Yes to Poetry! Sean Singer, Yes!

Traveling, so alternate dates for events coming up!

There will be excellent poetry this week, though our normal Saturday Zoom will be dark since I’m doing Bay Area readings. Here’s a listing of my in-person Bay Area events— hoping some of you will get there:

Clark County Poet Laureate Angela Brommel hosts the excellent Sean Singer in a Zoom writing workshop on Revision today from 6:00-8:00 PM. It’s great, because all you have to do to join is Zoom-in. Sean Singer is truly notable so thanks to Clark County and Angela for providing this program. Some poems by him are below. He won a Yale Younger Poets Award (selected by WS Merwin) and the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award. I’m giving you the link below. He will also read LIVE in LAs Vegas on May 15, and info for both readings is below.

Link to Sean Singer Zoom May 1 6:00 PM PDT

Here is the information on the May 15 reading— I will definitely be there!

His latest book is Today in the Taxi, a collection of funny, thoughtful, and moving poems about his time driving a taxi in NYC. The poems are iconic in depicting modern experience.

DAYS OF WINTER

Today in the taxi I brought a Chinese couple, parents of a student at Columbia, from Amsterdam Avenue to JFK. The girl was crying, the mother was crying, etc. The parents sat in silence for most of the trip. They didn't speak English and I didn't speak Chinese. I did offer them a little package of tissues. On the other hand, the sun came out and it warmed to 24 degrees.

A driver should find a fixed object on the road, such as a sign or a tree, and when the car in front passes it, count three seconds before his own car passes it. Then add a second for each hazard—rain, or darkness.

The road is not unlike a little pressed-between vessel that the car pushes along its black bloodstream. A psalm instructs that "It will be as it is said."
~

HARLEM RIVER DRIVE

Tonight in the taxi it felt like the path of names. The city night is like the breaking of vessels. I counted to four and marked the distances. There seemed to be infinite green lights reflected in the puddles.

We live in a time whose motor hums the noises of collapse. Sparks scattered in order to lift the streetgrid up.

The little shifter was set on drive, the pale lighted interior, and three maps sent me across boroughs. A monster is made only of nerves. The driver is nothing without the 3,300 pounds of metal slicing the air.
~

ONE-TENTH

Today in the taxi, I brought a man from midtown to someplace in Astoria near the airport. He asked me to take him round trip; we got to the address and he waited outside the place and someone came out and handed him a brown paper bag. The man gave the person some cash. Then we left; he asked me to drive him to the E train instead.

I don’t believe in saints or omens, early winds, or the pink luck of a sunset. I don’t see the Lord’s love with Her incisions and furry ornaments.

The vehicle is not just a way to get to the crime, but somehow bless whatever the journey needs. I use my braking and steering inputs to turn inward, or even to go down the uncertain road.
~

Aren’t we all going down our uncertain roads? Think about things you do regularly, every day. Focus on one repetitive action. Can you see it as part of a progression that define your experience? That define you? What can you tell us about this thing you do all the time? Can you describe the sense and feeling of it? Look at your larger life from the moments of doing your regular thing. What does doing it mean to you? How does it define you? Write it all up and call it a poem.

We’’ be back via Zoom on May 11 (no hybrid due to a County event). And I hope to see you at Poetry in the Bay! And at poetry from Sean Singer!

This series is sponsored by Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Thank you!

Bruce Isaacson
Poetry Promise, Inc. 
a 501 (c)(3) Corporation
Phone: (702) 205-7100
Bruce@PoetryPromise.org