"An Interrogatory" - In Which Isaiah Sees Seraphim as Did Sarah Sarai #poem

An Interrogatory 

     Nothing but smooth sailing.
     —The Isley Brothers

Those aren’t birds are they are they, 
are they?, or are they insects of an ilk

glowing and hovering hummingbird- 
like though not hummingbird, not bird,

no, I see it, that which I wasn’t seeing, 
a lingering phosphorescence, no

luminescence, oh!, it is incandescence 
and those are seraphim I see, I am

seeing seraphim, six-winged seraphim, 
seraphim having six wings or so said

Isaiah, a seraphim seer, two wings, 
fans over a mighty face, two enfolding feet

and two neon wings to lift them aloft, 
smoothly sail above prophesies for our

tangled times, two wings golden as honey 
is gold, as amber is gold, as transparency

is gold, carry us to a feared eternal now, 
tolerable, almost, when we sing along. 
____
Sarah Sarai. From Geographies of Soul and Taffeta, published by Indolent Books, 2016.

"the need to kill various elves" :Spencer Dew reviews my collection: #poetry

Spencer Dew is impressive. His review in decomP magazinE of my collection, Geographies of Soul and Taffeta, is no doubt the least of his accomplishments but in my life, the most important. His summations are the very “wry” he assigns me, and brilliantly so. I will let you read the review for yourself, and hope you will buy and read the book, as well. See below for links. 

Here is a taste of both book and review. “Rolling on the Floor Killing Elves,” begins with an apparition of discord: 

The elves, the freaking elves.    
They laugh at huge clumsy humans.
Big hands, big feet, and have you seen
our big bent stinky shoes! . . .

Spencer Dew sees the poem's link to the other poems in the book -  so gratifying to the poet - when he sums up by use of a few of my lines thusly: 

“It doesn't take brains, this thing called happiness,” but that doesn't make it any less elusive in a world of distractions, represented here by forks in mattresses, the underserved fame of snake, and the need to kill various elves. “When Trouble farts, you can smell it,” Sarai writes.

“...the need to kill various elves.” Who among us has not known that?   

Read the review, in decomP magazineE.
Buy Geographies, published by Indolent Books.
Check out Spencer Dew, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Centenary College of Louisiana, currently researching the Moorish Science Temple of American, and author of Songs of Insurgency; Here Is How It Happens; Learning for Revolution: The Work of Kathy Acker; and other books.

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.

I'm still a poet! And a teacher again! Professing writing!

Friends, Romans, frenemies,

This year: New people. New book. New body. New geology.
I need to take photos of the raw land I pass on the train in Jersey.
A track record of the Ice Age.

This past year has been whirlwindish in its fevered funneled tumultuousity. Multi-funneled, at that.

There was the final editing and input from and with my most wonderful publisher, Michael Broder of Indolent Books. And then, voila, Geographies of Soul and Taffeta, a tasty, delightful book of poems of which I am immensely proud. With which I am outrageously pleased.

Like the proper Southern belle it's not, Geographies had a debut, a coming out, as should an elegant and coy assemblage of poems. This, 3,000 miles from its home. This, at the Associated Writing Program's annual conference. This, in Los Angeles.  Along with the four other utterly wonderful books published by Indolent (by Robert Carr, Lisa Andrews, Joe Osmundson, Michael Broder), also debuting at the fete, Geographies sat upon a table, seductively fanning itself. Michael and myself and Robert Carr were behind the table, talking, selling, laughing.

Following that, I experienced a fallow period. Back in New York I felt, as they say, at odds. With myself and the world and certainly with poetry. It was what it was what it is which it was. After was-ing and is-ing ceased, I got my eyes checked and made the decision to get the operation I had feared, the second operation of my long life (the first involving appendix and an ovary).

Given my often hellish relationship with money and the fact my insurance company rep urged me to get the operation, promising they would cover it, and now is loathe to do so, laser surgery (not its grotesque predecessor, which involves cutting - cutting! - into the eye), was performed on one eye, then two weeks later, my other eye. My vision was made keener, crisper, not simply because cataracts were removed but because my surgeon surgeonated. He is a shining light and the first to be trained at Ear Eye Infirmary on laser surgery. So no matter what happens I now can read without glasses and get around as long as predators stay within five or so feet. After that, I need glasses.

And then, then being now, I begin teaching, or returned to teaching. Comp. Writing. Just comp. Just writing. Oh my gosh, my heart is open. I'm finding it so good to be with students again, and while I am teaching a ways away from my home, I am teaching, seeing new sights, commuting, helping. I am helping a group of people I want to help. I am doing service and being happy as a happy person can be.

So as of September 30, 2016, that's the deal in Sarah Sarai-world.

Poetry Squawks - at Indolent Books - a new weekly feature

from Harvard Museums' collection; what a beautiful squawking bird!; Jean-Baptiste Oudry, French, 1686-1755) 

The latest feature on the Indolent Books' website is a weekly-ish column - Poetry Squawk. A pretty great name, as is Indolent Books. In the column's first iteration, as "Writers on Writing," Poetry Squawk was intended to encourage poets to discuss means and methods native to their processes.

It still serves that function. But Michael Broder, Indolent's founder, broadened the scope of the column, if only by changing the name. Some squawks are loud. Here are links to a few poets' Squawks:

Jenna Lê's Secrecy and the Writing Life: "Like all kids who grow up to be writers, I was a daydreamer from the start."

Antoinette Brim's Why I Bury My Treasure: "I love trash T.V. Not the trash television of Kardashian fame. But, real trash—Flea Market Flip and Antiques Road Show trash—stuff found in dank basements."

B.B.P. Hosmillo's Towards an (Ins)Urgent Kind of Intimacy: "Once an American scholar in Japanese Studies shared a Japanese folktale with me."

To get Poetry Squawks delivered to your email, sign up on the Indolent site, here. Indolent Books is the publisher of Geographies of Soul and Taffeta, my second poetry collection.