A beautiful review of my book, Geographies...

Many, many thanks to writer July Westhale for this startlingly intelligent review of my chap/book Geographies of Soul and Taffeta. The review is in Lambda Literary. 

“Her [Sarai's] poems acknowledge the human capacity for boundary—and our inability to come to terms with fallibility. And while the poems speak to intimacies, to a constellation of personal intimacies that do the world a service in being global, they also speak to a state of people in crisis. Of people steering into the sun, unsure how they even got in the car in the first place, and where they’ll go next.”

Thanks to Posit and Susan Lewis (wherein "It Is True and Truth Sometimes Gets Me Published" - quoted above - was published; to Indolent Books and Michael Broder; and to William Johnson for marshalling/editing Lambda Literary. July Westhale is a writer to watch.

The Banal and the Profane

Quick mention of an article-ish by me on the Lambda Literary site.  What I want to mention is, IT'S THERE.

The Banal and the Profane: Sarah Sarai. 

It's all about me; me detailing a week in my life.  The best part is I was able to include a description of the Poetry Assembly we ran at the Bowery Poetry Club in January. The first such event since Zuccotti Park was de-peopled. (We = Occupy Poetry, a working group of OWS.)

I am fortunate to have been asked to transcribe an approximation of my life, and so I don't let Lambda down, if you want to read the article and then "Like" it, at the end, well, I wouldn't talk you out of it. (Browser-wise, liking is easier, I am told on Mozilla Firefox.)

And while you are there, explore the reviews and fabulous array of articles and events and insights.  subscribe to the Lambda mailing list, too. Send money, send love, send blessings. And more money and more love.

White People Are on my Mind These Days {a poem}

From the Spring/Summer 2011 issue of Mary, A Literary Quarterly {Publisher and Editor, William Johnson}. Thanks again to Wm. for inviting me participate, earlier this year, in a benefit reading at the Montauk House in Brooklyn. THAT was an evening.

{Note that when I read this poem to an audience, I preface it thusly: I know a mixed/interracial couple, both parties are named Robert.

Plus, the poem was conceived on a street corner in Soho, where my great-nephew and I discussed the demise of the Caucasian peoples.} I'm already exhausted. Poems shouldn't be introduced, right?

White People Are on my Mind These Days

We are going to disappear.
I say good riddance though
I'll miss myself.
Robert said Well what culture do they have.
The next day my answer.
Uh, the novels of Thomas Hardy,
farmers bent by winds off the Channel?

Do the dying move on with grace,
knowing there's new life and they're part of it
no matter?
Some hit the dirt oblivious to
lights strung up in the tunnel.
This is personal but what isn't.

Explorers were curious gold.
Conquistadors filed teeth for blood.
I can't figure out history.

I said we were on the way out and Robert's
Robert said Don't worry, we'll cause more damage
before we're gone.

My great-nephew promised to be kind,
as he looked into my eyes and
spotted the loving goddess, clawing to get out.

____
Sarah Sarai, Spring/Summer 2011 Mary, A Literary Quarterly {Publisher and Editor, William Johnson}