#Lynn Melnick

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

"What you smell is pleasure, not the rot of the thing / amid the waste."

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

[rustbeltjessie]

Listen,

recently a mess of writers said it's the mark of an amateur to use this imperative to start a line in a poem but they weren't poets and I would like to be an amateur all my life. I mean, what happens when we get good at this? When we get too good? When we get so proficiently fine that our words go down easy? I do not want easy pain or easy beauty. It takes very little for me to lean back on the grass in sunshine because my head has long tried to split from my body, but I'm here on a wooden stool in the part of February almost past love. Brick walls, pleasant chatter, so much to get done and how lucky I am that I get to try. Everything is pretend. Everything is dead serious. Listen, when I write poems again, I want them to be about joy.

—Lynn Melnick, from Refusenik (YesYes Books, 2022)

[agirlnamedbone]

Lynn Melnick (If I Should Say I Have Hope, 2012)

[wordsthatkeepmyfeetdry]

My Eyes Can Only See You by Lynn Melnick

[nataliewaitesnotesapp]

[rockyandsparky]

Since that piece of shit Robert Pickton has finally died, remember the names of his victims.

Confirmed victims:

Sereena Abotsway

Mona Wilson

Andrea Joesbury

Brenda Ann Wolfe

Georgina Faith Papin

Marnie Frey

Suspected victims:

Jacquelene Michelle McDonell

Dianne Rosemary Rock

Heather Kathleen Bottomley

Jennifer Lynn Furminger

Helen Mae Hallmark

Patricia Rose Johnson

Heather Gabrielle Chinnock

Tanya Holyk

Sherry Leigh Irving

Inga Monique Hall

Tiffany Louise Drew

Sarah Jean de Vries

Cynthia "Cindy" Feliks

Angela Rebecca Jardine

Diana Melnick

Debra Lynne Jones

Wendy Crawford

Kerry Lynn Koski

Andrea Fay Borhaven

Cara Louise Ellis

[garudabluffs]

The 1A Record Club listens to Dolly Parton’s ‘Rockstar’

It’s her world and we’re all just living in it.

Dolly Parton’s resume is as big as her hair. And at age 77 she’s adding another title to it: “Rockstar.”

Her new album was released on Nov. 17. It’s a mix of covers of classic rock songs, featuring collaborations with a whopping list of who’s who in Rock-n-Roll. And there are almost 30 tracks – give or take a few – depending on the version of the album that you buy. With 9 new singles, “Rockstar” is Dolly’s most significant foray into Rock and Roll music.

While Dolly has fully embraced a new “Rockstar” persona – down to the black studded outfits – glimmers of rockstar have existed in Dolly’s previous eras. And over the past fifty years, Dolly has won plenty of awards and accolades for her songwriting, becoming one of music’s most prolific songwriters.

Sit back and grab yourself a cup of ambition. For this edition of the 1A Record Club – Dolly Parton’s new album “Rockstar” and what her latest musical evolution represents.

GUESTS

Maria Sherman culture writer; author, “LARGER THAN LIFE: A History of Boy Bands from NKOTB to BTS”

Shima Oliaee Co-Creator, "Dolly Parton’s America"

Lynn Melnick poet; author, "I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton."

Jeff Conyers president, The Dollywood Foundation

LISTEN 46:14 https://the1a.org/segments/the-1a-record-club-listens-to-dolly-partons-rockstar/

[euphoricquotes]

There are 24 synonyms for the word envy. And although one of them is hatred and one of them is lusting no one envies me. If I could just make it to morning without selling myself one day I might have some land beyond the ficus pot whose heart leaves leak their poison inside this slummy garage where I sleep daytimes in a city I’m sure I’ve mentioned before. I am furious for answers inside the book of words I stole from a stranger’s back pocket. You see, through the years when everyone is dying I remain clean. That's why I believe there could be a God. There are 5 synonyms for the word redemption. and 46 for fear. One of them is chickenheartedness and another is awe. Only my body is for sale.

Lynn Melnick, LANDSCAPE WITH THESAURUS AND AWE

[buswrites]

.・゜゜・　poetry prompts　・゜゜・．

-Write a poem using these following five words: effective, gravity, persimmon, ballroom, waxwing

-Write a poem using these following five words: pretend, aubergine, toast, greasewood, systematic

-Write an abecedarian poem (See: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-abecedarian)

-Write a poem called "Don’t Even Think About It"

-Write a poem called "Gunslinger’s Lament"

-Write a poem called "What Happens in Vegas"

-Write a poem that knocks the wind out of you

-Read a religious text you aren’t familiar with, then write a poem sprung from it

-Grab the book closest to you and turn to page 73 -- copy down the first sentence and then write a poem ending with that sentence

-Write a poem in two parts -- in the first, you are driving somewhere/something and in the second you are being driven

-Write a poem that serves as a thank you to another poet for their work

these are from my mother<3

[vickyxc]

A shattered bottle tore through my hand last month and split a vein until every finger was purple and I couldn’t

make even a tentative fist. I used the other hand to indicate

I’m okay.

How unwise I am, how polite in a crisis. In triage, an overheard photo of someone’s lover

almost 3000 miles west made me seize with longing when I spied a palm tree in the background.

I understand what it says about me that my body lustfully wishes to place itself where it was never safe.

I have put enormous energy into trying to convince you I’m fine and

I’m just about there, no?

Besides, decades on, poorly healed bones help me to predict rain! though it’s true I like to verify weather

with another source because I tend not to believe myself. I’ve been told repeatedly that I don’t understand plot but

it would be a clever twist, wouldn’t it, if in the end I realize it’s me who does me in.

Lynn Melnick, from “Losing the Narrative,” published in Poem-a-Day

!!!

[tanglelegs]

There are so many ways        for a body to yield monstrous but I do not know how to die        to be where I would not see you:              just glass between us, just universe.

Lynn Melnick, from “Monstrous”

[antigonies]

In triage, an overheard photo of someone’s lover almost 3000 miles west made me seize with longing when I spied a palm tree in the background. I understand what it says about me that my body lustfully wishes to place itself where it was never safe. I have put enormous energy into trying to convince you I’m fine and I’m just about there, no?

Lynn Melnick, “Losing the Narrative”. Published in the Academy of American Poets.

[rustbeltjessie]

End of the Year Book Asks! 3, 6, 14, 20

3 - What were your top five books of the year?

You get thirteen, because it’s impossible for me to pit fiction against nonfiction against poetry, so I had to separate them all into their own categories. (By the way, these weren’t all released this year—though many were—but they’re all books I read this year.)

Fiction

I Was a Teenage Slasher, by Stephen Graham Jones

Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories, by GennaRose Nethercott

The Woods All Black, by Lee Mandelo

Some Strange Music Draws Me In, by Griffin Hansbury

I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both, by Mariah Stovall

Nonfiction

Breaking the Curse: A Memoir about Trauma, Healing, and Italian Witchcraft, by Alex DiFrancesco

Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders, by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

First Love: Essays on Friendship, by Lilly Dancyger

Lou Reed: The King of New York, by Will Hermes

Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry, by Terrance Hayes

Poetry

Refusenik, by Lynn Melnick

Romantic Comedy, by James Allen Hall

Modern Poetry, by Diane Seuss

6 - Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

Oh, so many things. My to-be-read list is neverending. Some things I meant to read in 2024 but never got to include: 

Care Of, by Ivan Coyote

Too Much Too Young: the 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism and the Soundtrack of a Generation, by Daniel Rachel

Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters, by Allyson McCabe

Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar, by Cynthia Carr (I started that one, but didn’t have time to finish it before I had to return it to the library)

Country & Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival, by Mark Guarino

Who’s Afraid of Gender?, by Judith Butler

14 - What books do you want to finish before the year is over?

The four I’m currently reading:

A Termination, by Honor Moore

Art Monsters, by Lauren Elkin

Familiar, by Matt Hart

Death Prefers the Minor Keys, by Sean Thomas Dougherty

20 - What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

To be honest? It was Diane Seuss’s Modern Poetry. It…very nearly lived up to my expectations. I had really high expectations because Diane is high on my list of favorite living poets, and though I wasn’t expecting the same exact style in Modern Poetry as in her previous books (one thing I love about her is that she can write about the same topics over and over but make them feel fresh each time), I was expecting to love it as much. And I didn’t, quite. It’s an excellent book of poetry, and I will definitely reread it at some point, but it didn’t knock me out the way her two previous releases, frank: sonnets and Still Life With Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, did.

[agirlnamedbone]

Lynn Melnick

[intimatum]

Lynn Melnick, Landscape with Written Statement

[missedstations]

“When Bad Things Happen to Good People” - Lynn Melnick

You can only hear you look like a hooker so many times before you become one. Spandex was really big

the year I stopped believing. I babysat for the rabbi’s son, Isaac. There was luxe carpet

in every room of the condo. Isaac liked Legos and we made a pasture and a patriarch and lots of wives.

In his car in his garage the rabbi handed me a self-help book and put my hand on his crotch, ready to go.

I didn’t care. I made good money.

Isaac lived to be 180 according to the bible. Isaac is the only patriarch who didn’t have concubines.

Isaac is 30 now. Modern scholarship tells us

the patriarchs never existed. Experience taught me the patriarchs are all we’ve got.