"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty
“Late, I have come to a parched land/doubting my gift, if gift I have,/the inspiration of water”~Dannie Abse
Make art about the inspiration of water.
7/17/2016
“Poor dear son, though you were not my son, I felt to love you as a son, what short time I saw you sick & dying here—“~Walt Whitman (letter to Erastus Haskell’s parents)
Make art about how they are all our sons.
7/18/2016
“May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.”~Mother Teresa
This week meet Jonathan Moody. Jonathan holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and a BS degree in Psychology from Xavier University of Louisiana. Author of The Doomy Poems (Six Gallery Press, 2012) and Olympic Butter Gold (Northwestern University Press, 2015), winner of the 2014 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, his poetry has appeared in such publications as African American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Borderlands, Boston Review, The Common, and Harvard Review Online. He lives in Fresno, Texas, with his wife and son.
Jonathan Moody grew up during the Golden Ages of hip-hop and listened to rap that was as adventurous and diverse as his military upbringing. When rap’s Golden Ages expired, the music’s innovativeness and variety diminished. Moody’s second book, Olympic Butter Gold, winner of the 2014 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, responds to Chuck D’s claim that “if there was a HIP-HOP or Rap Olympics, I really don’t think the United States would get Gold, Silver or Brass.” From the poem “Opening Ceremony,” in the voice of a heroin addict struggling to use Lady Liberty’s torch to cook “The American Dream,” to “Dear 2Pac,” an autobiographical account of teaching Tupac Shakur’s poetry to engage high school students indifferent to literature, Moody shares a worldview that is simultaneously apocalyptic and promising.
“The Doomy Poems challenges the notion that the blues embodies resignation: a self-imposed suffering in which one chooses to remain stuck at the crossroads of nostalgia and obsession. Through persona poems written in the voices of three characters, Jonathan Moody illustrates that in both the South (Houston) and the North (Pittsburgh) the roads to love and integrity, although freshly paved, are strewn with nails and shards of glass.”
Orlando. Dhaka. Istanbul. Baghdad. Medina. The killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the murder of police officers in Dallas. This summer, terrible bigotry and violence have rent our global community. The killings must end, and we in the poetry community must contribute in any way we can. As we search for answers to these horrors and for ways to combat hatred and prejudice, we are reminded of poetry’s capacity to respond to violence, to help us regenerate, like spikelets sprouting in a contested field, claiming our public spaces for everyone.
In solidarity with all those targeted at home and abroad, from the LGBT community in the United States to devastated families of Baghdad, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. Over the next couple of weeks, from July 14 to 28, we are requesting poems in response to and against violence toward marginalized communities:
Poems will be accepted until July 28, 2016.
Send us your poems in response to this violent summer, and we will publish them on Split This Rock’s blog, Blog This Rock (blogthisrock.blogspot.com), to create a Virtual Open Mic. We welcome poems new and old, whether previously published or not. (Please include credit information for previously published work.)
Thematically we are wide open: resistance, mourning, rage, celebration, love. We are especially open to poems focused on how we build again, how we heal, the places of light shining through the pain.
Unfortunately, Split This Rock’s blog is not compatible with poems with complex formatting. Should we find that your poem can not be properly we will be in touch to request a different poem.
Send the poem(s) as email attachments (.doc or .docx only) with the subject line “A Call in Response to Violence” to info@splitthisrock.org.
Please include the poem’s title and your full contact information in the body of the email.
We invite one poem per person.
From the open mic collection, we may occasionally choose poems to run as Poem of the Week in the weeks ahead. We will contact you directly if we decide to use your poem for Poem of the Week.
After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to Congress and the National Rifle Association.
Split This Rock is also accepting poems for its 10th Annual Poetry Contest until November 1, 2016.
For submissions guidelines, visit Split This Rock’s website or Submittable.
“The human brain holds in its cradle its own strangeness”-Eric Waggoner Make art about the brain, the magic of the brain, its beautiful strangeness.
7/1/2016
“I could spend my life trying to distill the feeling of a summer porch”~Jessie van Eerden Make art about that summer porch.
7/2/2016
Make art inspired by this quote: “Who looks after the sensitive child?”~Nikky Finney
7/3/2016
“You have to let the Light in.”~Nikky Finney Make art about ways of letting the Light in.
7/4/2016
I wrote a poem today called “What Goliath Wants Us To Know.” Make art about what someone—real or mythical, living or dead—wishes we knew.
7/5/2016
Alton Sterling ❤
7/6/2016
Philando Castile ❤
7/7/2016
Dallas shootings ❤ Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, and Lorne Ahrens.
7/8/2016
I’m struggling to function in the sorrow of what we’re doing to each other. Keep singing a song I learned as a child, One Tin Soldier.
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago
‘Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone
And the valley-people swore
They’d have it for their very own
Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold for which they’d kill
It came an answer from the mountain
With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain
All the riches buried there
Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away
Now the valley cried with anger
“Mount your horses! Draw your sword!”
And they killed the mountain-people
So they won their just reward
Now they stood beside the treasure
On the mountain, dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
“Peace on Earth” was all it said
Make art about what matters.
7/9/2016
Thanks and Love to Eric Waggoner for his seminar at the West Virginia Wesleyan MFA residency on writing ugly topics. Robert Bly said, “Dare to do something ugly.” Do this. Take on something ugly.
7/10/2016
Garmin took us down some strange backroads today, as it does at times 🙂 Today it took us down a two lane road with no lines, through a series of unicorporated communities, one of which was particularly sweet, Batesville Virginia. As we entered this tiny crossroad community, we passed a stone pillar with the word Elysium carved into it. Love letters from the Universe?
According to Eustathius of Thessalonica, the word “Elysium” (Ἠλύσιον) derives from ἀλυουσας (ἀλύω) and means to be deeply stirred from joy, or from ἀλύτως, synonymous of ἀφθάρτως (ἄφθαρτος) incorruptible, referring to the incorruptible joy of a soul in this afterlife.
Make art about your idea of the afterlife.
7/11/2016
Finding peace in doing the daily tasks of being home: folding laundry; washing dishes; sweeping floors. Make art about those moments when the mundane intersects with the divine.
7/12/2016
Lost a feline family member today, Dobi. She ruled our home with the most regal feline disdain for ten years, and my heart is broken at her going. Make art about what our animal family means to us.
7/13/2016
Coffee in the garden. Reminders of the cycles. Make art about what goes on, about what continues.
This week meet 
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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