“Let me fill your diversity quota.”

Watch: Poet paints a vivid picture of growing up as a Chinese American — and it hits deep.

i’m gonna cry

Watch: Brian Yu’s heartbreaking poem will strike anyone with students loans to the core.

“Open Letter to Kylie Jenner” The Fuze Philadelphia Poetry Grand Slam Championship 4.24.16

Y'ALL Listen to this and reblog! This was so damn good. @sapphiredoves saying real shit

This is SO good.

Cold

Favvvv line was when she said “ ITS CALLED GENETICS"👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

APPLAUD THE FUCKIN POET!

Watch: Poet Rachel Wiley continues “And ain’t that just like white feminism, always …”

Prince was so suave, goddamn.

Wu Zao (or Wu Tsao) is considered one of the great female poets of China, and one of the greatest lesbian poets of all time. Very little of her work has been translated into English, but the most beautiful translations are the handful by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung (the above being the best of the bunch, IMO).

Born in 1799, Wu Zao was the child of a merchant, and married to a merchant (in an arranged marriage, naturally). Both relationships are believed to have been unhappy. There were no literati in either family, and no one knows how she learned to read, write, play music and paint, since women of the merchant class were rarely taught these skills. A common dictum in the era was “A woman without talent is a virtuous one.” She basically said, “Fuck that noise,” and became a productive and talented poet, playwright and composer; one of the few female writers of the period. She used her writing to express her longing to break away from a traditional view of women’s roles, including an opera about a woman who cross-dresses and paints her own self-portrait, while lamenting her inability to use her talents because she is a woman and the gender roles of the era are stupid.

Her work was highly praised by poets and scholars, and her songs were sung all over China. She hobnobbed with other great artists of the age, both male and female. In her middle years she retreated from the world and became a Taoist priestess. (Or a Buddhist one, depending on who you ask). She died in 1863.

It’s clear from her poetry that she had sexual and romantic relationships with women, but apart from the short biography by Rexroth and Chung in their book Women Poets of China, it’s impossible to find a biography in English that does more than hint at her lesbianism. According to them, she had many female friends and lovers during her life, and wrote erotic poems to several courtesans, including this one. After reading it, I like to imagine her and Ch'ing Lin hanging out in her bedroom, painting each each other’s eyebrows and making out, like some kind of 19th century Chinese version of a sexy high school sleepover.

[Translation from Women Poets of China by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung; biographical information primarily from Women Poets of China, The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry and The Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women].

Button Poetry | Alex Dang - “What Kind of Asian Are You?”

I thought that the mods would enjoy this poem~

Poet Aja Monet Heartbreakingly Recalls The First Time She ‘Hated A Cop’

Poet Aja Monet recalls the first time she “hated a cop” in her poem “The First Time,” which she performed at the 2015 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational in Richmond, Virginia.

Watch the full poem here.

(GIFS via Button Poetry’s YouTube)

broken body

"I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning I break my legs, and every afternoon I break my arms. At night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep."

YOU DID NOT QUOTE SPONGEBOB AND MAKE IT SOUND POETIC AND BEAUTIFUL

#I have spent YEARS of my life thinking this quite was AN ACTUAL POEM#LIKE SOME FUCKING RICHARD SIKEN LEVEL SHIT#AND YOURE TELLING ME#ITS FUCKING S P O N G E B O B#I HAVE PROBABLY UNIRONICALLY REBLOGGED THIS QUOTE AS POETRY#FUCK THIS SHITTY BLUE SITE IM OUT

not an elegy for Mike Brown, By Danez Smith (via blackboybe)

THIS ISN’T YOUR HOME BUT YOU STILL BELONG HERE (2014) by Keaton Webb (via splitterherzen)

Maya Angelou - “On the Pulse of the Morning”

11x17 print of this Neil Gaiman Poem collaboration- available here!

The other prints have sold out, and @neverwear is offering this here:

http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2014/01/new-print-neil-gaimandavid-mack-i-will.html

Neil Gaiman reading and discussing the origin of the poem and collaboration here:

http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/21476192465/from-the-evening-with-neil-and-amanda-cd-from-the

A PORTION OF EACH PRINT PRICE WILL GO TO BENEFIT THE GAIMAN FOUNDATION.

here is the entire text of the beautiful poem Neil composed:

I will write in words of fire.

I will write them on your skin.

I will write about desire.

Write beginnings, write of sin.

You’re the book I love the best,

your skin only holds my truth,

you will be a palimpsest

lines of age rewriting youth.

You will not burn upon the pyre.

Or be buried on the shelf.

You’re my letter to desire:

And you’ll never read yourself

I will trace each word and comma

As the final dusk descends,

You’re my tale of dreams and drama,

Let us find out how it ends.

-Neil Gaiman

I have these prints that I did with Neil Gaiman available at my signing in Chicago C2E2 this Friday-Sunday. & here is the kickstarter of my new BOOK of art: MUSE. I hope you will reserve your book here. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/337503446/david-mack-muse-life-drawings-2012-2014 And thank you for all the love & response to my work on the #CaptainAmericaTheWInterSoldier film credit sequence that I made w @Sarofsky! I’m grateful, and I hope you enjoy the film!

Javon Johnson - “cuz he’s black”

The Kalevala (According To Scott Sandwich)

So, Kalevala, explained in about eight minutes, in English. Well worth a listen.