poet | phd | @umichwriters alum | fiddlehead poetry editor | author of not even laughter | record collector | one-armed bandit | he/him
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ALT Terminal What if, past a certain point, it weren't so bad to die? What if it were like lying on a couch at 3:00 a.m., the mind aloft and quiet, given over to a few piano notes finding ways melodically through predetermined loops in Brian Eno's Music for Airports? That's what you'd be listening to, music for those places where we go to go away, the music of going away, and you just disappearing into it without effort or pain, finding peace in knowing to obey means at its root only to listen.
ALT I dreamed you were a completely different person and we were still in love sawdust on my knees a sunny tomato
ALT Twelve copies of Tired Light arranged around a crewel embroidery of the sun and the moon :)
ALT Self-portrait A leaky ravioli on the boat to god
ALT Poster for a poetry reading at The Barns of Rose Hill, 11/7
ALT YOU WANT A SOCIAL LIFE, WITH FRIENDS You want a social life, with friends, A passionate love life and as well To work hard every day. What's true Is of these three you may have two And two can pay you dividends But never may have three. There isn't time enough, my friends— Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends— To find the time to have love, work, and friends. Michelangelo had feeling For Vittoria and the Ceiling But did he go to parties at day's end? Homer nightly went to banquets Wrote all day but had no lockets Bright with pictures of his Girl. I know one who loves and parties And has done so since his thirties But writes hardly anything at all. —KENNETH KOCH
ALT BLANDEUR If it please God, let less happen. Even out Earth's rondure, flatten Eiger, blanden the Grand Canyon. Make valleys slightly higher, widen fissures to arable land, remand your terrible glaciers and silence their calving, halving or doubling all geographical features toward the mean. Unlean against our hearts. Withdraw your grandeur from these parts. --KAY RYAN
ALT Announcement graphic for the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature, scheduled for 8 October at 13:00 CEST, displayed on a dark blue background.
ALT Lines for a Critic You say I live to use my life in verse And this appalls you. Sir, I have done worse.
ALT I Was Going To Burn Some Sage For The People Of This World But I Read An Article On The Internet Saying It Was A Bad Idea Also I didn't have any sage To burn Doing nothing is always easier Ask the cop in the graveyard Or the teacher who Every day Parks her car in front of legions Of Massachusetts dead And goes to work teaching Students about the history Of witches thieves And revolutionaries
