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The V of them

1945 –

the v of them                                                            wind

   a chevron                                                            claw

      zigzag                                                            bird

         against wind                                                  a

            meander                                          column

               bilateral                                       comb

                  forked tail                                 axe   
                        
                     lozenge                                  V     

                        circles                           then

                           in                            hoop

                              egg or               spiral

                                 checker     pattern
                                      
                                      board

                                         shape

From The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment, Section XXII, "Tears Streak the Reddest Rouge." Copyright © 2011 by Anne Waldman. Used with permission of Coffee House Press, www.coffeehousepress.com.

A prominent figure in the Beat poetry generation, Anne Waldman has published over forty books of poetry and is the cofounder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2011 to 2016.

About Anne Waldman

Themes

Weather

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rite

working with willow rods that’s the method,
bring great bundles of them,
put on the ground scatter them
pronounce them, saying:

“here’s one”
“here’s another one”
“here’s one, there…over there…”

willow rods, very consoling we’ll clear the ground
you don’t have to be a Scythian…

and then the ones behaving more like women use a different method

Anne Waldman

2018

From “denouement”

Resistance. Had to resist. Ward off. Deflect. Exorcise. Defy. Apotropaic experiments to shift tone & danger. Apo, away, trepein, to turn. Make the day an amulet. And there were women everywhere across the land, children women, and girl women and they women and fluid women and men who were women and boy women and women from the past on the tongues of mind & ear and images of women everywhere: ancestor women. Out on the streets. And everyone woman that day. I am woman they said. And it had already happened if you stopped to think.

Anne Waldman

2018

Anthropocene Blues

sound de-territorializes
weather
and my love clings to you
sings to you
in the “new weathers”
within a tragedy
of the Anthropocene

Anne Waldman

2017

Poems

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The V of them

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