A collection of poems sent as birthday presents, 2015 to 2024

In 2015, I began sending poems as birthday presents to my Facebook friends. At the beginning of 2024, I started making a list of all the poems that I had shared over the years. Since I often used poems for several days or even weeks in a row, especially when people liked them, the list has 797 poems in all (not 3653), almost all of them recently published online at the time I chose them. Here are the poets I chose most often: A. E. Stallings (13 times), C. Dale Young (12), Rae Armantrout (11), Yusef Komunyakaa (8), Adrienne Su (7), Terrance Hayes (7), Jane Hirshfield (6), and Matthew Sweeney (6). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 31 December 2024)

 

1.     A. B. Jackson, "The Cliff-Top Monastery"

2.     A. E. Stallings, "After a Greek Proverb"

3.     A. E. Stallings, "Containment"

4.     A. E. Stallings, "Daedal"

5.     A. E. Stallings, "Dyeing the Easter Eggs"

6.     A. E. Stallings, "Empathy"

7.     A. E. Stallings, "First Miracle"

8.     A. E. Stallings, "Lockdown Puzzle: Hokusai's Great Wave Off Kanagawa"

9.     A. E. Stallings, "Sea's fool" 

10.  A. E. Stallings, "Sunset, Wings"

11.  A. E. Stallings, "Swallows"

12.  A. E. Stallings, "The Barnacle"

13.  A. E. Stallings, "The Road Up"

14.  A. E. Stallings, "Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther"

15.  A. Van Jordan, "Such Sweet Thunder" 

16.  Abdulkareem Abdulkareem, "Enchanted Beach with Three Fluid Graces"

17.  Abriana Jette, "How Many Lovers"

18.  Abu Ibrahim, "The Day Breaks"

19.  Ada Limón, "Hell or High Water"

20.  Ada Limón, "While Everything Else Was Falling Apart"

21.  Adam Horovitz, "Into the Orkney Sky"

22.  Adam Zhou, "Anti-Confessions"

23.  Aden Thomas, "We were our Own Cartographers"

24.  Adrian Matejka, "The Explorer"

25.  Adrienne Su, "After the Dinner Party"

26.  Adrienne Su, "An Hour Later, You’re Hungry Again"

27.  Adrienne Su, "Eurydice"

28.  Adrienne Su, "Lychee Express"

29.  Adrienne Su, "On the Recommendation That American Adults Consume No More Than One-Quarter Cup of Rice, Twice a Week"

30.  Adrienne Su, "Savory Versus Sweet"

31.  Adrienne Su, "The Days"

32.  Aidan Forster, "Prom Song I: Carnival"

33.  Aimee Nezhukumatathil, "Dear Amy Nehzooukammyatootill"

34.  Aimee Nezhukumatathil, "Sea Church"

35.  Airea D. Matthews, "Anna Mae’s Woodlawn Baptist Choir Director"

36.  Al Maginnes, "Polite Society"

37.  Al Young, "Key to the Dollar Store"

38.  Alan Shapiro, "Frieze"

39.  Alberto Ríos, "Even-Keeled and At-Eased"

40.  Alfred Corn, "In the Grünewald Café"

41.  Alison Jones, "Astral Projection"

42.  Alison Prine, "Hush"

43.  Alistair Noon, "Escape from the Novinskaya Women’s Prison, Moscow, 1909"

44.  Alistair Noon, "The Fuzzy Dashes Fuzzy Dots"

45.  Aliyah Cotton, "Plastic Bag from Corner Store Laments the Self"

46.  Always Thomas, "I Think More in the Car than I Do at Work"

47.  Amanda Galvan Huynh, "Letter to My First Gold Hoops"

48.  Amanda Turner, "Frogs"

49.  Amanda Turner, "The Fish Hums to the Night and the Night Hums to the Fish"

50.  Amlanjyoti Goswami, "Village Mela"

51.  Amy Beeder, "The Jealous Minor Gods"

52.  Amy Zhou, "Ad for a Mountain"

53.  Andrea Cohen, "Something"

54.  Ange Mlinko, "Cottonmouth"

55.  Ange Mlinko, "The Fort"

56.  Angel Nafis, "Ghazal for Becoming Your Own Country"

57.  Angela Carr, "Silently, The Women Waited"

58.  Angela France, "The Cloud"

59.  Angela Narciso Torres, "If You Go to Bed Hungry"

60.  Angela Topping, "My Sister Poses as a Beatnik"

61.  Angie Macri, "What pleasure a question"

62.  Anna Jackson, "Bees, so many bees"

63.  Anna Sandy, "Wanting"

64.  Anne Kennedy, "The Arrivals"

65.  Anne Winters, "Two-Part Inventions" 

66.  Annie Kissack, "Delivery"

67.  Annie Stenzel, "Pilgrim’s list"

68.  Anthony Anaxagorou, "Text Message"

69.  Anthony Etherin, "Moby Dick (Palindrome-Sonnet, Petrarchan)"

70.  Anthony Lawrence, "Explaining Villanelles to an Alien" 

71.  Anthony Wilson, "Fresh Air" 

72.  Aracelis Girmay, "luam to her sibling"

73.  Aracelis Girmay, "luam/asa-luam"

74.  Aracelis Girmay, "to the sea"

75.  Aracelis Girmay, From “The Black Maria”

76.  Ari Tison, "The Storyteller Gets Her Name"

77.  Aria Aber, "Family Portrait"

78.  Ariel Francisco, "Seeing a UFO and Singing Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” into the Night at the Top of My Lungs"

79.  Arriel Vinson, "The Taste of Flight"

80.  Arthur Russell, "Salt Shaker"

81.  Arthur Sze, "Architect’s Watercolor"

82.  Arthur Sze, "Forage"

83.  Arthur Sze, "Midsummer"

84.  Arthur Sze, "Net Light"

85.  Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, "Aligarh"

86.  Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, "Lockdown Garden"

87.  Ashlee Haze, "temple"

88.  Ashleigh Young, "How I Get Ready"

89.  Ashley August, "Superstition"

90.  Ashley Crout, "An Uninterrupted View of the Moon"

91.  Atar Hadari, "The Country in Which I Was Born"

92.  Atsuro Riley, "Moth"

93.  Augusta Laurel Funk, "Still Life On The First Day Of Driving Home"

94.  Austin Smith, "The Leaves"

95.  Barbara Guest, "Finnish Opera"

96.  Belinda Rimmer, "Uprooted"

97.  Ben Banyard, "Experiment"

98.  Ben Banyard, "Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot"

99.  Ben Seanor, "Some Anniversary"

100.                 Bernadette Hall, "a little hopeful song"

101.                 Bert Meyers, "Signature"

102.                 Bert Meyers, "With Animals"

103.                 Bethany W. Pope, "Hippocampus and Amygdala"

104.                 Beverley Bie Brahic, "Apple Thieves"

105.                 Bianca Stone, "Marcus Aurelius"

106.                 Billy Collins, "Cosmology"

107.                 Billy Collins, "Study in Orange and White"

108.                 Billy Ramsell, "Sound"

109.                 Bob Hicok, "Kriah"

110.                 Bob Hicok, "Postcard"

111.                 Brendan Galvin, "An Egg Island Equinox"

112.                 Brian Docherty, "Serenity"

113.                 Brian Simoneau, "Ars Poetica with Birds"

114.                 Brian Simoneau, "I Dreamed Freddie Mercury's Legs"

115.                 Brian Volck, "Snowbirds"

116.                 Bruce Bond, "Bill Frisell" 

117.                 Bunny Moon, "A Flirtation Gone Awry"

118.                 C. Dale Young, "An Ordinary Boy"

119.                 C. Dale Young, "As If from the Sea"

120.                 C. Dale Young, "Henceforth" 

121.                 C. Dale Young, "In Plain Sight"

122.                 C. Dale Young, "Las Palmas Reales"

123.                 C. Dale Young, "On Nomenclature"

124.                 C. Dale Young, "Portrait in Burnt Orange and Bitter Almonds"

125.                 C. Dale Young, "Portrait in Nightshade and Delayed Translation"

126.                 C. Dale Young, "Scales"

127.                 C. Dale Young, "Sunday Afternoon"

128.                 C. Dale Young, "The Bridge"

129.                 C. Dale Young, "Transept"

130.                 Caitriona O'Reilly, "The Airship Era"

131.                 Calvin Forbes, "Momma Said"

132.                 Calvin Forbes, "The Card Players"

133.                 Camille T. Dungy, "Frequently Asked Questions: 10"

134.                 Carl Dennis, "Bottle of Wine"

135.                 Carl Dennis, "Two Lives"

136.                 Carl Phillips, "Brothers in Arms"

137.                 Carl Phillips, "Monomoy"

138.                 Carl Phillips, "Stray" 

139.                 Carl Phillips, "To Be Worn Openly at the Wrist, or at the Chest and Hidden"

140.                 Carl Phillips, "Wild is the Wind"

141.                 Carla Panciera, "Someone Asks Me to Consider Time"

142.                 Caroline Bird, "Megan Married Herself"

143.                 Cath Drake, "A Respectable Life"

144.                 Catherine Barnett, "Idee Fixe"

145.                 Catherine Barnett, "Restricted Fragile Materials"

146.                 Catherine Broadwall, "Wild Caraway"

147.                 Cathryn Shea, "A Price Favorable to the Buyer"

148.                 Cathy Song, "Snow in the Morning"

149.                 Charlotte Eichler, "Survivors"

150.                 Chase Troxell, "The Photograph of My Father"

151.                 Chase Twichell, "Lullabies of Elsewhere"

152.                 Cheryl Pearson, "The Mermaid Aquarium"

153.                 Cheryl Slover-Linett, "Ode to Muffins"

154.                 Cheyenne McIntosh, "Uncle Lazarus has a magic trick"

155.                 Christian Donovan, "Small hours chat"

156.                 Christian Sammartino, "How Aquarius Delivered Me to My Mother"

157.                 Christian Sammartino, "Self-Portrait as a Maple Tree"

158.                 Christine Vial, "Superman On The Victoria Line"

159.                 Christopher Crawford, "Opening the Gym"

160.                 Cian Ferriter, "West"

161.                 Claire Askew, "The lucky little girls"

162.                 Claire Crowther, "Creature"

163.                 Claire Trévien, "I discovered in this town more than a cliff"

164.                 Claire Walker,"A Well-Stoked Blaze"

165.                 Clare Jones, "The hard part"

166.                 Claudia Buckholts, "Antarctic Passage"

167.                 Claudia Emerson, "Bee"

168.                 Claudine Toutoungi, "Future Perfect"

169.                 Clay Matthews, "Psalm"

170.                 Cortney Lamar Charleston, "Devotion ('I Am on the Battlefield for My Lord')"

171.                 Craig Leland Sparks, "The Social Contract of Tupperware"

172.                 Craig Morgan Teicher, "Son"

173.                 Craig Santos Perez, "Halloween in the Anthropocene, 2015" 

174.                 D. A. Powell, "cruel, cruel summer"

175.                 D. A. Powell, "Not Overlooking the Kum & Go"

176.                 Daisy Fried, "No God in Us but Song"

177.                 Danez Smith, "The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar"

178.                 Danez Smith, From “summer, somewhere”

179.                 Daniel Bennett, "Cinema"

180.                 Danielle Hope, "Mrs Uomo visits Myddelton House Gardens"

181.                 Danni Quintos, "First Milk" 

182.                 Dante Micheaux, "Theologies for Korah"

183.                 Danusha Laméris, "Night Bird"

184.                 Daryl Muranaka, "Tether"

185.                 David B. Prather, "Journal Entry: Germination" 

186.                 David Cooke, "The Wren Boy"

187.                 David Hernandez, "We’re This and We’re That, Aren’t We?"

188.                 David J. Thompson, "It Rains"

189.                 David J. Thompson, "Tiramisu"

190.                 David Kirby, "Man Catches Baby"

191.                 David Shapiro, "Gratuitous Oranges"

192.                 Deborah Allbritain, "My Past Life as a Man"

193.                 Declan Ryan, "Rope-a-Dope"

194.                 Denise Duhamel, "I Have Slept in Many Places"

195.                 Dennis Cooper, "ABBA"

196.                 Devin Johnston, "Dragons"

197.                 Diane Seuss, "Bobby" 

198.                 Diane Seuss, "Romantic Poetry"

199.                 Didi Jackson, "Mercy"

200.                 Dilruba Ahmed, "Apella"

201.                 Donika Kelly, "Desire Path: Sequoia" 

202.                 Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, "Kissing the Opelu"

203.                 Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, "Wākea’s Blue Teeth (a super bowl poem)"

204.                 Dorianne Laux, "Brother"

205.                 Dorianne Laux, "Moon Ghazal"

206.                 Dorianne Laux, "Peach"

207.                 Dorothy Chan, "Ode to Chinese Superstitions, Haircuts, and Being a Girl"

208.                 Dorothy Chan, "Triple Sonnet Because Boy, You’re Starstruck and I’m a Wonder"

209.                 Douglas Nordfors, "A Walk through Central Park"

210.               Dudley Randall, "Booker T. and W.E.B."

211.                 Durs Grünbein, "Asked what it is", translated by Karen Leeder

212.                 Ed Hack, "Up from Sleep"

213.                 Ed Roberson, "Rosetta Stone Serious Study of Love Song (from the British Museum)"

214.                 Eleanor Wilner, "Ars Poetica"

215.                 Elena Karina Byrne, "During the Vietnam War"

216.                 Eliot North, "Homunculus"

217.                 Elise Paschen, "The Tree Agreement"

218.                 Elizabeth Campbell, From "Semele"

219.                 Elizabeth Crowell, "Ode to the Bottom of My Son’s Backpack on the Occasion of His Twelfth Birthday"

220.                 Elizabeth Worthen, "How it begins"

221.                 Ellen Bass, "Laundry"

222.                 Emi Maeda, "Pickled Plums"

223.                 Emily Berry, "No Name"

224.                 Emily Jungmin Yoon, "Bell Theory"

225.                 Emma Lee, "Before our meal"

226.                 Emma Lee, "Snow’s Reset"

227.                 Eric Gansworth, "Eel"

228.                 Estevam Coelho, "Song of a Girl Going to Bathe", translated by Richard Zenith

229.                 Evie Shockley, "senzo"

230.                 Fady Joudah, "The Floor Is Yours"

231.                 Faith Wilson, "lynette #1"

232.                 Federico Garcia Lorca, "Ballad of the Moon Moon", translated by Sarah Arvio

233.                 Federico García Lorca, "Two Evening Moons", translated by Sarah Arvio

234.                 Fiona Pitt-Kethley, "Burnt Barite"

235.                 Florence Lenaers, "On Laundry Day"

236.                 francine j. harris, "first, take a fistful of hair"

237.                 francine j. harris, "Portrait of My Father Mocking Sammy Davis Jr."

238.                 Frank Dullaghan, "The Big Outside"

239.                 Frank Lima, "Bright Blue Self-Portrait"

240.                 Frank Lima, "Felonies and Arias of the Heart"

241.                 Franny Choi, "Choi Jeong Min"

242.                 Franny Choi, "What a Cyborg Wants"

243.                 G. C. Waldrep, "St. Melangell’s Day, Eastnor ( II )"

244.                 Gareth Writer-Davies, "Cows"

245.                 Gayatri Rajan, "Ramshackle Waltz"

246.                 Geoffrey Brock, "Bryant Park at Dusk"

247.                 Geoffrey Brock, "Flesh of John Brown's Flesh: 2 December 1859"

248.                 Geoffrey Brock, "Forces of Nature"

249.                 Geoffrey Brock, "Midwinter Letter"

250.                 Geoffrey Brock, "The Beautiful Animal"

251.                 George Kalamaras, "Blown Away by 'Blues' from Bish at the Bank"

252.                 George Starbuck, "Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree"

253.                 Gillian Allnutt, "abutment"

254.                 Gillian Allnutt, "magdalen"

255.                 Gina Tomaine, "Old Story"

256.                 Ginny Saunders, "The Biologist, the Poet and the Silverfish"

257.                 Graham Barnhart, "Breach"

258.                 Gregory Pardlo, "The Wedding Planners"

259.                 Gretchen Marquette, "Want"

260.                 Gwen Carlson, "Postpartum Omens"

261.                 Hai-Dang Phan, "My Father’s 'Norton Introduction to Literature,' Third Edition (1981)"

262.                 Hannah Linden, "The Change"

263.                 Hannah Lowe, "The Stork"

264.                 Hannah Stone, "Lisbon Minibreak"

265.                 Hannah VanderHart, "Poem with a Fairy Tale, Nesting Hawks and Space"

266.                 Harnidh Kaur, "Hold The Sugar"

267.                 Heather Christle, "On a Walk"

268.                 Heidi Beck, "While driving to Ikea for a laundry basket"

269.                 Helen Mort, "Ablation"

270.                 Helen Mort, "Push the button, hear the sound"

271.                 Helen Mort, "Scale"

272.                 Henri Cole, "107 Water Street"

273.                 Hera Lindsay Bird, "Pyramid Scheme"

274.                 Hieu Minh Nguyen, "Litany for the Animals Who Run from Me"

275.                 Hilary Robinson, "Pineapple Upside-Down Cake"

276.                 Hinemoana Baker, "Narcissist Advice Column"

277.                 Hongwei Bao, "Hair in the Basin"

278.                 Howard Altmann, "Apertures" 

279.                 Ian Glass, "New Trees"

280.                 Ian Heffernan, "The Journey in"

281.                 Ilyse Kusnetz, "How to Build a Stradivarius"

282.                 Imogen Forster, "At the Station"

283.                 Imogen Forster, "Crocodile in the Underground"

284.                 Ina Cariño, "Birthstone"

285.                 Ion Corcos, "Elizabeth Starts Again with a Little Taste of Honey"

286.                 Isabel Rogers, "Grave robbing"

287.                 J. Estanislao Lopez, "False Cognates"

288.                 Jack Underwood, "I’m on the boating lake with Sean"

289.                 Jack Underwood, "Instead of Bad News about a Person I Love"

290.                 Jack Underwood, "Totem Pole"

291.                 Jackie Sabbagh, "Female CEO"

292.                 Jackie Wills, "Dressmaker at the market"

293.                 Jaclyn Dwyer, "Some People Get Only One Heart"

294.                 Jacob Shores-Argüello, "Pilgrims"

295.                 Jacob Shores-Argüello, "Reception"

296.                 Jacob Stratman, "A poem for my sons when they’ve been disciplined"

297.                 Jacqueline Allen Trimble, "The Language of Joy" 

298.                 Jacqueline Jones LaMon, "Socratic" 

299.                 Jake Adam York, "In Little Rock"

300.                 Jamaal May, "Respiration"

301.                 James Brown, "Waiheke"

302.                 James Lineberger, "The Cry of the Wild Rhino"

303.                 Jan Beatty, "Asylum"

304.                 Jan Beatty, "Stricken"

305.                 Jan Hutchison, "Five Ways of Parting"

306.                 Jane Frank, "Counting Sheep"

307.                 Jane Hirshfield, "I am asked a question."

308.                 Jane Hirshfield, "I Was Not, Among My Kind, Distinctive"

309.                 Jane Hirshfield, "Mountainal"

310.                 Jane Hirshfield, "Souvenir"

311.                 Jane Hirshfield, "Two Kerosene Lanterns"

312.                 Jane Hirshfield, "Wood. Salt. Tin"

313.                 Jane Mead, "The Outstretched Earth"

314.                 Jane Yeh, "A Short History of Silence"

315.                 Janet McAdams, "Tiger on the Shoulder"

316.                 Jaswinder Bolina, "Ancestral Poem"

317.                 Javier Zamora, "Second Attempt Crossing"

318.                 Javier Zamora, "The Pier of La Herradura"

319.                 Jaya Savige, "Carousel"

320.                 Jean Atkin, "Finding the hill again"

321.                 Jeanette Burton, "Mum, I’m worried about your dairy intake"

322.                 Jeannine Hall Gailey, "American Origins"

323.                 Jeannine Hall Gailey, "It Was No Longer Summer"

324.                 Jeannine Hall Gailey, "Spellcaster"

325.                 Jee Leong Koh, "The Christian" 

326.                 Jee Leong Koh, "The Editor" 

327.                 Jeffrey Hanson, "About Boys Jumping"

328.                 Jeffrey Hanson, "What Can You Do with a Drunken Sailor?"

329.                 Jeffrey Winter, "Church Party"

330.                 Jennifer Lee Novotney, "Prayer Shawl"

331.                 Jenny Bornholdt, "Flight"

332.                 Jenny George, "Tin Bucket"

333.                 Jenny Xie, "Metamorphosis"

334.                 Jeremy Wikeley, "First the Music and then the Words"

335.                 Jericho Brown, "Aerial View"

336.                 Jessica (Tyner) Mehta, "How many crows make a murder?"

337.                 Jessica Greenbaum, "I Had Just Hung Up from Talking to You"

338.                 Jessica Greenbaum, "Route 684, Southbound Rest Stop"

339.                 Jessica Spaeth, "Ode to the Stars" 

340.                 Jill Alexander Essbaum, "She Spent a Year Hallucinating Birds"

341.                 Jill Sharp, "Bucket Lists"

342.                 Jim C Wilson, "Patience"

343.                 Joan Larkin, "Banjo, Dulcimer, Fiddle"

344.                 Joan Larkin, "Chain of Events"

345.                 Joan Michelson, "Tom’s Poem"

346.                 Joan Nayiyuk Kane, "Epithalamia"

347.                 Joanna Suzanne Lee, "A word, like a key, is a little thing to break"

348.                 Joanna Suzanne Lee, "Wake"

349.                 Joanne Diaz, "Psychomachia"

350.                 Joe Williams, "The Day I Turned Into a Bear"

351.                 Joel Dias-Porter, "Turning the Tables"

352.                 John David Muth, "The Man from Chechnya"

353.                 John Gallaher, "And the Moon on Its Stem Will Steal You Away"

354.                 John Koethe, "A Private Singularity"

355.                 John Koethe, "Murray Gell-Mann"

356.                 John Koethe, "The Divinity Within"

357.                 John McCullough, "Xanthic"

358.                 John Murillo, "Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds"

359.                 John Shoptaw, "For the Birds"

360.                 John Short, "Chocolate Snowman"

361.                 Jon Alex Miller, "Aum" 

362.                 Jon Miller, "35mm"

363.                 Jonathan Humble, "Derek’s Thoughts on Bodies in Motion"

364.                 Jonathan Humble, "Red Pencil"

365.                 Jonathan Taylor, "Minor Prophet"

366.                 Jose Hernandez Diaz, "Pan Dulce"

367.                 Jose Hernandez Diaz, "Tecolote"

368.                 Joseph Millar, "Ars Poetica 3"

369.                 Josephine Balmer, "Shadowtime"

370.                 Joshua Bennett, "Owed to Pedagogy"

371.                 Joy Harjo, "Redbird Love"

372.                 Joy Ladin, "Forgetting"

373.                 JR Walsh, "Voluntary"

374.                 Julia Stothard, "Our House"

375.                 Julian Stannard, "Donut"

376.                 Justin Karcher, "Consider Yourself Lucky That Someone Loves You the Same Way They Love the World"

377.                 Justin Karcher, "We Heal in Dreams and Don’t Even Know It"

378.                 Justin Quinn, "Adelsö"

379.                 Kareem Tayyar, "Dream Journal" 

380.                 Kareem Tayyar, "Personal History"

381.                 Karen An-hwei Lee, "On June Blossoming in June"

382.                 Karen Smith, "Sisters"

383.                 Kate Farrell, "Master Class"

384.                 Kate Gaskin, "Domestic Taxonomy"

385.                 Kate Gaskin, "The Bat"

386.                 Kate Potts, "Catalogue of Strange Fish"

387.                 Katherine Fallon, "Marguerite"

388.                 Katherine Smith, "Miracle"

389.                 Katherine Stansfield, "Amy, how to write poems"

390.                 Katherine Stansfield, "Mars Girl"

391.                 Kathleen Ossip, "Old Strange Book"

392.                 Kathryn Maris, "How to Be a Dream Girl Not a Doormat about the 'Ex'"

393.                 Kathy Engel, "Now I Pray"

394.                 Kathy Fagan, "School" 

395.                 Katie Peterson, "A Citizen"

396.                 Katy Luxem, "On the Eve of Your Ninth Birthday"

397.                 Katy Luxem, "To Be Ten"

398.                 Kayleb Rae Candrilli, "Sestina Written as Though Genesis"

399.                 Keith Leonard, "Statement of Teaching Philosophy"

400.                 Kendra DeColo, "I am Thinking About the Movie Con Air"

401.                 Kenneth Pobo, "At the State Fair"

402.                 Kenneth Pobo, "Diner"

403.                 Kevin Graham, "Poem for Oscar with Stars in it"

404.                 Kevin J.B. O’Connor, "Fall"

405.                 Kevin J.B. O’Connor, "Troubadours"

406.                 Kevin Young, "Diptych" 

407.                 Khadjiah Johnson, "The Emmy Goes to the Seagull, Flying off with a Hot Wing… in Front of the Chicken Spot?"

408.                 Khaled Mattawa, "Migrant Serenade"

409.                 Khaled Mattawa, "The Boat Merchant’s Wife"

410.                 Kiandra Jimenez, "Halcyon Kitchen"

411.                 Kiki Petrosino, "Nursery"

412.                 Kimiko Hahn, "Not Nothing Again"

413.                 Kimiko Hahn, "On Pleasing"

414.                 Kirmen Uribe, "Back from the Cannery"

415.                 Kit Fan, "Hokkaido"

416.                 Ko Un, "Asking the Way", translated by Suji Kwock Kim and Sunja Kim Kwock

417.                 Komal Mathew, "For the Shepherd Who Is Also the Path the Sun Makes in Daytime"

418.                 Kristen Tracy, "Vampires Today"

419.                 Krystyna Dąbrowska, "Spirit of the Forest", translated by Karen Kovacik

420.                 Kunjana Parashar, "Here is to Everything"

421.                 Kwame Dawes, "Before Winter"

422.                 Kwame Dawes, "Horns"

423.                 Kwame Dawes, "Ode to the Clothesline"

424.                 Kwame Dawes, "Vagrants and Loiterers"

425.                 Kwame Opoku-Duku, "sonnet for the day of the lord" 

426.                 Kyle Dargan, "Dear Echo"

427.                 Kyle Dargan, "Olympic Drive"

428.                 L. I. Henley, "It’s true I seen them kissing (Tess)"

429.                 Laboni Islam, "Collecting Hail"

430.                 Langston Hughes, "Song for Billie Holiday"

431.                 Lani O'Hanlon, "Back Up Quick They’re Hippies

432.                 Lani O'Hanlon, "This Other Thing"

433.                 Larry D. Thacker, "Reservations"

434.                 Laura Kasischke, "Champagne"

435.                 Laura Kasischke, "Talisman

436.                 Laura Stott, "The Bear's Claw" 

437.                 Lauren Camp, "The Finest Light"

438.                 Lauren K. Alleyne, "Gretel As Crone" 

439.                 Lauren K. Alleyne, "Gretel’s Confession"

440.                 Lawrence Joseph, "On Utopia Parkway"

441.                 Leah Umansky, "Khaleesi Says"

442.                 Lehua M. Taitano, "One Kind of Hunger"

443.                 Leia K. Bradley, "My Gender Is a Red Stiletto or Grocery Store Feet"

444.                 Lilace Mellin Guignard, "Lullaby in Fracktown"

445.                 Lis Sanchez, "Manuel Sánchez. Our Demand"

446.                 Lisa Jarnot, "The Most Perfect Hill"

447.                 Livvy Hanks, "Time and again"

448.                 Liz Berry, "Oh Sweethearts"

449.                 Lucy Tunstall, "Kaftan"

450.                 Lucy Tunstall, "The Patient" 

451.                 Lucy Wainger, "Jiro Dreams of Sushi"

452.                 Luisa Muradyan, "Woman Posting in Parenting Forum"

453.                 Luke Davies, "Antiphons of the Known World"

454.                 Luke Davies, "Heisenberg Saying Goodbye to Mum at Lilyfield"

455.                 Lupe Mendez, "Rules at the Juan Marcos Huelga School (Even the Unspoken Ones)"

456.                 Lupita Eyde-Tucker, "Mis Gacelas"

457.                 Lynn Melnick, "Twelve"

458.                 M. Bartley Seigel, "In the Bone-Cracking Cold"

459.                 M. J. Iuppa, "Report If There Is Something Wrong"

460.                 Maddie Marriott, "Golden Gate"

461.                 Mai Der Vang, "After All Have Gone"

462.                 Mairead Small Staid, "In Defense of a Long Engagement"

463.                 Major Jackson, "Aubade"

464.                 Major Jackson, "Letter to Brooks: Spring Garden"

465.                 Major Jackson, "Superfluities"

466.                 Major Jackson, "Urban Renewal XVIII"

467.                 Makenzie Smith, "Baker"

468.                 Makenzie Smith, "Good Girl’s Guide to Exercising Inner (and Outer) Demons"

469.                 Marc Frazier, "Cape Cod Evening"

470.                 Marcus Wicker, "Conjecture on the Stained Glass Image of White Christ at Ebenezer Baptist Church"

471.                 Margaret Danner, "The Convert"

472.                 Maria Hummel, "Recess"

473.                 Maria Hummel, "Toy Room"

474.                 Maria Taylor, "My Mother’s Notebook for English Lessons"

475.                 Marilyn Nelson, "The Boley Rodeo"

476.                 Marilyn Schotland, "At my great-grandfather’s hundredth birthday party"

477.                 Marilyn Schotland, "My Grandfather was a Neurosurgeon Who Operated on Che Guevara"

478.                 Marilyn Schottland, "Rain (4:33)"

479.                 Mario Meléndez, "Future Memories", translated by Eloisa Amezcua

480.                 Marion McCready, "Her Hair is a Landscape of its Own"

481.                 Marion McCready, "I Fall in Love with a Tree Everywhere I Go"

482.                 Marion McCready, "March Snow"

483.                 Marion McCready, "The Complicated Sex Life of Primula ..."

484.                 Marion McCready, "The Orange Trees of Altea"

485.                 Marisa P. Clark, "Lisa Being Born"

486.                 Mark Granier, "Feathers"

487.                 Mark Valentine, "The Road to Chalvington at Dusk"

488.                 Mark Waldron, "I wish I loved lawnmowers"

489.                 Mark Waldron, "Poor light"

490.                 Mark Waldron, "The Stick"

491.                 Martin Bennett, "Ella In Lockdown, Rome, 2021"

492.                 Martín Espada, "Letter to My Father"

493.                 Martín Espada, "Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window"

494.                 Martín Espada, "The Monster in the Lake"

495.                 Mary Franklin, "Lost and Found"

496.                 Mary Franklin, "The woman in number four"

497.                 Mary Jo Salter, "Advent"

498.                 Mary Morris, "Yellowtail"

499.                 Mary Noonan, "Virgin of the Rocks"

500.                 Mary Ruefle, "Genesis"

501.                 Mary Ruefle, "Singular Dream"

502.                 Mary Ruefle, "Super Bowl"

503.                 Matthew David Manning, "Folding"

504.                 Matthew James Friday, "Elegy for the Caught Fish"

505.                 Matthew Olzmann, "Blake Griffin Dunks Over A Car"

506.                 Matthew Olzmann, "Letter to the Person Who, During the Q&A Session After the Reading, Asked for Career Advice"

507.                 Matthew Olzmann, "Letter Written While Waiting in Line at Comic Con"

508.                 Matthew Olzmann, "My Invisible Horse and the Speed of Human Decency"

509.                 Matthew Olzmann, "Your Moon-Eating Dog Is About to Kill My Favorite Elf Warrior"

510.                 Matthew Paul, "Reversing the Charges"

511.                 Matthew Stewart, "Fútbol Sala"

512.                 Matthew Sweeney, "Dialogue with an Artist"

513.                 Matthew Sweeney, "Five Yellow Roses"

514.                 Matthew Sweeney, "Huge Mirrors"

515.                 Matthew Sweeney, "Les Saltimbanques"

516.                 Matthew Sweeney, "Pommes Sautées"

517.                 Matthew Sweeney, "The Bottle Gatherer"

518.                 Meagan Chandler, "The Horse Trail"

519.                 Meg Boyles, "Verona"

520.                 Meg Day, "Portrait of My Gender as [Inaudible]"

521.                 Megan Denton, "A Girl and Her Fireplace"

522.                 Melissa Fite Johnson, "After the Beep"

523.                 Melissa Fite Johnson, "Snapshot"

524.                 Melissa Range, "Ofermod"

525.                 Mia Ayumi Malhotra, "Letter to My Daughter"

526.                 Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, "Workshop exercise"

527.                 Michael Durack, "Keepers"

528.                 Michael Hettich, "The House"

529.                 Michael Julian Arnett, "Guarded Sails"

530.                 Michael Kleber-Diggs, "Structural Fatigue"

531.                 Michael Mark, "All Today I Lived"

532.                 Michael Robbins, "Know It All"

533.                 Michael Symmons Roberts, "Nativity Scene in Bullet-Time"

534.                 Michelle Mitchell-Foust, "Camera Eulogia"

535.                 Mike Gallagher, "The English Papers"

536.                 Mike James, "Letter to Joe Arcangelini, On Another Coast"

537.                 Miller Oberman, "Joy"

538.                 Momtaza Mehri, "Glory Be to the Gang Gang Gang"

539.                 Monica Rico, "Elegy for My Quinceañera"

540.                 Monica Sok, "ABC for Refugees"

541.                 Morri Creech, "Allegory"

542.                 Moya Pacey, "Birders"

543.                 Muna Abdulahi, "ESL"

544.                 Murray Edmond, "What to Do If You Find a Dead Hobbit in Your Garden"

545.                 Nadra Mabrouk, "Brother as Younger Self, Humming"

546.                 Nancy Campbell, "Pkhali"

547.                 Nancy Mattson, "Epistemology for Quizmasters"

548.                 Naomi Shihab Nye, "Burning the Old Year"

549.                 Natalie Rose Richardson, "Cure and Curry"

550.                 Natalie Scott, "A Boy with Parrot-blue Hair"

551.                 Natalie Shapero, "An Example"

552.                 Natalie Shapero, "Sunshower"

553.                 Natalie Shaw, "Eleven Days"

554.                 Nate Marshall, "Oregon Trail"

555.                 Niall Campbell, "The Apiary at Night"

556.                 Niall Campbell, "The Rainmaker"

557.                 Nick Browne, "The Road to Ethiopia"

558.                 Nicole Byrne, "Just Before 2AM"

559.                 Nikki Giovanni, "Bay Leaves"

560.                 Nikki Giovanni, "Her Dreams #2 (Runner-Up)"

561.                 Nikki Giovanni, "Her Dreams"

562.                 Nikki Wallschlaeger, "Rogue Corn" 

563.                 Noah Stetzer, "Stranger Jelly"

564.                 Nome Emeka Patrick, "Smile"

565.                 Nour Al Ghraowi, "Truth is I would like to escape myself"

566.                 Nyah Hardmon, "Cocoon" 

567.                 Olga Dermott-Bond, "Still No Room At The Inn"

568.                 Oliver Comins, "Fish Pie"

569.                 Oliver de la Paz, "Autism Screening Questionnaire — Speech and Language Delay"

570.                 Oliver de la Paz, "You Must Lift Your Son’s Languid Body"

571.                 Padraig Rooney, "Making is finding, troubadours know"

572.                 Paisley Rekdal, "Driving to Santa Fe"

573.                 Pamela Job, "Dear Ocean"

574.                 Partridge Boswell, "Upon Hearing Amy Winehouse at St. James’ Church in Dingle"

575.                 Pat Edwards, "Watching the woodpecker at 5.30 am"

576.                 Patricia Lockwood, "Government Spending"

577.                 Patricia Lockwood, "Jewel Thief Movie"

578.                 Patricia Smith, "A Street in Lawndale"

579.                 Patricia Zylius, "Mind’s Eye"

580.                 Patrick Cotter, "Time Traveler"

581.                 Patrick Deeley, "From the Benedictine Abbey at Schaffhausen"

582.                 Patrick Deeley, "The Speed of the Earth"

583.                 Patrick Dundon, "Gratitude"

584.                 Paul Stephenson, "Banisters"

585.                 Paul Stephenson, "Double French"

586.                 Paul Stephenson, "The Barbecue (Royal Wedding, 1981)" 

587.                 Paul Stephenson, "The Conversation"

588.                 Paula Cunningham, "At St. Malachy’s Church"

589.                 Penelope Shuttle, "Orchard End, or The Laboratory of Continuous Effort"

590.                 Peter Daniels, "Answers"

591.                 Peter J Donnelly, "Next Time I Go To Dunster"

592.                 Peter Mason, "Crush 1999" 

593.                 Peter Munro, "The Wind’s Measure"

594.                 Peter Richards, "Breakfast Club Wall"

595.                 Phil Wood, "Tides"

596.                 Philip Levine, "The Second Going"

597.                 Phillip B. Williams, "Vision in Which the Final Blackbird Disappears"

598.                 Phillis Levin, "Cloud Fishing"

599.                 Phyllis McGinley, "Portrait of Girl with Comic Book"

600.                 Pierluigi Cappello, "Staying", translated by Todd Portnowitz

601.                 Pippa Little, "The summer I lived as a wolf"

602.                 Quraysh Ali Lansana, "1972 ford ltd"

603.                 Rachael Boast, "Disfigurations"

604.                 Rachel Beachy, "What I Want to Tell My Daughter as I Watch Her Falling"

605.                 Rachel Galvin, "After the War"

606.                 Rachel Hadas, "A Poultice" 

607.                 Rachel Hadas, "Love and Dread"

608.                 Rachel Hadas, "Triolets in the Argolid"

609.                 Rachel Plummer, "The Iron Children"

610.                 Rae Armantrout, "Asymmetries"

611.                 Rae Armantrout, "Background Information"

612.                 Rae Armantrout, "Elsewhere"

613.                 Rae Armantrout, "Gist"

614.                 Rae Armantrout, "How to Disappear"

615.                 Rae Armantrout, "Natural Histories"

616.                 Rae Armantrout, "Object Lesson"

617.                 Rae Armantrout, "Pinocchio" 

618.                 Rae Armantrout, "Project"

619.                 Rae Armantrout, "The Corner"

620.                 Rae Armantrout, "Twilight"

621.                 Randall Mann, "Almost"

622.                 Raymond Antrobus, "Echo"

623.                 Raymond Antrobus, "Scratched Light"

624.                 Rebecca Guess Cantor, "12 Trees"

625.                 Rebecca Hazelton, "Sexy Is the Least Interesting"

626.                 Rebecca Hazelton, "The Good in the Evil World"

627.                 Rebecca Lehmann, "Come Down Spring"

628.                 Regie Cabico, "Daylight Saving Time Flies Like an Instagram of a Weasel Riding a Woodpecker & You Feel Everything Will Be Alright"

629.                 Richard Cole, "Deepwater Horizon"

630.                 Richard Wilbur, "Advice to a Prophet"

631.                 Richie McCaffery, "Clutter"

632.                 Richie McCaffery, "Dead Letter" 

633.                 Richie McCaffery, "Recalibration"

634.                 Rick Barot, "Goodwill"

635.                 Rick Barot, "Ode with Interruptions"

636.                 Rick Barot, "The Boy with a Flower Behind His Ear"

637.                 Rick Barot, "The Flea"

638.                 Ricky Garni, "My First Wife"

639.                 Rita Dove, "From the Sidelines"

640.                 Rita Dove, "Voiceover"

641.                 Riya Mokashi, "Bones"

642.                 Robert Adamson, "Australasian Darters"

643.                 Robert Adamson, "Winter, Hospital Bed"

644.                 Robert Darken, "Billions and Billions Served"

645.                 Robert Etty, "The Bones"

646.                 Robert Fanning, "Philadelphia Rooftop"

647.                 Robert Hasselblad, "The King of Montana"

648.                 Robert Pinsky, "Samurai Song"

649.                 Robert Sullivan, "Hello Great North Road"

650.                 Robert Sullivan, "Maui’s Mission"

651.                 Robert Wrigley, "Chorus"

652.                 Robert Wrigley, "Might Have Been July, Might Have Been December"

653.                 Robin Rosen Chang, "From the Rocking Chair on the Front Porch of an Airbnb in Belgrade, Montana"

654.                 Rod Whitworth, "Technology"

655.                 Rodd Whelpley, "First thing each morning"

656.                 Rodney Wood, "Alive"

657.                 Rodney Wood, "Vermillion"

658.                 Ron Gibson, Jr., "Washelli"

659.                 Ross Wilson, "Au'um"

660.                 Ross Wilson, "Echo"

661.                 Roy Marshall, "Bonjour Tristesse"

662.                 Roy Marshall, "This is the Day"

663.                 Roy McFarlane, "Papers"

664.                 Ruth Sharman, "Tellisford Weir"

665.                 Ruth Stacey, "No Flags, Territory and War"

666.                 Ruth Wiggins, "Making Water"

667.                 Ryan Stone, "Coal Town"

668.                 Saeed Jones, "Alive at the End of the World"

669.                 Safiya Sinclair, "Center of the World"

670.                 Salima Rivera, "The Voices at My Ear"

671.                 Sam Payne, "My Botanist, aged three"

672.                 Sandra Simonds, “There was this bear cam”

673.                 Sandra Simonds, “When you think about it, mostly, a cage is air—”

674.                 Sappho, "Charaxos and Larichos", translated by William Logan

675.                 Sara Moore Wagner, "Not Abraham"

676.                 Sarah A. Etlinger, "The Weather Gods"

677.                 Sarah B. Puschmann, "A Golden Past As Seen Through The Hole Of A Donut"

678.                 Sarah Browning, "When the sun returns"

679.                 Sarah Gzemski, "Sermon"

680.                 Sarah L. Dixon, "To Kill a Mocking Bird"

681.                 Sarah Wimbush, "Between Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and My Class Enjoys Cooking"

682.                 Scott Thomas Outlar, "Extinction Is the Genesis of Evolution"

683.                 Seamus Heaney, "Postscript" 

684.                 Seán Hewitt, "Kyrie"

685.                 Sebastián Hasani Páramo, "Still-Life with Salt on Fruit"

686.                 Sergio Lima, "God of War"

687.                 Seth Hagen, "One of Us"

688.                 Shamala Gallagher, "How They Speak of the Fields"

689.                 Sharon Black, "Oh, someday, girl, I don’t know when"

690.                 Sharon Olds, "The Relics"

691.                 Sharon Phillips, "Near Miss"

692.                 Sheila Black, "Forest, Burning"

693.                 Sheila Jacob, "The Preoccupations Of Women"

694.                 Sian Meades-Williams, "Yesterday's confetti"

695.                 Simon Armitage, "Camera Obscura"

696.                 Simon Costello, "TV"

697.                 Sina Queyras, "The Couriers"

698.                 Sonya Plenefisch, "Little Blind Thing"

699.                 Sonya Plenefisch, "The Disappeared"

700.                 Spencer Short, "The Gentle Art of Shabby Dressing"

701.                 Stanley Moss, "Beachcomber"

702.                 Stanley Moss, "New Born"

703.                 Stephanie Burt, "Disco Fantasia on Themes from Elizabeth Bishop"

704.                 Stephen Claughton, "The Old Sticks"

705.                 Stephen Connolly, "And then the sun"

706.                 Stephen Daniels, "Wordslast"

707.                 Stephen Derwent Partington, "Satao"

708.                 Stephen Dunn, "Propositions"

709.                 Steven Chung, "Second-hand Smoke"

710.                 Stuart Handysides, "Winter"

711.                 Stuart Henson, "Three Octonaires on the Vanity & Inconstancy of This World"

712.                 Stuart Pickford, "Jigsaw"

713.                 Stuart Pickford, "Rings"

714.                 Sudeep Sen, "Banyan"

715.                 Sue Finch, "Clambake"

716.                 Sue Kindon, "Wandering in The Pyrenees, April 2016"

717.                 Sunni Brown Wilkinson, "At Last the Light in the Trees Wavers"

718.                 Susan Browne, "Romance"

719.                 Susan Castillo Street, "Arpeggio"

720.                 Susan Fealy, "Lake Mungo"

721.                 Susanna Brougham, "Peaks Island Ghosts"

722.                 Susannah Hart, "Becoming"

723.                 Suzannah Evans, "De-Extinction"

724.                 Suzanne Frischkorn, "Dear America"

725.                 Tamara Madison, "The Muse Commands"

726.                 Tamsin Cottis, "Shifts"

727.                 Tarfia Faizullah, "That One Time I Stayed Up All Night Making Excuses to Talk to Danger"

728.                 Taylor Hamann Los, "Linea Nigra"

729.                 Tennessee Hill, "Driving Home from Keyworth’s"

730.                 Teresa Mei Chuc, "Names"

731.                 Terrance Hayes, "Antebellum House Party"

732.                 Terrance Hayes, "Capra Aegagrus Hircus"

733.                 Terrance Hayes, "Cocktails with Orpheus"

734.                 Terrance Hayes, "How to Draw a Perfect Circle"

735.                 Terrance Hayes, "The Golden Shovel"

736.                 Terrance Hayes, "What It Look Like"

737.                 Terrance Hayes, "Woofer (When I Consider the African-American)"

738.                 Tess Gallagher, "Stolen Dress"

739.                 Therese Lloyd, "Y2K"

740.                 Thomas Tyrrell, "Breaking Up With The Bookshelves"

741.                 Tianru Wang, "After 'Yellow Crane Tower'"

742.                 Tianru Wang, "Sound Play"

743.                 Tim Dwyer, "Grey Herons"

744.                 Tim Love, "Dark Matter"

745.                 Tim Seibles, "Magnifying Glass"

746.                 Tim Seibles, "Simple Song Blues Villanelle"

747.                 Timothy DeLizza, "Claw Machine"

748.                 Timothy Donnelly, "Hymn to Edmond Albius"

749.                 Timothy Donnelly, "Public Speaking"

750.                 Tishani Doshi, "Monsoon Poem"

751.                 Todd Mercer, "Jesus Salesman"

752.                 Todd Mercer, "Mother’s Day Card Before the Apology Card"

753.                 Todd Mercer, "N.J.’s Secret is Out"

754.                 Todd Mercer, "Windy City Mascot"

755.                 Tom Kelly, "Running Down the Past"

756.                 Tom Phillips, "Unfair assumptions about pigeons"

757.                 Tom Postell, "Gertrude Stein Rides the Torn Down El"

758.                 Tomas Tranströmer, "Breathing Space, July", translated by Patty Crane

759.                 Tomaž Šalamun, "Three Flies", translated by Brian Henry

760.                 Tony Gloeggler, "1969"

761.                 Tony Williams, "Helgafell"

762.                 Tracie Renee Amirante Padal, "Learning To Float"

763.                 Tracy K. Smith, "Alternate Take: Levon Helm"

764.                 Travis Truax, "Tallahassee"

765.                 Truth Thomas, "Urban Warming"

766.                 Tyehimba Jess, "Sissieretta Jones"

767.                 Vicki Morley, "Weather Gods" 

768.                 Victoria Kennefick, "Paris Syndrome"

769.                 Victoria Kennefick, "The Preacher’s Daughter"

770.                 Victoria Melekian, "New Year’s Eve"

771.                 Vidyan Ravinthiran, "As a child"

772.                 Virginia Keane, "Fish and Friend"

773.                 Vona Groarke, "On Seeing Charlotte Brontë’s Underwear with my Daughter in Haworth"

774.                 W.S. Graham, "An Entertainment for W.S. Graham for Him Having Reached Sixty-Five"

775.                 Wayne Miller, "The End of Childhood"

776.                 William Doreski, "Dark Passage"

777.                 William Doreski, "Mushrooms and Orchids"

778.                 William Doreski, "One Night in Moscow"

779.                 William Doreski, "There Goes All the Ecology"

780.                 William J. Harris, "My Friend, Wendell Berry"

781.                 William Matthews, "Mingus at the Showplace"

782.                 Willie Perdomo, "That’s My Heart Right There"

783.                 Yalie Kamara, "Besaydoo"

784.                 Yuri Kazarnovsky, "The Tram", translated by Boris Dralyuk

785.                 Yusef Komunyakaa, "A World of Daughters"

786.                 Yusef Komunyakaa, "Blackamoors, Villa La Pietra"

787.                 Yusef Komunyakaa, "Crossing a City Highway"

788.                 Yusef Komunyakaa, "Dead Reckoning III"

789.                 Yusef Komunyakaa, "Our Side of the Creek"

790.                 Yusef Komunyakaa, "Slingshot"

791.                 Yusef Komunyakaa, "Sperm Oil" 

792.                 Yusef Komunyakaa, "The Rented Boy"

793.                 Zack Strait, "Blaze"

794.                 Zeina Hashem Beck, "Maqam"

795.                 Zeina Hashem Beck, "Souk"

796.                 Zilka Joseph, "The Rice Fields"

797.                 Zoe Mitchell, "Séance"

84 concerts in 2024, including six by Andreas Schärer and brilliant shows by Jason Moran, Taylor Swift, and Tamikrest

In 2023, I saw 73 concerts; in 2024, I went to 84 concerts. The musicians I saw most were Andreas Schärer (six times), Kalle Kalima and Fabio Gouvea (four times each), and George Ricci and Alice Auclair (three times each). My best jazz concert was Jason Moran playing his solo piano arrangements of Duke Ellington compositions at the Martinskirche in Basel on 8 April, and my best non-jazz concert was Taylor Swift at the Letzigrund in Zurich on 9 July. The best dancing was again at Basel concerts by musicians from Africa: concerts by Vieux Farka Touré, Oum, and Fatoumata Diawara at the Volkshaus, and another brilliant Tamikrest concert at Gannet. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 December 2024)

A possible course on Long Songs

The other day, when I listened to Nick Cave's fourteen-minute-plus song "Baby, I'm On Fire" ("Nocturama", 2003), I added it to my still rather short list of songs to include in a possible course on Long Songs. The first two on the list are Bob Dylan's "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" ("Blonde on Blonde", 1966) and Taylor Swift's "All Too Well (Ten-Minute Version)" ("Red (Taylor's Version)", 2021). The course could also include Neil Young's "Ordinary People" ("Chrome Dreams II", 2007) or Al Stewart's "Love Chronicles" (1969). The only condition is that the song should be at least ten minutes long and have a whole lot of text (rather than long jams). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 December 2024)

Comic rhymes and lines in Nick Cave songs

In my Nick Cave listening, I've been highly amused by his wit, especially in his rhymes, as in the rhymes for "Gibraltar" in "Rock of Gibraltar" ("Nocturama", 2003): "falter", "alter", "altar", and "Malta". There's also the rhyme of "hysteria" and "wisteria" in "Nature Boy" ("Abattoir Blues", 2004). The title of that album also includes this wonderful passage: "I went to bed last night and my moral code got jammed. / I woke up this morning with a Frappucino in my hand." That's just a small selection of the rhymes and lines that made me laugh with pleasure while I have been walking and listening to Cave in the past three days. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 December 2024) 

The unexpected power of Nick Cave’s “Baby, I’m On Fire"

On a walk yesterday, I started listening to "Nocturama" (2003), by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and I finished it on another walk today. According to my computer, I copied it to my hard drive in October 2019 but have not listened to it since. In fact, I'm not even sure when I got the album or how often I'd ever listened to it before. So today, I may have immediately noticed the dissonant sound and driving bass line of the last song, "Babe, I'm On Fire", but I was completely unprepared for the song to maintain its power and the dark humor of its lyrics for almost 15 minutes! (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 December 2024)

Discovering a new style of music in California in Fall 1980

When my parents and I moved to Palo Alto, California, in September 1980, I began to hear a wider range of music on the radio than I had been hearing for the previous few years in Toledo, Ohio. I don't remember what stations I listened to, but I do remember how I kept hearing a particular style I really enjoyed. But for some reason I never heard what any of the songs were or which bands were playing them. Then, in the course of a few weeks, I learned that all those songs I had thought were one style were actually by one band with a singular sound: Creedence Clearwater Revival. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 December 2024) 

A Dickensian cento for Christmas Day 2024

The year came round to Christmas-time. Last Christmas reared clean out of its crazy frame in the Christmas pantomimes. "What do you do here on Christmas Eve?" said the goblin sternly. She drank eleven cups of tea. "And where the deuce ha' you been?" Mental green-peas were produced. And as to the revellings, stick a bit o' Christmas in 'em! Give three cheers at the breakfast-table on Christmas morning with exactly the same words. Devouring a Christmas pie, I meant to have given you five shillings this morning for a Christmas box. A Christmas box! My song I troll out, for Christmas Stout. I'll give you one after the Christmas holidays. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 December 2024, a Dickensian cento)

Richard Thompson breaks a string at the Ark in Ann Arbor in Summer 1988

I spent part of summer 1988 at my mother's house in Ann Arbor, Michigan. One concert I remember going to while there was a solo acoustic show at the Ark by English singer-songwriter Richard Thompson, whom I had seen a few years earlier with his band at Wolfgang's in San Francisco. I remember few details of the Ark concert, but I do remember that when he broke a string, he checked his back pocket and sighed that he'd forgotten to put backup strings there. So he got the crowd singing "Twist and Shout", ran off stage during the bridge, and came back with strings just in time for the last verse. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 December 2024).

The press attention generated by the Taylor Swift course at the University of Basel in Spring 2024

In Spring Semester 2024, the Taylor Swift seminar I taught with my co-teacher Rachael Moorthy attracted a lot of attention press. After an interview with the BZ appeared on 24 January 2024, Bajour declared us "Basler:innen des Tages" for that day, and we received inquires from newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations. From then until July, articles and reports about our course appeared all over Switzerland, including on 20 Minuten, Radio Argovia, Basel Jetzt, Telebasel, TSR (Le 19:30), and SRF (10 vor 10). Die Zeit in Germany even published two articles about us, and an article in El País in Madrid on university courses on Swift also mentioned our course. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 December 2024, written for the University of Basel English Department's year-end report)

Getting into Keith Moon’s drumming on The Who’s 1971 singles compilation “Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy"

Listening to The Who's 1971 singles compilation "Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy" today (after not having listened to the band in a long time), I have especially felt the rush and explosiveness of Keith Moon's singular drumming. On "I Can See for Miles" (1967), Moon provides the thunderous background to the chorus; on "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", his tom-tom playing during the instrumental break creates space for guitarist Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwhistle, and session pianist Nicky Hopkins to make fragmented, proto-psychedelic sounds that must have been rare on the pop charts when the song (only the second single the band released) spent eleven weeks in the UK Top 40 in 1965. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 December 2024)

From Diane Seuss’s “frank: sonnets” (2021) to the invention of Russian Matryoshka dolls (1890)

When I prepare poems for class discussion, I sometimes end up down unexpected rabbit holes. These lines begin a poem in Diane Seuss's "frank: sonnets" (2021): "I was raised in a rectangle. Aluminum. There was a rectangular / toy box, red. Sometimes, I’d take out the toys and climb inside. / Rectangle within a rectangle." As the child is inside a box (a rectangle) that is inside a mobile home (a rectangle), I thought of wooden Russian dolls, wondered what they are called, and found the answer: Matryoshka or nesting dolls. But I also learned that they are not a long-lasting Russian folk tradition, as they were only invented in 1890. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 December 2024)

The homesickness of Rezia Smith in Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925)

Rereading Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" (1925) for a student's MA exam next week, I had to take a break after noticing something I don't think I had ever noticed on earlier readings: the heartbreaking depiction of the Italian wife of shellshocked World War One veteran Septimus Smith. Lucrezia, or Rezia for short, married Septimus at the end of the war and moved to England with him, and it is the homesickness of the emigrant with a mentally ill husband that moves me: "Far was Italy and the white houses and the room where her sisters sat making hats, and the streets crowded every evening with people walking, laughing out loud [...]." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 December 2024)

Emily Dickinson’s birthday and Austin Dickinson’s new hat

Today is Emily Dickinson's birthday (10 December 1830), so I made sure to read two more letters from Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell's edition of her collected letters. They were written in Amherst in October 1851 to her brother Austin, who was teaching school in Boston. Dickinson's letters to Austin are especially full of her wit, as when she mentions her eagerness to see his new hat: "Father says you wear a white hat, cocked up at the sides - know I shall like it's looks and want so much to see it - as for the wearer, I want to see him too - but which the most - prithee?" (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 December 2024) 

On not grading essays

This fall, in our first-year academic writing courses at the University of Basel English Department, Peter Burleigh and I have stopped grading the essays. We both feel liberated from the pressure of the grade. We still write detailed comments – and feel like the comments themselves are better than before, without taking more time to write. For the course evaluations, I asked the students to comment on not having grades, and all of them thought it was great. And I have been getting a lot more individual feedback about how useful the comments are – which might imply that the students are reading the comments more now than when the essays were graded. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 December 2024)

The many great covers on Rebekka Bakken’s “Always on My Mind” (2023), including Greg Brown’s “Brand New Angel"

"Always on My Mind", a 2023 album by Norwegian singer and pianist Rebekka Bakken, who is performing solo at the Martinskirche in Basel this evening, includes songs by many great songwriters: Nick Cave ("Red Right Hand"), Don McLean ("Vincent"), Peter Gabriel ("Here Comes the Flood"), Randy Newman ("Louisiana 1927"), Bob Dylan ("Where Teardrops Fall"), Elton John and Bernie Taupin ("We All Fall in Love Sometimes"), and Paul McCartney ("Yesterday"). That selection would be enough for me to love the album, but Bakken also includes "Brand New Angel", a song by my favorite songwriter of all, Greg Brown, from his most recent and probably last album, "Hymns to What Is Left" (2012). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 December 2024)

"'Tis my part to use that language”: The Gay Beggars production of “The Witch of Edmonton” currently running in Basel

"'Tis my part to use that language," says Winnifred to Frank when he asks her whether she forgives him for what the crimes that he has committed. But on stage, the line from Thomas Dekker, John Ford, and William Rowley's 1621 play "The Witch of Edmonton" also seems in the current production in Basel by the Gay Beggars to refer to how the actors have learned to "use that language" from the seventeenth-century to play their parts. The lively and wide-ranging production runs for four more shows at the Kellertheater at the English Department of the University of Basel: Sunday, December 8, and then Friday to Sunday, December 13 to 15. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 December 2024)

 

Jacques Roubaud (1932-2024), poet, novelist, mathematician

When I lived in Saarbrücken and worked at the University of the Saarland from 1993 to 1995, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture and reading by the poet, novelist, and mathematician Jacques Roubaud. As a founding member of Oulipo, the Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, his work explores literary constraints of all kinds, from traditional approaches like lipograms to approaches invented for individual works. Along with his poetry and fiction, Roubaud also wrote among other works an excellent 1978 study of the history of meter in French verse, "La Vieillesse d'Alexandre: essai sur quelques états récents du vers français". Jacques Roubaud died yesterday, 5 December 2024, on his 92nd birthday. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 December 2024) 

The pronunciation of Salvador Dalí’s name and Taylor Swift’s “the last great american dynasty"

As I have learned from Spanish, the last name of painter Salvador Dalí is stressed on the second syllable, not the first as it usually is in American English. He comes up in Taylor Swift's "the last great american dynasty" ("folklore", 2020), which is about his friend Rebekah Harkness, who married into money, became a socialite, composer, and philanthropist, and lost "on card game bets with Dalí." But Swift pronounces his name the American way, so when I mentioned Dalí and the song today to my Spanish teacher (a fellow Swiftie), she knew the song, but had never understood that Swift was referring to the painter and not someone named "Dolly." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 December 2024)

Ambitious first songs and poems opening debut albums and books: Taylor Swift’s “Tim McGraw” (2006) and Seamus Heaney’s “Digging” (1966)

Today in my Volkshochschule beider Basel course on Taylor Swift, we'll be discussing "Tim McGraw", the first song on her eponymous album from 2006. As I wrote back in January, the song is a statement of the singer and songwriter's ambition, narrowly, to be better known than country singer Tim McGraw, but broadly, to be even more popular than that. The song's marking of ambition to start Swift's career reminds me of "Digging", the first poem in "Death of a Naturalist", Irish poet Seamus Heaney's 1966 debut collection. Now I'm trying to think of other songs and poems that open debut albums and books and so powerfully express the artist's ambition. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 December 2024)

Two striking copies at the St. Gallen Abbey Library

My wife Andrea bought us day-passes for the Swiss railway system for my birthday in August, so on this cold December Sunday we took the train to St. Gallen to visit the Abbey Library. Two objects on display there really struck me, and both are copies. The first is the St. Gallen globe from the 16th century, which is 2.33 meters high. But in 1712, troops from Zurich and Bern stole it when they plundered the Abbey, and the original is still in Zurich. The second is a seventeenth-century copy of a painting from the Basel Art Museum: Hans Holbein's sixteenth-century painting "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 December 2024) 

Swiss broadcaster Blue Sport and the varieties of German used in their broadcasts

The Swiss television channel Blue Sport broadcasts all the matches of the Swiss men's football league, the Super League. Until recently, their German-language broadcasts had one commentator, but now they have a second commentator, always a former Swiss player in the league (and often a former Swiss men's national team player). One feature of these broadcasts strikes me as unusual: The main commentator speaks Swiss High German, but the second commentator speaks his particular variety of Swiss German. This is so consistent it must be a conscious decision by the broadcaster. I've listened to sports broadcasts in many countries, but I've never before heard one where two commentators speak different languages. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 November 2024) 

Abstract: On Truth and Lies in a Swiftian Sense

In "Tim McGraw", the first song on Taylor Swift's eponymous 2006 debut, a boy flatters a girl by comparing her eyes to "Georgia stars", and she responds, "That's a lie." This begins Swift's exploration in songwriting of rhetoric, lies, and truth. Through the lies and truths of rhetoric, that song's speaker negotiates the meaning of her former relationship with herself and with her ex-boyfriend. Truth, lies, rhetoric, and the negotiation of truth, as well as rumors and the simultaneity of truth and lies, are also addressed in such later songs by Swift as "Dress" (from "reputation", 2017), "illicit affairs" ("folklore", 2020), "happiness" ("evermore", 2020), and "Cassandra" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 November 2024)

 

Note: This is the abstract for "On Truth and Lies in a Swiftian Sense", my talk on Taylor Swift on Tuesday, 10 December, at 1 pm, in room 11 of the English Department of the University of Basel, Nadelberg 6, Basel.

"I do not agree with being a white Otello”: White tenor Francesco Meli apparently thinks opera audiences are stupid and unimaginative

Tenor Francesco Meli is currently performing the title role in Verdi's "Otello" at the La Fenice opera house in Venice, and the white singer has publicly objected to one feature of the production: "I do not agree with being a white Otello." That is, the director of the production, Fabio Cerese, decided that Meli would not wear blackface for the role. Meli seems to think that the audience needs to have his face be painted black or they won't understand what's happening. Apparently, he thinks opera audiences are incapable of using their imaginations. La Fenice could of course solve the problem by hiring a black tenor to sing the role instead. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 November 2024)

 

“And so they went on […] keen for the worry”: An evening with the Finnegans Wake Reading Group in Basel

At our Finnegans Wake Reading Group in Basel this evening, we took up where we had left off last time: "And so they went on, the fourbottle men" (FW 95.27). And so we went on, without four bottles but with lots of good cheer and great insights into "the framing up of such figments in the evidential order" that constitute James Joyce's 1939 novel. When we finished our hunting, a hunt had begun: "Gundogs of all breeds were beagling with renounced urbiandorbic bugles, hot to run him, given law, on a scent breasthigh, keen for the worry" (FW 96.36-97.2). For once, we completed much more than one page in our "upframings". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 November 2024) 

Names of bands I’ve been in from the 1980s to today

My 1980s band at Stanford first changed names at every gig, including Ask Andrew, The Bears, and The Sound and The Furry (one five-word name). Then we settled on Petting Zoo. Everyone else left town after graduation, but I stayed in Palo Alto for a year and formed Onomatopoeia. Asked what genre we played, I'd say, "Means what it sounds like." After not having bands in Philadelphia or Berlin, my short-lived band in Saarbrücken was Psychic Sidekicks. In Basel, my acoustic folk trio Human Shields had  a great run from 2006 to 2017. After a few years of hibernation, I hope to resurrect Human Shields with a new duo in 2025. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 November 2024)

How to write a Bob Dylan song: A creative-writing exercise

My latest exercise for my poetry and songwriting class is to "write a Bob Dylan song", like "Queen Jane Approximately" from "Highway 61 Revisited" (1965), with a one-line refrain to end each stanza: "Won't you come and see me, Queen Jane?" First, come up with a good refrain line that ends with a good rhyme word. Then pick a form for your stanzas, the simplest being a quatrain with an ABAB rhyme. Then make a list of rhymes for your rhyme word. Now write lines to rhyme with your refrain, and then brainstorm what goes around those lines. Write many more stanzas than you need, then keep all the good ones. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 November 2024)

Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s “Summer” and a "hieroglyphic profile” of Napoleon in Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major" (1880)

Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major" (1880) takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, around 1806 and the Battle of Trafalgar. The novel refers to a caricature of Napoleon that it calls "a hieroglyphic profile", with such features as a hat that is "a maimed French eagle", a face "of human carcases", and an ear that is "a woman crouching over a dying child." I had not heard such images called "hieroglyphic" before, but I know them from the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), such as those I once saw in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna: a profile of "Summer", for example, made up of cherries, a peach, a cucumber, and other summer crops. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 November 2024)

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, “Summer”, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Public Domain

“Neck or nothing” in Thomas Hardy’s “The Trumpet-Major” (1880)

In Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major" (1880), while they are trying to protect Bob Loveday from a press gang, Matilda Johnson tells Anne Garland that "it is neck or nothing with us now." Although I did understand "neck or nothing" immediately, I would have said "all or nothing". My sense is that I had never heard the expression before, but it has a long history: the entry for the expression Oxford English Dictionary has citations from 1673 to 1968, whose authors include Jonathan Swift and William Cowper. There's even a quotation from Charles Dickens – but it's from "Sketches By Boz" (1836), which I didn't read when I read all of Dickens's novels. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 November 2024)

Update: Of course now I have found the phrase in Dickens’s “Martin Chuzzlewit” (1844): “[…] he'll fill his wehicle with passengers, and start off in the middle of the road, neck or nothing […]”. But according to the online Dickens concordance, that’s the only use of the phrase in one of CD’s novels.

“I should like to study mathematics – to know about the stars”: From Katherine HIlbery in Virginia Woolf’s “Night and Day” (1919) to Jakob Bernoulli and Thomas Pynchon

In Virginia Woolf's "Night and Day" (1919), Katherine Hilbery has a "purely imaginary dialogue" in which she hesitantly reveals "her ambition" to herself and her imaginary interlocutor: "I should like [...] to study mathematics – to know about the stars." This wish recalls something said by the Basel mathematician Jakob Bernoulli (1654-1705): "Invito patre sidera verso." I first came across Bernoulli's motto in Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" (1997), where it is quoted in an English translation: "Against my father's wishes, I study the stars." I later used it as an epigraph to a poem I wrote for my mathematician father's 70th birthday, "Ars Conjectandi" (the title of Bernoulli's book on probability). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 November 2024) 

A snowy walk in Liestal to get to a concert

When the train from Basel reached Liestal station, I made my way through the first winter snow to the bus stop, but the next bus was delayed by 45 minutes. So I put the address into my phone and followed the GPS to the venue. The paths I went down were often narrow, and the streets and sidewalks had not been cleared, but I had thought of getting my winter boots out, so with a bit of care, I never slipped. I made one wrong turn and walked down a beautiful footpath in the snowy night to a dead end. But I found my way back and arrived at the venue. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 November 2024)

“Herself, and not her music”: Emily Dickinson goes to a Jenny Lind concert, 3 July 1851

On 3 July 1851, twenty-year-old Emily Dickinson went to a concert in Northampton, Massachusetts, by the Swedish singer Jenny Lind (1820-1887). Three days later, she wrote about it to her brother Austin, who was then living in Boston: The singer, not her singing, was what captured Dickinson's attention: "Herself, and not her music, was what we seemed to love – she has an air of exile in her mild blue eyes, and a something sweet and touching in her native accent which charms her many friends." Yet Dickinson could not name what charmed her about Lind: she "seemed to love" her, with that vague "air of exile" and "something" about her accent. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 November 2024)

Participating in and attending events at the BuchBasel literature festival, 15-17 November 2024

At this weekend's BuchBasel literature festival, I had the pleasure of participating in a panel on Taylor Swift with moderator Svenja Reiner and writer Anne Sauer, author of the recently published book "Look What She Made Us Do: Anne Sauer über Taylor Swift". But I also heard superb talks by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (at the opening ceremony on Friday), by photographers Johny Pitts and Eddie Otchere on Otchere's photography, by Carolin Emcke on "queer life", and by Pitts and poet Roger Robinson on their collaborative book of photographs and poems, "Home is not a Place". Pitts and Robinson's title also came up as a theme in the other events I heard. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 November 2024)

Turning 22,000 days old

On my 60th birthday in August this year, I wondered how many days old I was. I found an internet page to calculate it: I was 21,915 days old. That made me wonder when I would turn 22,000 days old, so I used that page to calculate it: 16 November 2024 (today). Then I forgot about it, until yesterday, when I was reminded of the number by a calendar alert that I had set up and then forgotten. If all goes well, I'll make 23,000 days on Friday, 13 August 2027, 25,000 days on Wednesday, 2 February 2033, and 30,000 days on Friday, 12 October 2046, at the age of 82. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 November 2024)

Don Q speaks to crowds and empty rooms

Don Q told crowd after crowd what he saw, and they saw what he said he saw. As he kept speaking and speaking, the crowds thinned out until the rooms were empty, but he kept speaking to the crowd he still saw before him. The former members of the crowd had left, but they kept seeing what he said he saw, and they told others about what they saw that he said he saw, until half the people saw what others said they saw that he said he saw. Meanwhile, Don Q left an empty room, went outside, and was followed by the crowds that saw what he said he saw. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 November 2024)

A “tattoo” in Thomas Hardy’s “The Trumpet-Major” and the annual Basel Tattoo

In Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major", the Royal Army's Dragoons show up in the village of Overcombe, and Anne Garland hears them break the silence of the night: "Louder sounds [...] came from the camp of dragoons, were taken up further to the right by the camp of the Hanoverians, and further on still by the body of infantry. It was tattoo." The "tattoo" is a military signal played on drums or bugles, but I only learned the term in 2006 with the first Basel Tattoo, a show of military bands that has taken place every summer since then (except for 2020 and 2021, when it was cancelled due to the pandemic). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 November 2024)

The trolley problem, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the television series “The Good Place”, and allegory and literature as thought experiments

This morning, on my way to teaching a session on Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (1948), I passed a classroom where I spotted a slide from a presentation on "the trolley problem", philosopher Philippa Foot's 1967 thought experiment. In class, then, we discussed "The Lottery" itself as a literary thought experiment akin to the trolley problem and the scientific thought experiments of Albert Einstein or Erwin Schrödinger. But I also referred to the vivid, macabre presentation of the trolley problem in episode 6 of the second season of the television series "The Good Place". Ultimately, we linked "The Lottery" as a thought experiment to allegory in particular and to literature in general. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 November 2024)

Screenshot from Season 2, Episode 6 of The Good Place

The playwright “Colman” and the actor “Bannister” in Thomas Hardy’s “The Trumpet-Major” (1880)

In Thomas Hardy's "The Trumpet-Major" (1880), which is set during the Napoleonic Wars, the main characters go to see a play in Budmouth: "To-night it was one of Colman’s, who at this time enjoyed great popularity, and Mr. Bannister supported the leading character." Charles Bannister (1738-1804) was an English actor and singer who was widely celebrated for his performance as Caliban in William Shakespeare's "The Tempest". "Colman" is probably George Colman the Younger (1762-1836), whose play "The Iron Chest" premiered in 1799 with Bannister in the cast. But it could also be his father George Colman the Elder (1732-1794), if any of his plays were still being produced after his death. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 November 2024)

Update, 13 November 2024: A friend on Facebook quoted the manuscript of Hardy’s novel, which names Colman’s play as “The Heir at Law”, and added that “Bannister” is more likely to be Charles’s son John Bannister (1760-1836).

Don Q and a rifle

Don Q held up a rifle and said it was a microphone. He held up a dagger and said it was a pen. He held up a bomb and said it was a clock. He held up a skeleton and said it was a mannequin. He held up a tombstone and said it was a bench. He held up body armor and said it was a suit. He held up a tank and said it was a bicycle. He held up barbed wire and said it was kite string. He held up a drone and said it was a balloon. He held up his mask and said it was his face. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 November 2024)

Don Q and the clouds

Don Q saw clouds on the southern horizon: “See the dust rising from all the approaching giants, who grow every day.” He saw clouds on the northern horizon: “See the dust rising from all the giants among us, who grow every day.” He shouted louder until the people nearby, hearing nothing else, asked Don Q what to do about the giants. “We must send all the giants beyond the horizon.” The clouds from the southern storm kept growing every day, blowing their wind and rain towards the smoke from the northern fires, which kept growing every day. “The giants, the giants,” Don Q shouted. “The giants, the giants,” the people cried. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 November 2024)

“I cannot tell the sum”: A cento for the day after the election, November 2024

I cannot tell the sum

I cannot see a spoke

I cannot see - your lifetime -

I cannot vouch the merry Dust

I cannot buy it - 'tis not sold -

I cannot be ashamed

I cannot be proud

I cannot meet the Spring - 

I cannot want it more -

I cannot want it less -

I cant tell you - but you feel it -

I cannot see my soul

I cannot make the Force

cannot fold a Flood

cannot feel the seam

cannot solder an Abyss

cannot prick with Saw

cannot make Remembrance grow

cannot comprehend it's price -

All this and more I cannot tell - (Andrew Shields, #111Words, a cento, 6 November 2024)

I can’t pretend like I understand: A cento for Election Day 2024

I can't pretend like I understand. I can't even be sure. I can't even say it with a straight face. I can't unlock it. I can't hear you any more. I can't get no relief. I can't hear one single word. I cannot explain that in lines. I cannot play this game. I can't make it all match up. I can't say anything to your face. I can't remember what it's like. I cannot be excused. I can't help myself. I can't even touch the books. I can't sing a song that I don't understand. I can't get out of bed. I cannot move; my fingers are all in a knot. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, a cento, 5 November 2024)

Wikipedia’s List of female United States presidential and vice presidential candidates – and comedian Gracie Allen’s 1940 spoof campaign

There's a Wikipedia "List of female United States presidential and vice presidential candidates" that goes back to Lucretia Mott and Lydia Maria Child receiving nomintaton votes at the abolitionist Liberty Party convention in 1847. Only two women have ever received electoral-college votes for President, both in 2016: Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party and indigenous activist Faith Spotted Eagle, who received a vote from a faithless elector pledged to Clinton. But my favorite piece of trivia is in the list of women who have received 40,000 or more votes for President: it concludes with comedian Gracie Allen, whose 1940 spoof campaign for President for the Surprise Party garnered 42,000 votes nationwide. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 November 2024)

Mosquitoes in poems by Jane Hirshfield and Meagan Chandler

I have a set of online poetry magazines that I read to find poems to send Facebook friends on their birthdays. This morning, I read "I Was Not, Among My Kind, Distinctive", a new poem by Jane Hirshfield in the November 2024 issue of "Poetry": "I fed the world’s mosquitoes who fed the world’s bats." Perhaps that line would not have stuck in my head if it was not for "The Horse Trail", by Meagan Chandler, from the excellent Singapore-based daily literary magazine "Eunoia Review": "[...] the humming mosquito tickling / my ear with thirst as I clear a way through tangled reeds / convinces me that I am needed [...]." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 November 2024)

 

“Torius”, the earliest known named resident of the area that is now Basel

For my sixtieth birthday in August, my wife and my in-laws gave me a subscription to the new ten-volume history of Basel, "Stadt.Geschichte.Basel". Since then, I've been reading the first volume, one or two pages at a time, and in the last few days, I've arrived at the section about the Basel area during the Roman Empire. This morning, I came across an illustration of a "Gepäckanhänger aus Geweih" ("Luggage label made of horn"), which has an inscription: "T.Tori". As the book notes, this refers to the name of the luggage's owner, "Torius", which makes this otherwise unknown soldier the earliest resident of what is now Basel whose name is known. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 November 2024)

“Crackle”: The fifth derivative of position

I wanted to look up "crackle" because I wondered from a poem by Ada Limón if it might be the name of a bird (as the context of the poem suggested). It's not, but it is a name for "the fifth derivative of position". In order, the derivatives of position from the first to the sixth are velocity, acceleration, jerk (or jolt), jounce (or snap), crackle, and pop. Yes, the fourth to sixth derivatives are named after the characters in advertisements for Kellogg's Rice Krispies: snap, crackle, and pop. The latter don't come up often, but according to Wikipedia, reduction of snap, the derivative of jerk, to zero improves railway tracks. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 November 2024) 

Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and Ohio sixth-graders in 1976

Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" was released as a single in the United Kingdom on 31 October 1975 and in the United States that December. At some time before June 1976, my sixth-grade music teacher at Ottawa Hills Elementary School in Ottawa Hills, Ohio, brought the song in for us to hear, discuss, and sing. We went through it so often that I have had all the lyrics and all the instrumental parts memorized ever since I was eleven. Or as a classmate said when I wrote a March 2010 post about listening to "Bohemian Rhapsody" with my children Miles (then 10) and Luisa (then 6), "the lyrics are burnt into my brain." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 31 October 2024) 

A day with Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and James Joyce

My day began with a deathbed confession of a murder from half a century earlier: “You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat” (Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado). It continued with the sense of overhearing someone quoting 1 Corinthians 2:9: “‘Eye hath not seen’ may possibly / Be current with the Blind / But let not Revelation / By theses be detained—“ (Emily Dickinson, “The Lilac is an ancient shrub, Fr 1261). It ended with a further Biblical allusion, to Matthew 7:3-5: “from Lesbia Looshe the beam in her eye” (James Joyce, “Finnegan's Wake”, 93:27-28). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 October 2024)

Images of champagne in Taylor Swift lyrics

The first mention of champagne in Taylor Swift's songs is in a description of "big parties" in "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" ("reputation", 2017): "Everyone swimming in a champagne sea". This image of swimming in champagne returns in "the last great american dynasty" ("folkore", 2020): "Filled the pool with champagne and swam with the big names". These are images of excess and luxury. Then, "champagne problems" ("evermore", 2020) takes the luxury of "Dom Pérignon" and makes it a problem of luxury. Finally, "Paris" ("Midnights", 2022) turns champagne into a fantasy of luxury in a new setting: "Cheap wine, make believe it's champagne [...] In an alleyway, drinking champagne." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 October 2024)

Arthur Fils and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, two young French players to watch from the Swiss Indoors quarterfinals in Basel on Friday, 25 October 2024

At the quarterfinals of the Swiss Indoors men's tennis tournament in Basel on Friday, 25 October 2024, the best match was a close three-setter: Ben Shelton (22, USA, ATP 23) beat Andrei Rublev (27, Russia, 7), with Rublev converting zero of six break points and Shelton winning two of two. But the two most impressive players were Arthur Fils (20, France, 20), who beat Stefanos Tsitsipas (26, Greece, 11), and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard (21, France, 50), who beat Denis Shapovalov (25, Canada, 95). Both these Frenchmen, who faced no break points in their matches, will surely be in the Top Ten soon, and today, Mpetshi Perricard defeated Shelton in the final. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 October 2024)

Phil Lesh (1940-2024) leads The Grateful Dead into “Gimme Some Lovin’”, Berkeley Community Theater, 2 November 1984

On 2 November 1984, at the fifth of six Grateful Dead concerts at the Berkeley Community Theater around Halloween, the band played a conventional second-set opener with "Help On The Way / Slipknot! / Franklin's Tower" and "Lost Sailor / Saint Of Circumstance". Then, instead of going to "Drums" and "Space",  Jerry Garcia went into "Wharf Rat". As that song's final jam began to merge into "Drums", bassist Phil Lesh (1940-2024), with a huge grin on his face, broke into the band's debut performance of the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" (1966) and, in a duet with Brent Mydland, sang on stage for the first time in over a decade. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 October 2024) 

Listening to “Box of Rain”, “Unbroken Chain”, and “Eyes of the World” on hearing of the death of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh (1940-2024)

On hearing that Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh died today, I first listened to his "Box of Rain" ("American Beauty", 1970), with Robert Hunter's lyrics: "Such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be there." I followed that with his "Unbroken Chain" ("From the Mars Hotel", 1974), with Bobby Petersen's lyrics: "Listening for the secret, searching for the sound." And finally, I turned to Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter's "Eyes of the World" from "Dick's Picks, volume 31", live at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey, on 6 August 1974, with Lesh taking intro and outro leads in one of The Grateful Dead's finest performances. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 October 2024)

 

“Goils don’t know how to make speeches”: The comic strip “Nancy” and men’s silencing of women

A fan of Ernie Bushmiller's comic strip "Nancy" posted a strip from 23 October 1944, in which Sluggo tells Nancy that he wants to run for "president of d' neighborhood". He refuses Nancy's offer to make speeches for him because "goils don't know how to make speeches". So Nancy starts running for the office herself! – Just as Nancy decides to run for office when Sluggo chooses to silence her, men refusing to take women seriously or even refusing to let them speak catalyzed both the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848 and the second wave of feminism that began in the United States in the 1960s. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 October 2024)

“Narcotics in all of my songs”: Taylor Swift’s “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024)

Here's a line from Taylor Swift's song "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024): "[I] put narcotics into all of my songs / and that's why you're still singing along ..." Narcotics are painkillers, and in law-enforcement and popular usage, addictive drugs more generally. In medical settings, narcotics can be put into pills or intravenous solutions; in bars, they can be slipped into drinks to take advantage of people. Among other things, the "narcotics" that Swift slips into her songs are the rhetorical, poetic, and literary devices that keep people returning to her lyrics (along with some "Easter eggs"). So here, "narcotics" is a metaphor for metaphors. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 October 2024)

Stalled in the middle of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Mike Nichols’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (1966)

The other day, I watched the 1933 Disney cartoon "The Three Little Pigs" with the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" as preparation for a discussion of Taylor Swift's "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024) in today's first session of my eight-week-long Volkshochschule beider Basel course on Swift. I also started Mike Nichols's 1966 film of Edward Albee's 1962 play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (an Oscar-winning role for her). I stalled fifty minutes in, as a drunk couple yelling at each other gradually grows tiresome. But the superb acting still makes me want to finish it soon. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 October 2024)

A marginal note I wrote in my e-book of Virginia Woolf’s “Night and Day” (1919)

Back in 2019-2020, I read e-books of all of Virginia Woolf's novels in chronological order. I highlighted occasional passages, but generally did not write notes. Now, re-reading four of Woolf's novels for a student's MA exam, I've begun with the earliest, "Night and Day" (1919), and the other day, I came across a note I had written when suffragette organizer Sally Seal mentions her frustration with how long the movement has been taking: "I'm fifty-five, and I dare say I shall be in my grave by the time we get it—if we ever do." My note was not about the suffrage but about that age: "Read on my 55th birthday." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 October 2024)

“Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” (Churchill and Ronell) and the 1948 revision of Disney’s 1933 short “The Three Little Pigs"

The song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" appeared in the 1933 Oscar winner for Best Animated Short Film, "The Three Little Pigs", one of Disney's "Silly Symphonies". An immediate hit, it was written by Frank Churchill (1901-1942) and Ann Ronell (1905-1993; she had also composed the eventual standard "Willow Weep for Me" in 1932). When the Big Bad Wolf disguises himself to try to blow down the third house, the one made of brick, he dresses like a Jewish stereotype, which was criticized at the time. Later, in 1948, Walt Disney had animator Jack Hannah revise the scene to eliminate the wolf's stereotypical voice and part of his disguise. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 October 2024)

Breaking my record for concerts attended in one year (which I set last year)

In 2023, I went to 73 concerts. By the end of August 2024, I'd gone to seventy concerts, and I assumed I'd break my record in September. However, I only went to three concerts the whole month. At the end of September, I was planning to attend four concerts in three days, and two more at the beginning of October, but I came down with a bad cold that flattened me for ten days, and I haven't made it to any concerts since, as I've been catching up with everything. Tonight at the Bird's Eye in Basel, though, I'll be at my record-breaking seventy-fourth concert this year, the Matthias Spillman Trio. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 October 2024)

“Sense was breaking through”: Andrew Bird’s musical setting for Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” (Fr340)

On 26 October 2022, singer-songwriter Andrew Bird released a recording of his setting of Emily Dickinson's poem "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" (Fr340), featuring singer Phoebe Bridgers. The arrangement begins with just Bird on guitar and vocals for the first the three lines, at the end of which bassist Tony Berg enters and Bridgers harmonizes the fourth line: "That Sense was breaking through". It's as if the bass and the second voice are that "sense" that "breaks through". And at the end of the song, when Bird repeats the poem's opening stanza, the spare instrumentation returns, but then he sings that line unaccompanied, and the sense breaks through again. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 October 2024)

 

Performing “Apparently with no surprise” (Fr1661): The theatricality of Emily Dickinson

In an essay I discussed with my students last week, Brenda Wineapple characterizes Emily Dickinson as "original, difficult, theatrical, perceptive, witty". We found the idea of Dickinson's theatricality especially helpful in discussing the late poem "Apparently with no surprise" (Fr1661, 1884), which we even performed with three students and me playing the roles of the "happy Flower", the "Frost", the "Sun", and the "Approving God":  "Apparently with no surprise / To any happy Flower / The Frost beheads it at it's play - / In accidental power - / The blonde Assassin passes on - / The Sun proceeds unmoved / To measure off another Day / For an Approving God." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 October 2024) 

Donald Trump demonizing “illegal immigrants”, all immigrants, naturalized citizens, and all citizens who oppose him

Ever since he began campaigning for President in June 2015, Donald Trump has demonized immigrants to the United States – mostly those he considers "illegal", but sometimes also those who enter the country legally. On Friday, 11 October, though, Trump's advisor Stephen Miller called for "denaturalization" of immigrants who have successfully applied for and received United States citizenship. And yesterday, on Fox News, Trump even called for the National Guard or the military to be used against those citizens he sees as "radical left lunatics." As I noted after a burst of similar rhetoric from Trump last November, anyone who opposes him can become an object of the violence he calls for. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 October 2024)

 

• I take the recent points from this post by Heather Cox Richardson.
• My post from 14 November 2023.

Metrical variation in Terrance Hayes's poem "How To Fold" ("So To Speak", 2023)

Terrance Hayes's poem "How To Fold" ("So To Speak", 2023) begins with dactyls: "Seated alone at the edge of the bed". The poem is in couplets, so the second line could balance that tetrameter with dactylic trimeter, but it turns to troches instead: "grasp the finest fabric first". That could establish a pattern for the poem: alternating lines of dactylic and trochaic tetrameter. But Hayes's third line shifts to iambs: "the shrunken sock or silk softest to touch". "Softest" is a trochaic substitution, but that's not unknown in iambic pentameter lines. The continuous movement between several meters in Hayes's poem models how "free verse" can make use of variable metrical effects. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 October 2024)