"One of my best friends was a soldier on the front lines defending his city from annihilation and after his shift of fighting was done, he would walk an hour and a half under threat of shelling and snipers in absolute pitch darkness to get into the city center to go to a concert or performance. It’s what kept him alive and what kept so many Sarajevans alive, but more than just alive—kept them human." ...I'm going to be thinking about this today.
I am delighted to discover Heathen Derr’s work, and not merely because we have a few things in common despite never having met and belonging to different generations. (I too admire Muriel Rukeyser, who came to my home state of Alabama to be present at the trial of the Scottsboro Nine. Greg Orr was a good friend to me when we both lived in Virginia in the 1970s. And I gave poetry readings all over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1980, as part of a busload of poets roaming from Sarajevo to Mostar, as a poor last-minute substitute for Mark Strand.)
I saw Wings of Desire and Faraway So Close in reverse order. “Why can’t I be good?” Why, indeed. An angel gives up his wings to become human because he wants to help, and within a few days he’s drunk, sleeping in the gutter, trafficking in weapons and child porn. Does our capacity for self-delusion spring from divine origins?
What, I wonder, would be today’s equivalent of a film starring Natassja Kinski, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Lou Reed?
Anyway, by featuring Heathen Derr, SiftShiftLift inspired me to read all their poems on poets.org and to order their latest from Amazon. I’d rather go to a bookstore, but I want it now!
You are doing such important work with these weeklies, Shelley, thank you so much.
"Locating a sense of purpose in the face of uncertainty and absurdity formed my earliest drive to write."
This really speaks to me now while grappling with how to live in this time.
"One of my best friends was a soldier on the front lines defending his city from annihilation and after his shift of fighting was done, he would walk an hour and a half under threat of shelling and snipers in absolute pitch darkness to get into the city center to go to a concert or performance. It’s what kept him alive and what kept so many Sarajevans alive, but more than just alive—kept them human." ...I'm going to be thinking about this today.
I am delighted to discover Heathen Derr’s work, and not merely because we have a few things in common despite never having met and belonging to different generations. (I too admire Muriel Rukeyser, who came to my home state of Alabama to be present at the trial of the Scottsboro Nine. Greg Orr was a good friend to me when we both lived in Virginia in the 1970s. And I gave poetry readings all over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1980, as part of a busload of poets roaming from Sarajevo to Mostar, as a poor last-minute substitute for Mark Strand.)
I saw Wings of Desire and Faraway So Close in reverse order. “Why can’t I be good?” Why, indeed. An angel gives up his wings to become human because he wants to help, and within a few days he’s drunk, sleeping in the gutter, trafficking in weapons and child porn. Does our capacity for self-delusion spring from divine origins?
What, I wonder, would be today’s equivalent of a film starring Natassja Kinski, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Lou Reed?
Anyway, by featuring Heathen Derr, SiftShiftLift inspired me to read all their poems on poets.org and to order their latest from Amazon. I’d rather go to a bookstore, but I want it now!