the state

To disrobe when the agent asks you to

To find a spot on any wall to stare into

To develop the ability to leave an entire nation thusly, just by staring at a spot on the wall, as the lead-vested agent names article by article what to remove

To do this in order to do the other thing, the wild thing

To say this is my filmdom, The Master’s House, and I gaze upon it and it is good

To discuss desalinization plants and de terroir

To date briefly a banker, a lapsed Marxist, and hear him on the phone speaking in billions of dollars, its residue over the clear bulbs of his eyes, as he turns to look upon your nudity

To fantasize publishing a poem in the New Yorker eviscerating his little need

To set a bell at each intellectual’s table setting ringing idea after idea, and be the simple-footed help, rushing to say Yes?

To disrobe when the agent asks you to

To find a spot on any wall to stare into

To develop the ability to leave an entire nation thusly, just by staring at a spot on the wall

To say this is my filmdom, The Master’s House

To recall the Settler who from behind his mobile phone said I’m filming you for God

To recall this sad God, God of the mobile phone camera, God of the small black globe and pixelated eye above the blackjack table at Harrah’s and the metal, toothed pit of Qalandia checkpoint the same

To recall the Texan that held the shotgun to your father’s chest, sending him falling backward, pleading, and the words came to him in Farsi

To be jealous of this, his most desperate language

To lament the fact of your lamentations in English, English being your first defeat

To finally admit out loud then I want to go home

To stand outside your grandmother’s house

To know, for example, that in Farsi the present perfect is called the 
relational past, and is used at times to describe a historic event whose effect is still relevant today, transcending the past

To say, for example, Shah dictator bude-ast translates to The Shah was a dictator, but more literally to The Shah is was a dictator

To have a tense of is-was, the residue of it over the clear bulb of your eyes

To walk cemetery after cemetery in these States and nary a gravestone reading Solmaz

To know no nation will be home until one does

To do this in order to do the other thing, the wild thing, though you’ve forgotten what it was