jordan stempleman

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SONG 14 — POEM-A-DAY from THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN LUNATICS (#17)

poem a day jordan - Copy

poem a day jordan - Copy - Copy

poem a day jordan about etc - Copy - CopyI’ve been working on a number of “song” poems, as in songs that are sung under one’s breath, never really meant to be listened to. The songs are often unkempt, ancient and embarrassing. The identity of the original singer is unknown and unimportant, as these songs are constantly getting sung somewhere.
poem a day jordan - Copyry an djo (1)

Ryan MacDonald is a lecturer in the Studio Art Department at UMass, Amherst. He is the 2012 winner of the American Short(er) Fiction award. His collection of stories, The Observable Characteristics of Organisms will be released from FC2 in August 2014.
Jordan Stempleman’s collections include No, Not Today (Magic Helicopter Press 2012) and the forthcoming Wallop (Magic Helicopter Press 2014). He edits The Continental Review, runs the Common Sense Reading Series, & teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute. Find out more here.
poem a day jordan - Copy - Copy
poem a day jordanpoem a day jordan a kind of homage and alternative (a companion series, if you will) to the incredible work Alex Dimitrov and the rest of the team at the The Academy of American Poets are doing.

poem a day jordan - Copy

Comments Off on SONG 14 — POEM-A-DAY from THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN LUNATICS (#17)
May 1st, 2014 / 9:05 am

“The universe wants something that is in me / but not what I have in me to give. / Let me tell you: I haven’t whispered right in years.”

Why there aren’t Jordan Stempleman fan clubs in every open field—fan clubs that would consist of an abandoned Astro Van, painted with blue and yellow racing stripes, almost hidden among the tall stalks under a sunset somehow permanent, while inside the Astro Van is a photograph of the same field and Astro Van under an even more beautiful sunset, a photograph the fans inside the Astro Van try to avoid looking at (but when we do we can’t help but shake our heads) while meanwhile they are either trying to scratch out every reflective surface until it’s not reflective or polish every unreflective surface until it is reflective (we can’t decide), and even meanwhiler crows live their whole productive lives on top of the Astro Van because above all it makes for a meek scarecrow, why there aren’t Jordan Stempleman fan clubs like this—well, it’s beyond me. Here are four sets of decontextualized lines from Jordan’s new chapbook Wallop (from Grey Book Press) :

1

One out of five people applying for citizenship
today secretly wish they were applying
to live in a forest just outside the country
to which they’ve applied,
where they could still see the lights
from the largest cities at night

2

Was that the tenderness people always talk about
or just a bad cold?

3

Health happens like this:
there are stupid things
we put in us.
Some of these things go from stupid to nothing.
A few never leave.

4

… It’s like a road of pine trees
that first say no to the car, no to the bike, no holding hands
to make your way through this rowdy, timeless path.

Author Spotlight / 21 Comments
February 22nd, 2011 / 3:49 pm

“In the world there is this betweenness / and then there is all people”

What’s nifty about earworms is that they’re lodged inside of you because they found something to feed on. I’m pushing the metaphor biological, sure. Thinking more of an “ear parasite.” But what if things burrow into us because we’re somehow fertile for them? In ways we aren’t really aware of? What if we’re drawn when we’re drawn not because of what we want, but because beauty is looking for a brain to eat? I was going to get even more ridiculous and talk about dentistry, but I should probably just shut up and tell you the point: Jordan Stempleman’s poetry gets stuck in my head. READ MORE >

Uncategorized / 12 Comments
July 1st, 2010 / 3:54 pm