Foreclosing on that Peril by Julie Carr

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 9, 2017   Foreclosing on That Peril   Julie Carr

I'll keep explaining—because maybe you still don't get it Those children in California (substitute any state), dead from gunfire— Let me begin again in a little roof garden with my friend A perverse reader, he listens to my stories as if they were TV I mean he mocks me lovingly on the roof and at the library book sale My friend is not a banker but a prison activist He used to be a philosopher, but like many philosophers, he's taken a turn that should be easy to understand The trajectory from philosopher to activist is like the curve of a single brushstroke across a large canvas Artists in the fifties paid attention to that I hate flat language like this, but I'm pretty flat sometimes. You have to be your own dictator and the law is, hate yourself if you have to, but don't stop doing the thing you said you were going to do As I tell my daughters often Emotion is a site of unraveling (JB) I admit, gripping my T-shirt I wish I were writing in prose an unfolding intensity that shocks history professors and prison activists equally Later, in the grass, we'll practice gymnastics and that way contribute our sweat to Our Ephemeral City              Copyright © 2017 Julie Carr. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "I write from experience. 'Emotion is a site of unraveling' is a line from the writer and theorist Judith Butler, who helps me to understand my experiences as I have them. Poetry is a form of philosophy, of activism, and of history, but it is also only movement in the grass." —Julie Carr   Julie Carr is the author of Objects from a Borrowed Confession (Ahsahta Press, forthcoming in 2017). She teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and lives in Denver. Poetry by Carr   Sarah — of Fragments and Lines (Coffee House Press, 2010) "We never know how high we are (1176)" by Emily Dickinson "You Make the Culture" by Amy King "26" by Rachel Eliza Griffiths Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038