Posted in words on 12/27/2008| Leave a Comment »
I’m excited about the wonderful community I am connected to through NinaAlvarez.net. Here are my plans for the coming year:
Let me know if you want to share anything, see anything, or say anything.
Thanks for visiting!
Nina
Posted in words on 12/18/2008| 3 Comments »
Words Without BordersThe Online Magazine of International Literature Even Small Donations Make A Big Difference at Words Without Borders Dear Friend of Words Without Borders, Thank you for your support of Words Without Borders and its unique role in bringing literary voices from around the world to English-language readers. It has been an exciting year. As the premier forum for literature in translation, we marked our fifth anniversary with bold efforts to expand our circle of talent to include more professional staff dedicated to strengthening the organization and enhancing its offerings, more volunteers, more educators enriching the minds of more students, more active board members, and most important, more involved readers! Please join us in our continuing efforts to publish and promote the world’s best literature through a highly accessible and completely free online magazine, public events, education initiatives, and print anthologies. In 2008, with tremendous support from our donors, WWB:
We have even bigger plans for 2009. We will co-publish a special issue on international nature writing with Orion Magazine; publish an anthology and issue celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; expand our education initiatives; provide in depth coverage of world literature through our blog; and curate more events both in and outside of New York City. But to do this we need your help. We must continue our work knowing dedicated readers like you expect it and appreciate and understand its importance. A gift at this time, no matter the amount, will make a significant impact on our small organization and will contribute to creating a global community that is based on mutual understanding and respect. We look forward to hearing from you. We wish you a joyous holiday season! Warm regards, The Staff and Board of Words without Borders |
First Person Arts – PhiladelphiaThree ways to enrich yourself in 2009 Fill out a survey about the 2008 First Person Festival! Be a Joiner
Get in the Act
…and have a lovely holiday season! Your friends at First Person Arts: |
Posted in carruth, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer on 12/09/2008| Leave a Comment »
Endnote
The great poems of
our elders in many
tongues we struggled
to comprehend who
are now content with
mystery simple
and profound you
in the night your
breath your body
-Hayden Carruth
Posted in poem, poem of the day, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/08/2008| 5 Comments »
Mark Rothko
[ 01 Dec ]
London’s Tate Modern is currently
holding an exhibition of Mark
Rothko’s later works through to 1st
February 2009. The collection
plunges the viewer into his deep
“colorfields” – chromatic spaces for
meditation.
-Nina Alvarez
This is a found poem, stumbled upon on the front page of Artprice.com. If you have any found poems, send them in! This is found poem week.
Posted in Nina Alvarez, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 12/05/2008| 1 Comment »
Prometheus: Behind the Music
Prometheus loved the afternoon
and took his drink with goat meat then.
And shook the rawness of his hands
on his big thighs and wiped them clean.
The giant man held conference
with intangible or tiny things.
Once a woman stayed the night,
He scared her with his offerings.
Prometheus watched television,
two channels from a long dead wire.
One of heaven, one of hell
Both claimed to fear his fire.
What say you, said the billy goat,
Rumor, said the ancient man
Of my liver’s destiny
has gotten out of hand.
Foolishness or fascism
imagines horrors blindly.
But he also said beneath his breath,
You’d think they’d try to find me.
He supped at evening languidly,
The raw meat of sheep and elk.
He drank fermented honey
And slept on arid silk.
His hands smelled of animals,
His land smelled of blood,
And though he was immortal,
He was often sick and cold.
At night he hung his hut
With every kind of fur
Prometheus had seen no gods
Since he invented fire.
He never saw an eagle,
His liver never quivered,
No horror ever chained him by
A rock or cliff or river.
He simply went away,
From fame and flames and heat
to sup at quiet mountains
a cold and bloody meat.
-Nina Alvarez
This poem uses slant rhyme. Can you find it?
Posted in information, Nina Alvarez, publish, teach, Video, words, Write, Writer, writing, tagged 5 steps, duotrope, Publishing, Video, writing on 11/21/2008| Leave a Comment »
Something new. A little video lesson on Not Overthinking the Process of writing and publishing.
Let me know what results you get! If I get enough responses, I’ll do the exercise myself and post my results.
And here’s the link to my dear, cherished duotrope.
Posted in Nina Alvarez, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 11/20/2008| 2 Comments »
1998-2008
From time to time i took a poem and made it into origami
it was folded and i creased a long finger into it.
oh absent gods, a threshold over other thresholds
one true thing that speaks so well when it
finishes your sentences.
i heard the roar of Magenta and brought cards with me
in my pocket
with cigarettes
and napkins
in boy’s pants.
my breasts became beautiful
because they were small.
-Nina Alvarez
Posted in Nina Alvarez, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing on 11/12/2008| 1 Comment »
a kind of love that would have done well
on a farm in Minnesota: Protestant, judging,
held back with two hands, unable to forgive.
but i could never have stopped returning to you
after that day in Christiania.
a sideways glance at grown boy
shirt buttoned solid chest
beard rougher than hands
He was after me, not him
but him, the one from
another life
jilted in Abyssinia
you want to press at me
until i give a squeak
the returning jeer of some cosmic comic
when he gets close i cry in the mirror
call a friend who doesn’t answer
-Nina Alvarez
Posted in poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing, tagged graham on 10/07/2008| 1 Comment »
Spoken From the Hedgerows
To bring back a time and place.
A feeling. As in “we are all in this
together.” Or “the United States and her allies
fought for Freedom.” To bring back.
The experience of killing and getting killed.
Get missed. Get hit. Sun—is it with us. Holiday,
are you with us on this beach today.
Hemisphere of one, my soul, paratrooper,
greatness I house in my body, deepset, my
hands on these triggers—who once could outrun
his brother—consumed with fellow-feeling like a madness that does not
must not,
lower its pitch—going to the meeting place,
the spire of the church in Vierville, seen on aerial maps, visible from
eighteen miles out,
if it weren’t for fog, and smoke, and groundmist,
the meeting place, the appointed time surging in me,
needing to be pierced—but not me—not me—
only those to the left and right of me—
permit me to let you see me—
Me. Driven half mad but still in biography.
By the shared misery of. Hatred. Training. Trust. Fear.
Listening to the chatter each night of those who survived the day.
There is no other human relationship like it.
At its heart comradeship is an ecstasy.
You will die for an other. You will not consider it a personal
loss. Private Kurt Gabel, 513 Parachute Infantry Regiment—
“The three of us Jake, Joe and I became an entity.
An entity—never to be relinquished, never to be
repeated. An entity is where a man literally insists
on going hungry for another. A man insists on dying for
an other. Protect. Bail out. No regard to
consequence. A mystical concoction.” A last piece
of bread. And gladly. You must understand what is meant by
gladly. All armies throughout history have tried
to create this bond among their men. Few succeeded as well
as the paratroop infantry of the U.S. Army,
Rifle Company E, 506th.
Fussell: It can’t happen to me. It can happen to me. It is
going to happen to me. Nothing
is going to prevent it.
Webster (to his parents): I am living on borrowed time—
I do not think I shall live through the next jump.
If I don’t come back, try not to take it too hard.
I wish I could persuade you to regard death
as casually as we do over here. In the heat of it
you expect it, you are expecting it, you are not surprised
by anything anymore, not surprised when your friend
is machine-gunned in the face. It’s not like your life, at home,
where death is so unexpected. (And to mother):
would you prefer for someone else’s son to die in the mud?
And there is no way out short of the end of war or the loss
of limb. Any other wound is patched up and you’re sent back
to the front. This wound which almost killed him
healed up as well and he went back.
He never volunteered. One cannot volunteer.
If death comes, friend, let it come quick.
And don’t play the hero, there is no past or future. Don’t play
the hero. Ok. Let’s go. Move out. Say goodbye.
-Jorie Graham
Posted in Nina Alvarez, poem, poem of the day, poet, poetry, words, Write, Writer, writing, tagged room with a view on 09/11/2008| 3 Comments »
It is strange to think,
As I had not thought before,
About what I’ve sacrificed to be who I am
About how the program I signed up for
Or was signed up in me
In 1978
Maybe precluded romantic love
Or at least the lasting kind
Because it didn’t fit
With the self-centered mind, the oozing self-consciousness
The interior eye always blinking
That is my way into language.
I watch now, from a small window, the
One that still looks out this way
Some days when I get up from the desk,
I see there was never anyone who could have held me
But still, at 30, it is beginning to trill
That far off siren
That says the race is over
And all have gone home
Having won their partner
And yet, here I was, all the time, waiting
Wasn’t I?
Hadn’t I signed up, too? Done my hair, flattered myself in the mirror.
Hadn’t I pursed my lips and flicked the strands of blond hair
Against some illuminating day’s sun.
Or had it been a dream?
Because there is only me now.
In this one room, with a window that used to look out onto love
Now looking only onto wilderness
And not one single track in a ground
That is overgrown and muddy.
-Nina Alvarez
Poem of the Month 