The Dutch photographer, Rineke Dijkstra, took a series of portraits of Portuguese matadors taken moments after leaving the ring. In one, the young subject appears particularly stunned; his face and costume are stained with blood, but—too exhausted to pose—his vulnerability and humanity are palpable. This poem, in part motivated by raising my son in a culture infused with male violence, explores these contradictions in Dijkstra’s image.
Lauren Goodwin Slaughter on "Vila Franca de Xira, May 8, 1994" |
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Shelley and the Spark of Revolution
"Shelley’s dissidence was, if anything, more antique. A skeptic who disdained religious and political authority, he fused poetic expression with the use of reason—a synthesis that led Harold Bloom to call him an 'English Lucretius.' For the young radical, literature was the spark that could light the fire of enlightenment and move people to rise up and overthrow their oppressors."
via JACOBIN |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Eugene Ostashevsky on Vasily Kamensky's “Constantinople"
"The Cubist language of the poem imposes cuts on words, fractures them into planes by repetition and variation, and recombines parts of words to build other words. Although the poem lacks a single order of reading—nor do we have evidence that Kamensky ever performed it out loud—it pulsates with sound repetitions. Repetitions convert its word lists into the sonic counterparts of Cubist planes, with each word turning into a formal variation of the one above it." |
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