More April Poetry!

Poetry

SNOW IN APRIL?

THE QUESTION BECAME, when we accepted two poems from Erin Knowles Chapman for the Poetry Month of April, “How to finesse a poem about snow which is being published in April?”

Fortunately, nature and Michigan’s always-unpredictable weather came through for us with three inches of snow this past Friday. There you have it. Proof! Sometimes it snows, in Michigan, in April.

Anyway, we give you the reader two new poems by Erin Chapman which are reader-friendly, thought-provoking, mood-invoking, entertaining– if not exactly topical and timely, other than being poetry presented in the poetry month of April. We trust you’ll enjoy them.

What needs to be done

Is attainable here, a way of earning more time

Alone. (Their home is really her home.)

*******

(Art: “Watercolor Landscape” by John Marin.)

Pop Lit Poetry Attack!

Poetry

IS ANYONE looking for the New? Does anyone besides ourselves actually want and is actively searching for and creating the NEW?

Pop Lit is about discovery and synthesis. It’s about creating. About fusing two poles, in poetry’s case, of stasis and chaos. System and street. Bebop rhythm and wordplay, the energy of freedom combined with poetic learning, predecessors, history. IF the humanities mean anything (one hears massive nonsense about “the humanities”) it means nods to the past but not shackling institutionally the talents and voices of today.

TODAY we present fresh creations from young verse-master Timmy Chong— seven or nine poems depending upon how you count them– which he names “Twenty & Change.” Note his euphonious use of assonance, rhythm, occasional rhyme, with urban/suburban themes, a hip-hop feel– but it’s not hip-hop– and with tricks absorbed from past masters like Plath or Berryman– but it’s not like anything they wrote either. It’s only, hyperbolically-speaking, where poetry needs to go. Where it needs to be, in 2018, or 2020.

Boy got them low eyes,
got that good lip
reeking purple like periques.
Says when the plug dry
****

AS PART of our Poetry Attack! we’re soliciting audio for our ongoing Open Mic, at Club New Pop Lit. (Think neon letters reflected on a rainy Detroit-or-Philly street.) The club is imagination but the voices are real. (Well, maybe not Ms. Hepburn’s.) COMING within days or hours to the club is spectacularly talented Detroit-area poetess Erin Knowles Chapman with a reading ostensibly about a bowling alley.

Exciting things are happening. Just saying.
*******

(1st public domain action painting is by Michael Philip. 2nd public domain “spin art” painting is by German artist calling self Kungfuman.)

Four Poems by Erin Knowles Chapman

Poetry

Warhol or cheeseburger?

Cheeseburger or Warhol?

Such are dilemmas of running a pop literary site. Do we headline our current offering with a photo of a cheeseburger, or one of Andy Warhol?

The New Pop Lit staff engaged in a furious debate over the matter.

The question came up because we feature today four poems from talented Detroit-area poet Erin Knowles Chapman. One of the poems has to do with pop artist Andy Warhol. Another mentions a cheeseburger.

We finally asked ourselves: “What would Warhol do?”

Being a pop artist– loving American pop culture– Andy Warhol would undoubtedly have run with the cheeseburger, which screams “Americana.” Which shouts, “pop.”

Who are we to argue with Andy Warhol? We are, after all, a “pop” cultural project.

Anyway, please read the four poems. We hope you enjoy them!

Snow, the size of thumbprints, diagonally descends.

Do the Fates constrict our naked hands?