Bernadette Mayer, “Returning Books to Their Shelves”
In 2025 this poem was featured in one of the essay assignments for ModPo.
Category: week 7
“The SoCal Spellers”: nonspeaking autistic ModPo reading group in southern California
“The SoCal Spellers” have been posting to the ModPo forums, contributing their comments to our discussions of individual poems. We here on the ModPo team invite all ModPo people to respond to their posts!...
John Ashbery’s “The Short Answer”
Here is the text of Ashbery’s poem “The Short Answer” from his book Quick Question. This was the basis of a PoemTalk episode which can be heard and viewed HERE. The Short Answer I...
Tracie Morris improvises a poem-performance with Jayne Cortez
Watch Tracie Morris improvise a poem-performance in response to (and with) the video of Jayne Cortez performing her piece “She Got He Got.” This was Tracie’s contribution to a program featuring six poets each...
Notes on Barbara Guest’s “20”
ModPo citizen John Kamholz recently responded to reading Guest’s poem “20” with the following observation: When I was in Seville, my son and I went to a flamenco bar. The dancing started at midnight...
John Yau poems in ModPoPLUS week 7
We recently added two new poems—and a new video for each poem—to our John Yau entry in ModPoPLUS. See list and links below. These are now part of the week 7 syllabus in ModPoPLUS....
re-reading Ashbery’s “Hard Times” in a time of pandemic
During our May 13, 2020, live interactive webcast, we talked about re-reading John Ashbery’s “Hard Times” a time of pandemic. Here is that segment of the webcast:
re-reading Bernadette Mayer’s “The Incorporation of Sophia’s Cereal” in a time of pandemic
During our May 13, 2020, live interactive webcast, we talked about re-reading Bernadette Mayer’s “The Incorporation of Sophia’s Cereal” in a time of pandemic. Here is that segment of the webcast:
New video: on Mayer’s “The Incorporation of Sophia’s Cereal”
We’ve long admired how Bernadette Mayer incorporates things, scenes, people, occasions from her daily life in her poems. This is at the heart of the New York School style, of course. Then there’s the...