Poetry Book Club

Our MoSt Summer Book Club is back on Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 6:30, and you don’t even have to drive to the library because it is a Zoom meeting!

We’ll be discussing Natasha Tretheway’s Pulitzer Prize winning collection, Native Guard. There are copies available to borrow at the Modesto Public Library. If you’d like one, please email Vicki, our most wonderful librarian contact, at vsalinas@stanlibrary.org.

Through elegiac verse that honors her mother and tells of her own fraught childhood, Natasha Trethewey confronts the racial legacy of her native Deep South — where one of the first black regiments, the Louisiana Native Guards, was called into service during the Civil War. Trethewey’s resonant and beguiling collection is a haunting conversation between personal experience and national history. (from the Houghton Mifflin website)

We’ll send out the Zoom invite via Mailchimp and our Facebook page later this month, so stay tuned!

Second Tuesday @ Barkin’ Dog – On Zoom!

We will be holding our Second Tuesday poetry reading series on July 14th, 2020, via Zoom. We hope you’ll join us. Please see the flyer above for more information on our featured poets, Connie Post and Michael Meyerhofer.

Live links for reading here:
For the open mic: https://padlet.com/beratliss/j0ynareusug2u61c
For the Zoom reading: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/99196095308

MoSt Annual Meeting

Our Annual Meeting is open to all MoSt members! Join us for a Zoom meeting on Sunday, July 12 at 3:00. We’ll be reflecting on the past year, discussing new initiatives, electing/re-electing board members, and getting excited about all the MoSt events we have planned.

If you would like to attend, please RSVP to info@mostpoetry.org with MEETING in the subject line, and we’ll send you the Zoom invite. If you are unable to attend, but interested in all the goings-on, we can send you the minutes as soon as those are available. And, of course, if you are interested in becoming part of our board, please let us know!

Jun 30

Amplify Black Poets, Day 26

Highflown:Love

by Eugene B. Redmond

In the highflown language
Of moon travelers
Social Scientists sort our hurts—
Add their smog-crippled vision—
And rearrange our private pains
Along the Wall Street of current demands:
And my people become the
Cocaine that makes America high:
Become dreams
America sucks through maniacal straws of sleep;
Discounting our lore,
The scientists say we cannot love
                say our needs are numbed:
But, sometimes,
When you construct knots in my throat
And your lips re-create my heartclock
I am hypnotized by the aggregate passion
Of my past     by the sun of my historical ecstasy:
A power we know
Cannot be stilled by airborne theories of scholars
Nestled in Freudian citadels
A power that cannot be seen
Heard
Or flattened to fit the pages of a book

From: THE EYE IN THE CEILING: SELECTED POEMS. Harlem River Press, 1991

Most Poetry will post a poem by a Black poet each day through the month of June.

Jun 29

Guidelines for the Amplify Poets of Color Project

Greetings, MoSt Poetry members! Thank you for considering sharing the poetry you find especially moving, inspiring, or amazing by Poets of Color. This group includes Black poets, but also Indigenous/Native American poets, Hispanic/Chicano/Latinx poets, and poets of Middle Eastern, East Indian, and Asian descent. We are sharing this poetry on the MoSt Facebook page (and other social media) through the month of July as too often these groups have been marginalized and their contributions to poetry have not been recognized. Their voices deserve to be heard.

When submitting a poem, please follow the guidelines below. This helps us to post the poem in a clean and easy way and also makes sure that we give credit where credit is due. Please note that the name of the person who suggested the poem is not included in the post, and that MoSt reserves the right to not post any poem if the submission guidelines are not met. We will only consider poems suggested by MoSt members. If you’d like to become a member, you can find the membership form on the front page of our website.

  1. The poem must be by a Black poet or a Poet of Color. Consider American poets as these are the poets who have been marginalized by the systemic racism in our country. 
  2. The poem must have been previously published online, in a journal/lit mag, or in a collection. But…if it has been posted online within the last 48 hours, it is already out there, so consider another poem or wait a few more days.
  3. The poem must not be by the person submitting it. 
  4. Please submit the poem as a Word document.
  5. Do not submit a scan, jpeg, or pdf.
  6. Include the original publication info so we can give credit where it is due.
  7. Be aware that social media sites will change the font and size to their specifications, so just keep the Word doc plain and simple. Font size 12, Times New Roman are great.
  8. Please honor the lines, stanzas, and spacing of the original poem. If they have complicated line breaks and spacing, we will make a jpeg of the Word doc you send, so please make sure everything is correct.
  9. The entire poem or excerpt must fit on one page, including title, author’s name, and publication information. 
  10. Submit the poem to info@mostpoetry.org with JULY in the subject line.

If you’d like to see an example of a poem we have posted, please check out the MoSt Facebook page for any day in June. 

Thank you!