I’m writing a short series of dispatches about Mardi Gras for The Rumpus; the first one is available here (click through for the link). They’ll be appearing every day or so, until the parades run out or my vision is so blurred I can’t see to write, whichever comes first.

Slake Magazine has just announced its Lundi Gras celebration in Los Angeles for next Monday, featuring a host of artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians with Crescent City connections. Angelenos take note — nights as rich as this are rare to come by, especially for such an inexpensive cover. And we’re all still waiting for the New Orleans edition of Slake, but that’s a different story.

A stirring essay up this morning at the Times, by the Chinese writer Hao Qun, aka Murong Xuecun. “…when the air quality deteriorates, I feel we should do something; not simply shut our mouths and stop breathing.”

study the masters

like my aunt timmie.
it was her iron,
or one like hers,
that smoothed the sheets
the master poet slept on.
home or hotel, what matters is
he lay himself down on her handiwork
and dreamed. she dreamed too, words:
some cherokee, some masai and some
huge and particular as hope.
if you had heard her
chanting as she ironed
you would understand form and line
and discipline and order and
america.

–lucille clifton (1936-2010)

A year ago this week, Lucille Clifton, one of this country’s finest and most beloved poets, passed away, after a long struggle with cancer. Given the magnitude of the loss — to literature, to poetry, to civil rights, even just to anyone who met her — to say it still feels like only a few days is an understatement. I only knew her for a short while, but even then she left a profound impression. In her honor, an essay I wrote a few days after her death is below. (This piece was slated to run in the Baltimore Sun — her adopted city, where she taught and served as Poet Laureate of Maryland for a number of years — but I don’t know if it ever did.)

♦ Continue reading “i.m. Lucille Clifton (1936-2010)” →