@danvera.com
Washington, DC —poet| poetry foundation bit.ly/40tituc , editor, literary historian, 📚: Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen) & co-editor, Imaniman: Poets at the (Gloria) Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute). Quilt & watercolor. danvera.com
I wish this didn't seem so relevant so often: "In mainstream discourse, it's become standard to blame the excesses of the right on liberals, the left, feminists.... It's a way that the right is granted masculine prerogatives and the left feminine responsibilities for the right's behavior."
More love, please!
Thanks!! You at AWP?
At least you didn't send it by mimeo.
Will we be seeing you at #AWP in Baltimore?? We hope so!!
And always find us at www.washingtonwriters.org
#writers #poets #AWP26 #writingcommunity 💙🌈🏳️🌈✍️✍️💕
"These intimate poems are filled with vulnerability, longing, hope, and resilience. They honor queer devotion as a force capable of healing hearts and transforming history through a practice of tenderness rooted in the belief that love can be both sacred act and quiet revolution."
Rectangular cover of a portrait oriented book of poems featuring a white banner centered in front of a vibrantly multicolored abstract watercolor. The title of the book, Celestial Fire: Songs For A Love That Dares, is centered in bright red letters on the white field. At the bottom of the cover in white letters against the watercolor are the words, "Poems by Dan Vera"
Happy to share the cover of my new book of poems, Celestial Fire: Songs for A Love That Dares, officially out from Beothuk Books in April but appearing at Saints & Sinners in NOLA at the end of the month. Book description below. #poetry #gaypoetry #queerpoetry #lgbtpoetry #latinopoetry #latinxpoetry
XXI Imagine her face, having kissed her husband’s forehead for the final time, thinking that all skin is dead by the time anyone kisses it.
A Salten Urn, Joshua Rothes
Oh, my heart breaks for you. A neighbor across from us planted a quince bush that has been an annual Spring joy when in bloom. Its distinct color is part of a sequence (along with dogwood, forsythia, red bud, and pink magnolia) he left when he moved away. Not a great guy TBH, but he left that gift.
View from below of a five-pointed lighted chandelier against the background of a white ceiling.. geometric and sparkly.
Star-shaped lights above the table where we met to share poems. A photo memory from the first year of the LGBTQ Poetry Fellowship at the Arts Club of Washington in 2023. So happy that this project has continued with other poets! #dcpoetry
Uff. Great charge in that poem. That closing line! Thanks for sharing it.
Seems unfair to the Bardo.
(apologies to Groucho)
talking about poetry with a group of young people full of imagination and compassion gives me so much joy. and hope.
Three recent pages from the Grandiloquent Word of the Day calendar, featuring the words Twaddle, gombeen and inaniloquent. Twattle is a verb meaning "to talk much and idly; to gabble, to twaddle." Gombeen is a noun for "A mean, underhanded, corrupt person; usually applied to politicians." and an adjective meaning "corrupt, shady, underhanded." Inaniloquent is an adjective which means "Given to talking insanely; loquacious; garrulous."
Anyone needing MORE words for last night’s hideous #stateoftheunion (it's almost like @grandiloquentwords.bsky.social planned their words for this week to help us all out!)
The talk to your friends app and the witness the horrors app being the same app is not great for the mental health is it
Y’all. OMG. Y’all.
Wow what can't GrokAI do? Shudder.
A poem for Carmen Miranda on her birthday, “All Oranges and Bananas Now” from my book Speaking Wiri Wiri ( @redhenpress.bsky.social) #poem #cliophrasis
Far-right Christian nationalist pastor Dale Partridge has some thoughts about Bad Bunny's halftime show. Well, thoughts may be too generous. He has a reaction.
Did I catch a reference to Lolita Lebron in this part? That garble effect did a number on it.
There are US states where professors could be fired for walking their students thru a critical analysis of the Bad Bunny halftime show.
Was that Bad Bunny Lebron reference to Lolita or James? That section right after LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii, makes me believe it was Lolita Lebron, which would be astonishing! 🔥
40 members of the audience
were treated for hypertension.
20 year old dark haired beauties found their heads
had turned a Moses White.
From: Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam
By @danvera.com
Read by @zigzackly.bsky.social
honestly about as big of a psychospiritual fuck you to ICE as i can imagine
The Americas is going to have every sorry ass pundit trying to write something negative but hey that was correct
“We create — poems and paintings, stories and songs — to find a language for the bewilderment of being alive, the failure of it, the fullness of it, and to have lived fully is not to have spared yourself.”
Astonishing loveliness in @mariapopova.bsky.social essay on AI. h/t @jenbenka.bsky.social
But reading this statement calling for flexibility and context from the BDS movement reminded me of the basic takeaways Jim Hubbard and I cohered from our decades of study of ACT UP. 1. ACT UP was not a consensus-based movement. Their statement of unity, "Direct Action to end the AIDS crisis," emphasized direct action in contrast to social service provision. Basically, if someone had an idea that would move us closer to ending the AIDS crisis, they could do it. When others disagreed, they would debate and argue. ACT UP was a very confrontational place as a result of the high pressure of the suffering among us, combined with pre-gentrification New York culture. Lots of yelling. But if in the end you had an idea that was direct action to end the AIDS crisis and I didn't want to do it, I wouldn't try to stop you from doing it. I just wouldn't do it. I would go find my five people to do my idea. And in this way, there was a broad range of many different kinds of actions with different methods and aesthetics, aimed at different social milieus, that would take place at the same time.
My own study of history shows me that movements that try to force everyone into one analysis or one strategy always fail, and I can't find any historical exceptions. Trying to make pcople all agree on approaching the problem the same way is not effective, and this is because people are different and therefore can only be where they are at. It took me decades of therapy to accept this. But the fundamental truth is that people will always be different and therefore real leadership is rooted in facilitating people being effective from where they are at. 2. Second, ACT UP went action first, not theory first. The reason was not ideological. ACT UP was driven by people with AIDS whose clocks were ticking. They had immediate needs that had to be won as soon as possible, and so the method had to be effective. As a result, there were concrete goals; our job was to figure out how to make them winnable by coming up with solutions that were doable. Part of this process was people in ACT UP becoming the experts on the issues. They avoided the infantilization process that comes with asking the powers that be to solve problems. They will never solve our problems, primarily because they don't want to and don't know how to, since their power is derived from the status quo. So, to create change, we have to be highly informed and design the reasonable, winnable, and doable solutions ourselves. This means taking action in the realm of the real. As Maxine Wolfe, one of the leaders of ACT UP, often pointed out, if we go action first, our theory will emerge because we have to make decisions about how to enact the action. And this is how our values are cohered. If instead we went theory first, we would be instantly polarized by theoretical differences, with nothing concrete at stake.
Sarah Schulman in The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity on two of the qualities that made ACT UP effective: it “was not a consensus-based movement” and “went action first, not theory first”
Fantastic in coffee IMHO.
