Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry
By John Murillo
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Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry - John Murillo
Also by John Murillo
Up Jump the Boogie
KONTEMPORARY AMERIKAN POETRY:POEMS
John Murillo
Four Way Books
Tribeca
for Nicole
and in loving memory
of Josefina Cervantes Murillo,
Francisco Morales Santiago,
and Philip Levine
Copyright © 2020 John Murillo
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Murillo, John, author.
Title: Kontemporary Amerikan poetry / John Murillo.
Description: New York : Four Way Books, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019031752 | ISBN 9781945588471 (trade paperback)
Classification: LCC PS3613.U6945 A6 2020 | DDC 811/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031752
This book is manufactured in the United States of America and printed on acid-free paper.
Four Way Books is a not-for-profit literary press. We are grateful for the assistance
we receive from individual donors, public arts agencies, and private foundations.
This publication is made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts
and from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency,
We are a proud member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.
ISBN-13: 978-1-945588-57-0 (electronic)
CONTENTS
On Confessionalism
I.
Variation on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop
Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds,
On Metaphor
Dolores, Maybe.
On Magical Realism
Poem Ending and Beginning on Lines by Larry Levis
Dear Yusef,
On Negative Capability
Mercy, Mercy Me
II.
A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn
III.
Contemporary American Poetry
On Epiphany
After the Dance
Variation on a Theme by Gil Scott-Heron
On Lyric Narrative
Distant Lover
On Prosody
Variation on a Theme by the Notorious B.I.G.
Notes
"I know this isn’t much.
But I wanted to explain this life to you, even if
I had to become, over the years, someone else to do it."
—Larry Levis
"‘You’re lying,’ said Memory.
‘You’re asleep,’ said Forgetfulness."
—Henry Dumas
ON CONFESSIONALISM
Not sleepwalking, but waking still,
with my hand on a gun, and the gun
in a mouth, and the mouth
on the face of a man on his knees.
Autumn of ’89, and I’m standing
in a Section 8 apartment parking lot,
pistol cocked, and staring down
at this man, then up into the mug
of an old woman staring, watering
the single sad flower to the left
of her stoop, the flower also staring.
My engine idling behind me, a slow
moaning bassline and the bark
of a dead rapper nudging me on.
All to say, someone’s brokenhearted.
And this man with the gun in his mouth—
this man who, like me, is really little
more than a boy—may or may not
have something to do with it.
May or may not have