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America is a doomsday cult. It seems like to most of the world, Americans are known for their sunny optimism and can-do attitude, almost to a fault. Maybe it’s a relic of our myth of a classless society, the unspoken belief that hard work and an upstanding character can take you as far as you want to go in life that’s almost always been mostly a lie. Denise Levertov’s “Tenebrae” exhumes the…

On interconnectedness. Image: J. Simpson I spent yesterday swimming in a hidden section of Bear Creek in Oregon with one of my best friends, nestled in a hollow choked by nettles, cloaked by brambles, opening up to some of the cleanest, clearest, purest mountain water you could ever hope for. We spent hours swimming nude in the crystalline waters, sunbaking dry on the rocks, talking of…

Reflecting on what isn’t there. “Abandoned Cellar” by Nicky Sykes I really didn’t plan for today’s poem to be such an on-the-nose continuation of this week’s earlier poems about old houses and vanishing places. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe it’s synchronicity. Maybe i’m just that predictable. I truly couldn’t tell you how i came across Robert Frost’s “Ghost House” this morning. I found…

There are two houses. Jessica Butterfield’s “White House” is a short little vignette speculating about the lives and inner worlds of the owners of a shabby, rundown house. She wonders, quickly and in passing, why they don’t fix up their house, spinning out potential lives like a drive-by Lachesis before turning her focus to the dandelions outside. “White House” is a reminder that there’s always…

Time present meets time past. Old wooden staircase in grass. Photo: Anatoly Knigin Last night, i spent an hour reading a short story about time travel that took place in a Chicago blizzard while listening to a slow, spiraling ambient album about a heatwave in the American Southwest. Time is, as they say, seriously out of joint. Atemporality is just one reason Denise Lezertov’s “A Time Past”…

The infinite perception of time. Edith Cavell with her dogs, 1900 It’s really not clear what Louise Gluck’s “A Summer Garden” is about. A longer poem divided into three parts, each line seems to negate the one before it, calling the last into question. At first, she’s describing the contents of a photograph of her mother and their dogs, then the photograph itself, then the paperback where the…

Poetry does make things happen. 1916 Illustration of a Broken Harp Death can have an alienating effect. It can leave you feeling disoriented, distant, even from everyday, commonplace objects. You might even end up a stranger to yourself, as grief rewires your brain, your body, your behavior until you don’t even known yourself. Today’s poem, “Broken Lyre” by actor and poet Asha Futterman,…

What happened to the Flannan Isle light house keepers? Image: @Pan Macmillan “Flannan Isle” by Georgian turn-of-the-century poet Wilfrid Wilson Gibson checks several of my boxes for instant obsession. For one, it’s set in the misty, moody, mysterious island in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides Islands. Secondly, it’s based on a real-life mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Lastly and just as…

Joseph Stanton captures the isolation and accidental camaraderie of Edward Hopper’s New York Movie. It’s been hot lately. It’s the perfect reason and the perfect excuse to spend a lot of time at the movies, hiding from the blazing, disorienting sun amid living shadows. Imagine my delight when i discovered this poem about seeking sanctuary in a movie theater based on a work by one of my favorite…

Take your time, people, take your time. photo: @TheBerkshireEdge I spent all of last week reading Michael McDowell’s The Blackwater Saga, a sprawling Southern Gothic epic about a family and a river monster. As it’s set in the real town of Perdido, Alabama, there’s a lot of sitting on porches and rocking, guzzling sweet tea to try and beat the sweltering heat. This lazy, languid feeling is…

“Tonight’s a ghost, a revenant, a shade.” Crater photographed by Apollo 11 crew near landing site//NASA “July Moon” by Louise Townsend Nicholl Speech is transmuted when the moon is warm,Like sculpture curving to an ancient clusterOr music veering to an older beat,And all we say takes on the antique lusterOf metal molten to another formBy a different heat. “Tonight’s a ghost, a revenant, a…

On patience and camels. Camel and Arabs by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps//Credit: Google Arts & Culture I’m going to be honest – I don’t know a whole ton about Iran. I know even less about the conflict between Iran and Israel. I’ve managed to glean in the last few hours that Israel have been making pre-emptive strikes against Iran in a bid to dismantle their nuclear capabilities, which they have…

A brief reflection on reading James Joyce’s Ulysses for Bloomsday. I had every intention of finishing James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, and getting up my review in honor of Bloomsday, June 16, the day the events of the novel take place. I was even making good headway, despite the novel being notoriously dense and difficult, giving me hope that i might be able to accomplish my fool’s errand of…

It’s necessary to talk about trees. Wilderness Landscape Forest with Pine Trees and Moss on Rocks: Credit: Andreiuc88 Last week’s Los Angeles poems turned out to be eerily prescient, but not for the reasons i would hope. L.A.’s been all over the news this weekend after Donald Trump unleashed first the National Guard and then active Marines onto peaceful protestors demonstrating against unlawful…

Vintage Malibu Postcard. Credit//Eric Wienberg Collection of Malibu Matchbooks, Postcards, and Ephemera 0129 The early summer always reminds me of Los Angeles. After six months of overcast and gloom where i live in Portland, Oregon, sapphire skies finally peak out from under their covers, casting glorious golden sunlight on emerald flora and endless pleasure gardens. Windows demand to be opened.…

Vachel Lindsay’s “Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress” is an ode to a brand new artform. Mae Marsh. The Photo-Play Journal, July 1916 It’s wild to think that the rapid technological innovations of the 19th and 20th Century allowed for whole new artforms to be created. What’s more, mediums like photography, recorded music, and most especially cinema radically redefined the raison d’etre of new…

Maurya Simon’s “Los Angeles, Fin de Siecle” is a transmission from a Los Angeles that no longer exists but also hasn’t changed. Sherman Oaks Galleria, 1981. Photo: Wayne Thom discovered via @LAExplained. In many ways, Los Angeles is America. If the East Coast is the body, the inheritance of custom and traditions passed down from Europe like a rare congenital illness, Los Angeles is the…