poetry
Untitled
Singer-songwriter Cass McCombs wrote this powerful poem for The Holding Court Issue, with an illustration by Albert Herter.
Rachel Glaser’s Hypercolor Multitude of Moods
I can still remember where I was the first time I read Rachel B. Glaser. I’d slept the night on a friend’s futon and was woken up by the sun blasting me in the face. Crumbs from the sofa were pressed into my skin. I groggily picked up the issue of my...
Shapes That Make You Dizzy
Coconut Books is the print arm of the longest-running online poetry publisher I can think of. In the past several months they’ve released a slew of wicked new books. Here are my thoughts on three of them, along with an excerpt from each.
My Friend Is a Poet and I Didn't Even Know It
My buddy Dan Boehl handed me a novel for young adults that he'd written titled 'Naomi and the Horse Flavored T-Shirt.' I checked out his website and realized that he has three more books of poetry in print, is writing a new novel titled 'Fire Twins...
Rand Paul Is Wooing Conservatives on Immigration Reform
The Republican Party have reached a tipping point and appear to have started tepidly embracing immigration reform. The man who has played a big role in tipping the scale is Senator Rand Paul, the libertarian golden boy.
A Black Flag Kid Wrote a Book of Poems
By now you've probably heard about the Black Flag reunion that everyone is creaming themselves over. What you might not have heard, however, is that Chuck Dukowski's stepdaughter, Mira Gonzalez, is publishing her first book of poetry, and it's the bee...
The Jim Jones of Poetry
Rauan Klassnik seems like someone you’d find lingering out behind a porno bookstore in a jacket and hat, creeping around the dumpsters. His blog is full of obsessive posts about Nicholas Cage and guns and National Poetry Month. I’ve probably read his...
Displaced Verse
In Syria, controversial poet Mohamad Alaaedin Abdul Moulawas earned a reputation as a sort of Arabic Henry Miller. Mohamad now lives in Mexico. He fled Syria just before the Free Syrian Army and Assad’s forces decided to turn his country into a pile of...
Just Because You’re Bored Doesn’t Mean You Have to Be a Surrealist
Surrealism is pretty stupid. It’s always just about women with clocks for faces or animals that can use cell phones. It wants you to believe it deserves more attention for pretending everything about the world isn’t just a mess governed by math. Jason...
The Family Man Responds
You really want to take my children into the street? Go ahead, my wife needs some peace and I work nights all this week. Good luck with that, though. I seriously think you have no fucking idea what you're getting yourself into. First off my daughter is...
Dorothea Lasky’s Wild-Ass Shout-Brain
The first time I saw Dorothea Lasky she was standing in the middle of a crowded living room in Brooklyn wearing a dress and shouting into a loudspeaker. Her words go kindly for the throat. Whether she's writing about blood or going to hell or friends...
Emily Dickinson Was So Horny and Ready to Die
Paul Legault's new book, 'The Emily Dickinson Reader,' offers greatly condensed and often aphorism-like statements, termed here 'English-to-English' translations, each based on the 1,789 poems Dickinson produced in her lifetime. One by one he entirely...