Mission Stuffed - No need for volunteers Thursday night

Due to the incredible exertions of the multitudes who showed up last night, we finished the mailing! So, no need to come out tonight. If you'd like to get involved and help with other things, just let us know. You'll get lots of love and appreciation.

Many thanks to Wednesday evening's excellent crew!

Sarah Browning on Langston Hughes at Words Matter

The following is an excerpt from Sarah Browning's guest post on Abdul Ali's blog, Words Matter. To read the full entry, click here.

Why do I, a straight white woman, choose Langston Hughes, a queer Black man, as literary father? Because Hughes chose me, a dreamer. Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed, he wrote in that great manifesto, “Let America Be America Again.” He chose us, those who believe America can be America again (which never was to so many). He chose the poets, the activists, the believers.

Poem of the Week: Randall Horton

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Note from a Prodigal Son III

The gavel

The splintered body

The red-neck guards

The state dungarees

The grey cinder block

The naked shower

The elemental fear

The unspoken yoke

The mercy plea

The awakening

The trembling hands

The walk to chow

The razor fence

The barrel’s scope

The Rottweiler’s teeth

The hesitation

The guttural pain

The calls refused

The return to sender

The rivulet of tears

The frozen heart

The opaque night

The seclusion

The muffled screams

The masturbation

The silence

-Randall Horton

From The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street (Main Street Rag 2009). Used by permission.

Randall Horton, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, resides in New Haven, CT and is a former recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. He is the author of the poetry collections The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street and The Definition of Place, both from Main Street Rag. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Haven and the poetry editor of Willow Books.

Horton appeared on the panel Dissidence, Memory, and Music in African American Poetry during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

Split This Rock on Poets & Writers Website

Poets & Writers is featuring a quote about the Festival from our report on their funding support on their website until June 15. Just click here: http://www.pw.org/funding and scroll down to the box on the left labeled, "What They're Saying."

Photo of the Week: Melissa Tuckey and Sarah Browning

This feature highlights a different photo each week from the 2 Split This Rock Festivals. For more photos from the last festival, check out Split This Rock's Flickr.



Melissa Tuckey and Sarah Browning at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival opening ceremonies.

Photo Credit: Jill Brazel

Poem of the Week: Philip Metres

For the Fifty (Who Formed PEACE With Their Bodies)

In the green beginning,
.……in the morning mist,
………………they emerge from their chrysalis

of clothes: peel off purses & cells,
.………slacks & Gap sweats, turtle-
………………necks & tanks, Tommy’s & Salvation

Army, platforms & clogs,
.………abandoning bras and lingerie, labels
……………….& names, courtesies & shames,

the emperor’s rhetoric of defense,
.………laying it down, their child-
……………….stretched or still-taut flesh

giddy in sudden proximity,
.………onto the cold earth: bodies fetal or supine,
……………….as if come-hithering

or dead, wriggle on the grass to form
.………the shape of a word yet to come, almost
……………….embarrassing to name: a word

thicker, heavier than the rolled rags
.………of their bodies seen from a cockpit:
……………….they touch to make

the word they want to become:
.………it’s difficult to get the news
……………….from our bodies, yet people die each day

for lack of what is found there:
.………here: the fifty hold, & still
……………….to become a testament, a will,

embody something outside
.………themselves & themselves: the body,
……………….the dreaming disarmed body.


-Philip Metres

Used by permission.

Philip Metres is the author of numerous books, including To See the Earth (poetry, 2008), Come Together: Imagine Peace (anthology of peace poems, 2008), Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941 (criticism, 2007). His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry and Inclined to Speak: Contemporary Arab American Poetry. He teaches at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. Were it not for Ellis Island, his last name would be Abourjaili.

Metres appeared on the panels "The Peace Shelves: Essential Books and Poems for the 21st Century" and "Documentary Poetics" during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

Calling All DC-Area Volunteers!

Dear Friends,

Split This Rock is gearing up for our national mailing and we need your help!

Please join us on the evenings of Wednesday June 9th or Thursday 10th (or both!) at 5:30pm for our first mailing party since the 2010 festival.

This is a great chance to meet the staff, other volunteers, and talk poetry and politics - all while helping spread the good word!

What: Split This Rock mailing party
When: Wednesday June 9 and Thursday June 10 5:30-7:30 pm
Where:Institute for Policy Studies 1112 16th St. NW6th Floor Washington, DC 20036
(Red Line: Farragut North, Blue Line: Farragut West)

Please RSVP to info@splitthisrock.org

Snacks and drinks will be provided. (Free beer and wine!) We'd love to see you.

In peace and poetry,
Split This Rock