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Promiscuously Autobiographical
“I’m promiscuously autobiographical, but it’s never gotten me into trouble.” Samuel R. Delaney, interviewed by The New Yorker Continue reading
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Hello, my Chinese readers
大家好,我嘅中國讀者。我想知:留個留言話畀我知你嚟自中國邊度,如果方便,仲可以講下點解你會嚟到呢度。 Hello, my Chinese readers. I’m curious: drop a comment telling me where in China you are visiting from and uf you’re so inclined, what brought you here. [Above Translated to Cantonese by DeepL] Continue reading
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The turkey don’t get no respect
September’s Prompt from Field Generator:Write a one-page monologue generated from a single found line (spoken by a character on a TV show, an influencer, a minister, a child, something overheard at a restaurant, waiting in line at the post office, etc.). Begin the monologue with that sentence, then follow your personal inclinations and poetic imagination… Continue reading
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On Robinson Jeffers and Revision
“Clearly [Robinson Jeffers] did not linger over brief passages to the degree Ezra Pound might have urged him to, and he felt none of the urgency to revise and refine his work that is characteristic of modern poets as diverse as Eliot and Marianne Moore. Not that Jeffers is crude, or simple-minded, for he is… Continue reading
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Old New Poets Prize
On the anniversary of my first published poems 17 years ago at age 52 (archived link below) I will take a moment to lament all of the publications which seek to glamorize the young, whether its an “emerging poet prize” with a ridiculous age limit or those “30 under 30” articles in the local lifestyle newspaper/magazine.… Continue reading
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The Silicon Dragon
He fooled the AI bird ID appthis old man mouthing bird calls—I knew in that moment humanswill defeat the rising silicon dragonif we lean on the elders instead —Mark A. Folse Continue reading
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Creolized
I grew up on Robert E. LeeBoulevard, learned all the racial epithets from my grandfather, recall the genteel way my grandmother said “nigra.”I watched the panicked retreat downSt. Bernard Avenue along the bayoufrom the relentless advance of Blackdentists and their encroaching Volvos.I fled from that torch-lit crowd,moved toward the Quarter where my great aunties lived… Continue reading
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There is no other way
” Don’t do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don’t do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do… Continue reading
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People and a Heron
Sitting with this one from Poem-A-Day, pondering the end. I do admire the nature poetry of this Poundishly cantankerous but less twisted man, who did not wish evil on the world but would welcome modern society’s collapse and Nature’s Reconquista, especially if he could watch from the stone tower of Tor House. People and a… Continue reading
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Surrender
I was always troubled by the title of the beautiful John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana collaboration Love Devotion Surrender. Surrender was never an appealing option for me. I burn with a defiant Promethean fire only death will extinguish. And yet as I grow older, surrender calls me: not to the feet of the tin idol… Continue reading
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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