I am reminded via email to resubmit my preferences for the schedule by Chen Chen

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 27, 2016   I am reminded via email to resubmit my preferences for the schedule   Chen Chen

But really I would prefer to sit, drink water, reread some Russians a while longer  —a luxury perhaps, but why should I, anyone, call it that, why should reading what I want, in a well-hydrated fashion, always be what I’m planning to finally do, like hiking       or biking, & now that I think of it, reading should make me, anyone, breathe harder, then easier, reach for cold, cold water, & I prefer my reading that way, I prefer Ivan Turgenev, who makes me work for not quite pleasure no, some truer  sweatier thing, Turgenev, who is just now,  in my small room  in West Texas,  getting to the good part, the very Russian part, the last few pages    of “The Singers”  when the story should be over, Yakov the Turk has sung with fervor, meaning true Russian spirit, meaning he’s won a kind of 19th century Idol in the village tavern, The End, but Turgenev goes on, the narrator walks out, down a hill, into a dark enveloping mist,  & he hears from misty far away some little boy  calling out for Antropka! calling hoarsely, darkly,  Antropka-a-a! & it’s that voice that stops then opens my breath that voice & all Monday-Wednesday-Fridays all Tuesday-Thursdays     are gone I have arrived in the village of no day   none & I am sitting with the villagers   who are each at once young   old   who have the coldest water to give me   & songs I think I have sung   before they sing their underground tree-root syllables they give me silences from their long long   hair            Copyright © 2016 Chen Chen. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘The Singers’ is the only work by Turgenev that I’ve read. I’ve read and loved much more Tolstoy, Chekhov, Nabokov (and in poetry, I can’t live without Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva). Honestly, ‘The Singers’ does not seem that remarkable in terms of character development or prose style—still, it’s a story I return to when I need the startling gift and portal of stories.” —Chen Chen   Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017). He is a PhD student at Texas Tech University and lives in Lubbock, Texas.   Poetry by Chen   Kissing the Sphinx (Two Cups Press, 2015)  "Black Petal" by Li-Young Lee "The Future is an Animal" by Tina Chang "To a Stranger" by Walt Whitman 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