{"id":1011309,"date":"2023-04-04T11:00:08","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T16:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/?p=1011309&preview=true&preview_id=1011309"},"modified":"2026-02-28T14:12:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T20:12:22","slug":"deep-it-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/deep-it-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep It Lies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deep It Lies<\/h2>\n

Deep it lies
Buried (for now)
Crouched below, but poised
To spring; the fury of a thing
With feathers robbed of wings
\"The world isn't fair,\" you said,
Hinting at the rightness of iniquity.
\"It's a dog-eat-dog world.\"
That might have been my first clue:
I never saw a dog eat dogs.<\/em>
But I saw men kill
Rape
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Lie
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Steal
They beat devoted dogs for less.
Tossed them in black bags,
For their lap-licking loyalty.
Disappeared them<\/em> in the trash on Wednesdays,
Subtly warning
Smoldering silence.
Ask not for whom
The roar of the incinerator burns:
It burns for you.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Holly Jahangiri (April 4, 2023)<\/em><\/p>\n

Amusing aside:<\/strong> While I'm all for private platforms enforcing community standards, I had to laugh at Midjourney, this morning - I have a paid account, and privately fed this poem to the bot, wondering what it might propose as a featured image. I immediately got this warning:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What a world, where rapists are protected<\/a> but poetry mentioning \"rape\" gets the author the threat of a permanent ban. Maybe that screenshot<\/em> ought to be the featured image.<\/p>\n

Todays Poets<\/h2>\n

Only in Russia is poetry respected\u2014it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u2014 Osip Mandelstam<\/em><\/p>\n

Boris Dralyuk<\/strong> - a Ukrainian-American writer, editor and translator who currently\u00a0teaches in the English Department at the\u00a0University of Tulsa<\/a> (my alma mater!)\u00a0He has taught\u00a0Russian literature<\/a>\u00a0at his\u00a0alma mater<\/a>\u00a0and at the\u00a0University of St Andrews<\/a>, Scotland. Executive editor and editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a><\/i> and managing editor of\u00a0Cardinal Points<\/a>.<\/i> Read more here<\/a>.<\/sup><\/p>\n

Boris Dralyuk | Light (lightpoetrymagazine.com)<\/a><\/p>\n

In L.A. poetry fights Putin (forward.com)<\/a><\/p>\n

Short Conversations with Poets: Boris Dralyuk - McSweeney\u2019s Internet Tendency (mcsweeneys.net)<\/a><\/p>\n

Paul Laurence Dunbar<\/strong> - born on June 27, 1872 to two formerly enslaved people from Kentucky, Paul Laurence Dunbar became one of the first influential Black poets in American literature. Dunbar's poetry is a depiction of Black life in turn-of-the-century America. Read more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Haunted Oak by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Poetry Foundation<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

April is National Poetry Month<\/a>. This year marks its 27th year. NaPoWriMo<\/a> - 30 days of writing poems - is poets' answer to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).<\/p>\n

This coincides with the A to Z Blogging Challenge<\/a>, now celebrating its 13th anniversary. Some participants choose a theme; others wing it. Doesn't matter! The real challenge is to build a practice of writing daily. I think I stuck with it...once. There's still time to sign up - registration ends April 9. You can see the list of participants - I'm sure they'd love it if you'd visit and comment on their blogs.<\/p>\n

This month, my goal is to:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Write a poem a day and share it - uncurated<\/a> - here; and<\/li>\n
  2. Highlight some poets you may be unfamiliar with.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I encourage you to click the links to read about them and their work. I plan to choose a diverse array of classical and contemporary poets - indigenous poets, Black poets, women poets, LGBTQ poets - that challenge us to see the world differently while also tapping into universal themes and emotions.<\/p>\n

    Remember, too, that comments and conversation are always welcome here. (Spammers<\/em>, on the other hand, will be tossed into the moat or mocked, so before you leave an irrelevant comment or drop a link, consider that it's fair game!)<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    “Only in Russia is poetry respected\u2014it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?”<\/p>\n

    \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u2014 Osip Mandelstam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1011451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[],"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-1011309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 20:51:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011309"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137990829,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011309\/revisions\/137990829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011309"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=1011309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}