Song of a Reformed Headhunter

The National Poetry Writing Month begins tomorrow: write a poem a day for the month of April. In NaPoWRiMo 2005, I wrote most of the sonnets of Payday Loans . In 2006, I wrote poems in hymn stanzas, some of which were revised and arranged into the sequence, "There Is No Safety in Distance." This year, the inspiration is Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric." I hope to use section nine as a plan for a suite of poems about the history and the ethics of the body. 9. O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you; I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the Soul, (and that they are the Soul; ) I believe the like of you shall stand or fall with my poems--that they are poems, Man's, woman's, child's, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's, father's, young man's, young woman's poems; Head , neck , hair , ears, drop and tympan of the ears , Eyes, eye-...

I really enjoyed my visit to The Phillips Collection, in Washington D.C., yesterday. The museum of modern art has split personalities: a Georgian Revival house and a modern white-wall gallery building. The jewel of its collection is Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party . After seeing so many reproductions in prints and books, I was surprised by the monumental size of the painting. Size is how an artist signals the importance of a painting to his oeuvre, a summation of his explorations, a claim to immortality. Another monumental painting is The Terrace (1918) by Bonnard. I was very touched by the elderly couple crouching in their garden in the painting. Their presence humanizes the monumentality of the canvas. Richard Diebenkorn's Girl with Plant (1960) was particularly fascinating. Against the severe background of abstract expressionist wall, doorway and bed, the plant seems peculiarly alive. The brushstrokes are energetic and the strong colors look as if they were applied r...

From the editors: Shit Creek Review+II Plywood Edition is now online, with poetry by Lee Harlin Bahan, Sam Byfield, Michael Cantor, K.R. Copeland, Brian Dion, Richard Epstein, Larry Fontenot, Angela France, Jude Goodwin, Juleigh Howard-Hobson, Danielle Lapidoth, Amanda Laughtland, Dave McClure, Mary Meriam, Bee Smith, Kirby Wright, and essays by Norman Ball, Anna Evans and Rose Kelleher. There is art by Don Zirilli, Patricia Wallace Jones, Hanka Jaskowska, C.D. Russell and Valori Herzlich. A new feature supplement, II, focuses on the Poetry of Tim Murphy, and includes three new poems by Tim, as well as a selection from his as yet unpublished prosimetrum, Requited; also an interview, and essays and perspectives by Janet Kenny, Henry Quince, Rhina Espaillat, Alan Sullivan, Daniel Haar, R.S. Gwynn, Richard Wakefield, A.E. Stallings, Rose Kelleher, and Wendy Videlock. Click on the big II on the front page of SCR. We are calling for submissions for the July edition of SCR+II: for SCR, poem...

When I was an evangelical Christian, of the four gospels, the one I loved most was John's. Sure, Mark writes the tautest plot, Matthew charms with his Christmas story, and Luke betrays the compassion of a doctor for the sick. But John, in the most argumentative and dramatic of the gospels, unveils the Power and the Glory: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. And that gospel-in-a-nutshell, that bribe disguised as a gift of love, that verse memorized in Sunday School and thrust into the faces of unbelievers: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. So it was with some shock I heard John’s words again, in Bach’s Passion, and realized how anti-semitic the gospel is. The crowd, repeatedly called “th...

Mimesis is a new international poetry journal edited by James AL Midgley. The just-launched website gives a sampler of the poems in the first issue. 48 Poems from: Julie Carter, Brent Fisk, Rebecca Kutzer-rice, Jee Leong Koh, Taylor Loy, Rob Mackenzie, Ian McLachlan, Jon Stone, R. L. Swihart and Emily Stuart. Also: an interview with poet Michael Laskey . Artwork from: Jesse Michael Renaud (cover), Amanda Rehagen and Sarah Hayes.

I went twice to see the Chinese art exhibition at the Met, so enchanted was I by the artistic explorations of place: imperial inspection tours, scholars' fantastic mountain retreats, landscape as political allegory or lament, laborers' biking daily to work, pleasure gardens, gorges. In the traditional landscape paintings, the subject matter may appear limited, but the wonder is that a mountain can be painted in so many different ways. Dong Qichang (1555-1636) advocated approaching painting like calligraphy, with an emphasis on abstraction and kinetic brushstrokes. His "Shaded Dwellings Among Streams and Mountains" reminded me of Cezanne's post-impressionist paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire, though they are from such different periods. I can't find that painting on the net, so here's another landscape by him: Dai Benxiao (1621-1693) seemed to be heavily influenced by Qichang, to my ignorant eyes, when he painted "The Strange Pines of Mount Tiantai....

In Mother’s womb, we started as a pair of lungs, sea slugs hanging on to a reef. We grew toe rays, brain sponges and gonads relaxed by the liquid song. The Doppler ultrasound echoed our submarine and found us one. The truth was monozygotic— we sucked each other’s nub of thumb inside the brine. When, headfirst, we were unceremoniously expelled, we were halved like an egg sliced with a line of hair. A beak plucked at the cord and knotted my navel. Mother never speaks of you although I know you were with me at sea. How else to understand my panic playing hide-and-seek, the cracked canoe, wet dreams of touching a man, waking up, a curse crying, not knowing why, like a turtle washed ashore, a lacquered carapace—these shimmering absences?