All posts tagged: Jane Wong

Afterwords // Naming the Animals: Stephen Burt on The Nearly-Baroque in Contemporary Poetry

Published by Staff

By Rich Smith Poetry Northwest Contributing Writer The talk was held in a conference room on the second floor of the Communications Building on the UW Campus. Weird room! (Good light, though. Lots of lamps.) Weird time! 6:00PM on a Friday, a fact that was not lost on Mr. Burt. However, he drew a good crowd—maybe 30 people, nearly all with notebooks on their laps. Burt speaks clearly, loudly, and with authority. He was a casual dresser, though, in a striped long-sleeve shirt, blue jeans, clear-framed glasses, Chuck Taylor’s with colorful laces, and sporting silver nail polish on modestly trimmed nails. I thought the fingernail polish was a nod to the theme of the talk, and I was admiring his commitment to the bit, but when I asked him about the polish later on in the evening he said he just liked to wear it. In short, I was ashamed. Especially three days later, after reading his beautiful essay about the newly released anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. Anyway, the …

Afterwords // Last Year in Quotes! (We’re Glad We Took Notes.)

Published by EC

January 5 Jason Witmarsh, Writers on Writing Lecture Series “Occupy that critical part of your brain–the thing that says, ‘this is useless’–and give that part of your brain a crossword puzzle, while the other part writes.” (J.W. on: writing in form) January 6 Rebecca Albiani on Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Frye “William Blake couldn’t stand falsity in anyone . . . and so he was a difficult companion.”  March 11 Barbara Courtney, Tiny House Reading Series, hosted by Emily Johnson “You will have to learn . . . how to dispense with teachers, even me.” April 14 Troy Jollimore, Seattle Arts & Lectures “Any really good poet has to be philosophical . . . if you pursue any field long enough you eventually end up doing philosophy.” April 16 Andrew Feld, Open Books “I don’t think there are that many people these days writing narrative-poems-in-heroic-couplets-that-are-visionary-quests. So, I sort of enjoy doing that.” April 22 Gregory Laynor, Tiny House Reading Series “I think I’m more of a worry doll than a poet . …

JANE WONG Aphoristic

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If you stay, you will always make that face. If you stay, a dog will bark and a chandelier will break. A child will bite another child, right on the nose. A lesson learned will be a lesson worn, thread barren. What is a good friend but apology? As in: I need my old habits. As in: I am sorry for the beetles littering the ceiling, for keeping miserable company. Truth is, I am nothing but a close stranger, well begun, half done. Having taken the bull by the sinking ship. We both know when it rains, a snail opens its eye. To see water seeking its own level. To say there is no word for standing in a windy field, looking at the back of the one you love. Out of sight, out of sigh: an open window. I once threw a stone into a glass house and nothing happened. I threw it again. If only to hope for you, if only to waste not to want all too much. — Congratulations to Jane …