Rest in Peace Galway Kinnell

He was one of the lions of American poetry when I was just learning how to get some of my own down on the page. He was a friend and advocate of Etheridge Knight who was an even greater influence on my work. He was a teacher of some of my teachers and friends. I’m sorry to hear the news of his death. RIP, Galway Kinnell

Last Songs

1.
What do they sing, the last birds
coasting down the twilight,
banking
across woods filled with darkness, their
frayed wings
curved on the world like a lover’s arms
which form, night after night, in sleep,
an irremediable absence?

2. 
Silence. Ashes
in the grate. Whatever it is
that keeps us from heaven,
sloth, wrath, greed, fear, could we only
reinvent it on earth
as song.

Persea will publish my new book in 2016

I’m extremely happy to announce that Persea Books will publish my new collection of poems, Brooklyn Antediluvian, (probably) in 2016. This will be my fourth full-length book working with my editor, Gabriel Fried; Gabe and I go back to 1999, when he published poems of mine in Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. When few houses knew, let alone published, poems at the  simultaneous intersection of traditional literary modes and hip hop and immigrant lit and … and … Gabe believed there was a place on the shelves for Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive (2003), My American Kundiman (2006), and Boneshepherds (2011). Persea published them all and I’m truly grateful. 

More news coming about the book. I’ll post it here. 

Etymology of Duende

The deep etymology of the word duende can be traced to the Proto-Indo-European root “dom”. So, duende is a cognate of Spanish words like domicilio or Don (or domain and domestic in English) Duende comes, then, from house or home.The more recent root is said to come from an old Spanish contraction of “dueño de la casa"—"duen de casa”. Evidently, the Swedes have a word that is closely related: tomte.


http://etimologias.dechile.net/?duende