poetry
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Venus v. the Barbarians
I’m reading Bill Lavender’s book of poems, City of God, which combines commentary on our modern world and his thoughts on Augustine’s old book. at the same time I have found a blog, Via Negative, which frequently speaks to or shares images of the ancient Venuses whichever on my own mind of late. And somehow… Continue reading
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Everette* Would’ve
If you catch yourself Googling Picasso’s young lover (Françoise Gilot) just because some lush young woman enthused about some pretty-good, give-away poem posted online for #napowrimo put down the tablet and go write in your notebook in some no-bars bar where nobody knows your name beneath a television baseball game you pathetic old coot of a… Continue reading
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Stop Reading Berryman’s Sonnets, Dammit
(10) Writing poetry is an unnatural act — Elizabeth BishopNothing kinky. Think cuddles: the collapseof two into one, of that one into comfort:the innocent–the long hug, the movie couch–and the afterwards, coming back from blisswhere union is fully consummated by touchskin to skin, hands measuring from shoulder to hip the full depth of desire, while… Continue reading
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There is a light somewhere
“There is a light somewhere.”Charles Bukowski, “The Laughing Heart* How to write or paint the dark from the bottom of the tar pit of anthropocene extinction without resorting to the calling bottle of Poe-etics? When you remember spirits as disparate as Bukowski and Lenoard Cohen can see that glint of light like a star seen… Continue reading
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Surfing on the Shore
I want to salt my hands in sand bits of silica diamonding themin the blue green Gulf glare away from concrete monuments to misunderstood Jimmy Buffett—where pelican and heron at rest stand still and permit me to passon the hard sand at the surf line—two shore creatures in our element Continue reading
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Poète Maudit, Again
I have known all the facets of what the ancient Greeks meant by mania: inspired frenzy, mad passion, a word related to seer. Poetry is, for me, not just an avocation or a talent or a study; it is possesion by a force older than humanity or how else to explain the creation of the… Continue reading
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Easy Come, Easy…Wait WTF?
This is so weird. I’ve never had poems accepted, published electronically and then taken down because I somehow after the fact was determined not to fit their editorial vision. Yes I read the themes statement in the call. On the Theme Blue Spring – Recollection & the Interior Life Recollection Cultural memory and ancestral reverence.… Continue reading
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Poète Maudit Part Deux
Being a conduit for lightning is difficult for those around me when it spills over into incesssnt chatter or abrupt irritability so I try to keep it locked in this office like Frankenstein’s monster, venting mostly on the page. 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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