The Academy of American Poets is for people who love poetry. Our membership is nearly 9,000 strong and growing, and our programs reach over 20 million people every year. Our programs include Poets.org, the Poets Forum, Poem in Your Pocket Day, National Poetry Month, American Poet magazine, the Poem-A-Day email series, the Poetry Audio Archive, educational initiatives, readings and events, awards and prizes, and so much more. We’ve been doing this since 1934, and we still think it's fun.
Follow us on:   Facebook   &   Twitter
“I am interested only in ‘nonsense’; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestation.” - Daniil Kharms

“I am interested only in ‘nonsense’; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestation.” - Daniil Kharms

Hi, Mathias Svalina here. This is a photo of me & my dog D’Count in my favorite Colorado town, Leadville.  I’ll be tumblin today. 

Hi, Mathias Svalina here. This is a photo of me & my dog D’Count in my favorite Colorado town, Leadville. 

I’ll be tumblin today. 

  Kate & her hair & her feet & all of Kate reading & hmming & hewing. How much to love there is of Kate.   & How much the same a love of Max. Scroll down fr Max’s hair. hair collection site: U.S. Mail


 

Kate & her hair & her feet & all of Kate reading & hmming & hewing. How much to love there is of Kate.


 

& How much the same a love of Max. Scroll down fr Max’s hair.

hair collection site: U.S. Mail

from Veil: … But I’ve dropped    more than an armful of groceries or books downstairs into a train station. An acquaintance says    she colors her hair so people will help her    when this happens. To refute her argument,    I must wake up and remember my hair’s    already dyed. … hair collection site: Barbarella restaurant, La Jolla, CA date: April 4, 2012

from Veil:

…

But I’ve dropped   

more than an armful

of groceries or books

downstairs

into a train station.

An acquaintance says   

she colors her hair

so people will help her   

when this happens.

To refute her argument,   

I must wake up

and remember my hair’s   

already dyed.

…

hair collection site: Barbarella restaurant, La Jolla, CA

date: April 4, 2012

  Diane works for the MSPCA, who are promoting hamster love with this video. Thanks, Diane! Love, me & the animals ps. Diane’s most recent & wonderful Wonderbender on my 1913 Press here here! hair collection site: U.S. Mail


 

Diane works for the MSPCA, who are promoting hamster love with this video.

Thanks, Diane!

Love,

me & the animals

ps. Diane’s most recent & wonderful Wonderbender on my 1913 Press here here!

hair collection site: U.S. Mail

Susan’s hair traveled farthest fastest.

It came with this art & card from Hong Kong.

We watched the 2008 election with Susan in our Denver apartment with Ronald Johnson (the dog) & friends.

I miss Susan here, wherever that is, but I have these things.

& This from Coconut Poetry:

hair collection site: Air Mail from Hong Kong

…called this donation “a grid lock” I love Sarah’s loopy heart-shaped grid lock & her perfect questioning here, listen: “The question is: how did I become interested in poetry…I’d like to believe that all of us begin interested in poetry…and the real question is: how do we become or why do we become disinterested in poetry?” hair collection site: U.S. Mail

…called this donation “a grid lock”

I love Sarah’s loopy heart-shaped grid lock

& her perfect questioning here, listen:

“The question is: how did I become interested in poetry…I’d like to believe that all of us begin interested in poetry…and the real question is: how do we become or why do we become disinterested in poetry?”

hair collection site: U.S. Mail

Brenda asked if I would send the hair to help mop up the BP oil spill. Looks like they’d prefer chemicals (read here). Brenda is a champion of organizing via Code Pink—link—& as recently as this fall was mauled by the SWAT team at Berkeley during Occupy. Link to talk & reading here. hair collection site: U.S. Mail

Brenda asked if I would send the hair to help mop up the BP oil spill. Looks like they’d prefer chemicals (read here).

Brenda is a champion of organizing via Code Pink—link—& as recently as this fall was mauled by the SWAT team at Berkeley during Occupy. Link to talk & reading here.

hair collection site: U.S. Mail

Don’t Say My Name Skull, axis, kernel of focus,
 hub of center, genius of crisis,

 Drain, swaddled in silken tufts,
 shawl, veil, scarf, majestic loft.

 Listing, harebrained, keeling,
 right side up and upside down,

 one big lonesome brain searching
 through eternity for eyes, arms, legs,

 forty acres and a mule,
 kind neighbors, good luck, faithful

 lovers. Big, guileless baby of a brain
 searching through eternity

 with cracks in its skull
 nerve endings escape,

 attracting bees like honey,
 lightning bolts like thoughts,

 nerve endings like smoky moths.
 What fool thinks of strands

 of hair as passing thoughts?
 Who wants to comb them all

 morning and stroke them back
 to sleep all night?

 Whose hands haven’t
 felt as if they’ve detached

 to careen through space
 like stray thoughts of a lost planet,

 searching through space for your hair,
 to touch it, to worship its source. Verse Daily hair collection site: U.S. Mail

Don’t Say My Name


Skull, axis, kernel of focus,


hub of center, genius of crisis,



Drain, swaddled in silken tufts,


shawl, veil, scarf, majestic loft.



Listing, harebrained, keeling,


right side up and upside down,



one big lonesome brain searching


through eternity for eyes, arms, legs,



forty acres and a mule,


kind neighbors, good luck, faithful



lovers. Big, guileless baby of a brain


searching through eternity



with cracks in its skull


nerve endings escape,



attracting bees like honey,


lightning bolts like thoughts,



nerve endings like smoky moths.


What fool thinks of strands



of hair as passing thoughts?


Who wants to comb them all



morning and stroke them back


to sleep all night?



Whose hands haven’t


felt as if they’ve detached



to careen through space


like stray thoughts of a lost planet,



searching through space for your hair,


to touch it, to worship its source.

Verse Daily

hair collection site: U.S. Mail

Poetics Like many poets, I imagine, I keep a journal of phrases, images, snatches of conversation, etc. that I go to when I’m in the process of writing. I’m not a procedural or conceptual poet in the sense that I don’t begin with an interest in a specific set of formal problems to engage, though I admire poets who appear to work this way. However, once I have a specific idea for a poem I do think about the formal matters most appropriate—or most inappropriate—to the subject matter (and by appropriate and inappropriate I mean, of course, sedimented traditions). And then I write and rewrite but it’s very specific: some poems go through twelve, twenty, or more drafts, others, four or five. And I do believe in serendipity as I believe a poet must make his or her luck. My sense is that, for me and many others, the antennae are always up even if we are not always aware that they’re in reception mode. Tyrone Williams, from The Cooperative Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry hair collection site: U.S. Mail

Poetics

Like many poets, I imagine, I keep a journal of phrases, images, snatches of conversation, etc. that I go to when I’m in the process of writing. I’m not a procedural or conceptual poet in the sense that I don’t begin with an interest in a specific set of formal problems to engage, though I admire poets who appear to work this way. However, once I have a specific idea for a poem I do think about the formal matters most appropriate—or most inappropriate—to the subject matter (and by appropriate and inappropriate I mean, of course, sedimented traditions). And then I write and rewrite but it’s very specific: some poems go through twelve, twenty, or more drafts, others, four or five. And I do believe in serendipity as I believe a poet must make his or her luck. My sense is that, for me and many others, the antennae are always up even if we are not always aware that they’re in reception mode.

Tyrone Williams, from The Cooperative Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry

hair collection site: U.S. Mail