Posts filed under: Sammy’s Blog

Sammy’s Blog

Sammy’s Blog

Still we rise

My partner has been dreaming for the past week of plane crashes, then last night dreamt that the Buddha was dead, and concluded: It’s more important than ever that we keep kindness alive. Van Jones: “This was a whitelash against... Read More

Bandzoogle, WordFest, Verse Daily, Grace Note

Around the wompus on Banned Book Week… Verse Daily has chosen the poem Blue-footed Boobies from Sally Bliumis-Dunn’s Galapagos Poems. Van Garrett’s poems will be recognized and anthologized at Waco WordFest 2016, a ‘festival within a festival’ offering an exciting variety of events... Read More

Paper Thin

“The duty of critical writing is to listen to the noise of life without being deafened by it.” Teju Cole’s column on The Superhero Photographs of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Purple pancakes? See Van Garrett’s work in the Franklin Arts Center Resident... Read More

Nearly Naked

There’s a long, intriguing email exchange posted as an article in one of the NY Times magazines (T, their “Style” mag), between actress and director, Nathalie Portman, and her friend of fifteen years, the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. I got... Read More

Dear America’s Police

Let’s use accurate terms when we speak of the extra-judicial killing of people of color by American police whose salaries we pay. In any other country we’d call it state-sponsored terrorism. Roxanne Gay on Alton Sterling. Reginald Dwayne Betts on Tamir Rice. Jesse Williams’ beautiful speech... Read More

Ebb tide

Meghna Chakrabarti interviews David Blight on how Memorial Day started–a pivotal episode of our suppressed history, on a Charleston SC racetrack in 1865. Eileen Myles talks with Christopher Lyden about authentic diction, working class origins, gender fluidity and the democratic virtue of individualism... Read More

AWP & other human foibles

So often humans seem the least sensible creatures. We are speechless at the latest violence perpetrated by humans, against other humans; at the continuing agony of misery, of civilians fleeing violence, caught again in the literal and metaphorical crossfire. We gape as... Read More

Dear Bernie

Not everything is income inequality. Race is still an issue in 2016, and your resistance to examining this as distinct and worthy of your focus is why you are losing big right now. Don’t listen because it’s politically expedient—though it... Read More

With Friends Like These

Kelly Fordon’s chapbook, The Witness, is getting a lot of press. Here’s Kelly in Minerva Rising, talking about writing on the difficult subject of the pedophilia scandals in the Catholic church. She’s also interviewed in Speaking of Marvels, offering thoughts on... Read More

Skeletons & Celebrations

Two skeleton covers on the homepage, on chapbooks by Kelly Fordon and Bonne de Blas. You should read them both, and then for comic relief, try Chris Howey’s chap. (Click on the links to read Kelly’s description of writing The Witness;... Read More