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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

Follow Annelyse Gelman to discover more of her work. Read more at annelysegelman.com. You can also purchase her latest book, Vexations, published by University of Chicago Press.

Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

If they grow up not to love, honour and obey us
either we have brought them up properly
or we have not:
if we have
there must be something the matter with them;
if we have not
there is something the matter with us.

— R. D. Laing

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

R. D. Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness. Laing also wrote poetry, and his poetry publications include Knots (1970, published by Penguin) and Sonnets (1979, published by Michael Joseph).

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

Annelyse Gelman is the author, most recently, of Vexations (University of Chicago Press, 2023). She is also the founder and director of Midst (midst.press).

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

With gratitude to T. de los Reyes, who has run the Read a Little Poetry project—for many years in total anonymity—with a level of passion, integrity, vulnerability, and dedication that should inspire all of us. Thank you, T.! (10/10)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

R.D. Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist deeply critical and skeptical of psychiatry, and I hope you enjoy these poems and get as much out of them as I have. (9/10)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

If you’ve ever felt unhappy that you couldn’t make someone else happy, wanted what you couldn’t have or not wanted what you did have, or had the same argument over and over with a parent, friend, or partner, this book is for you. (8/10)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

And some of them precisely pinpoint a tension:

“Jack: Forgive me. / Jill: No. / Jack: I’ll never forgive you for not forgiving me.” (7/10)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

their music and genius is in plainly untangling the human condition and laying it bare. Some of them are quite exhaustive and devolve into feedback loops:

“Jill feels guilty / that Jack feels guilty / that Jill feels guilty / that Jack feels guilty.” (6/10)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

The poems are also remarkable for having almost nothing in common with most of the poetry I love—they contain few to no images or sensory details, no epiphanies, no lyricism, no associative leaps, no imagination; (5/10)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

to healing the broken communication patterns that underlie so much of the conflict I see in the world, applicable at scales both small and large. (4/10)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

I discovered this book in my late father’s library as a teenager and have always wished more people would read it: It points to the kinds of mutual understanding that I believe are a prerequisite (3/10)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

both internally and relationally—“knots” being these seemingly intractable, self-reinforcing patterns of negotiation rooted in both fear and desire. (2/10)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

From Annelyse:

I’m sharing an excerpt from R.D. Laing’s 1970 book Knots. As you’ll see, the poems are little puzzle boxes exhaustively exploring the psychological “knots” into which we unwittingly tie ourselves, (1/10)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 3h

Today’s poem is selected by Annelyse Gelman as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.

“Knots” appeared in Knots by R. D. Laing, published by Pantheon Books, 1970. Shared here with deep gratitude.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

Follow Lena Khalaf Tuffaha here to discover more of her work. Read more at lenakhalaftuffaha.com. You can also purchase her latest book, Something About Living, published by University of Akron Press.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

“Turning down Shiraz’s streets
it turns out to be such

a faraway thing.

A without which
I have learned to be.”

— Solmaz Sharif, from “The End of Exile”

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

Solmaz Sharif is the author of Customs (Graywolf, 2022) and Look (Graywolf Press, 2016), a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (UAkron, 2024), Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), and Water & Salt (Red Hen). She is also the author of two chapbooks, Arab in Newsland and Letters from the Interior.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

Sharif's use of syntax and negation refashion the language in which the speaker's exile is experienced to enact displacement in its fullness. (4/4)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

The city itself remains, but it is lost to the speaker. It hums in a language which she is locked out of, making her "audience, as the dead are audience" to the lives unfolding in a place she cannot actually inhabit. (3/4)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

a city to which she has returned, albeit tenuously. The poem exquisitely depicts the losses we incur when we leave a homeland as refugees, or as immigrants escaping the devastations of colonialism, including political upheaval and war. (2/4)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

From Lena:

A poem I have carried with me since I first read it and one that I return to often is "The End of Exile" by Solmaz Sharif, from her most recent collection CUSTOMS. The speaker of the poem is wandering the streets of her ancestral city, Shiraz, (1/4)

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 1d

Today’s poem is selected by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.

“The End of Exile” appeared in Customs by Solmaz Sharif, published by Graywolf Press, 2022. Shared here with deep gratitude.

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Read A Little Poetry @readalittlepoem.bsky.social · 2d

Follow I.S. Jones to discover more of her work. Read more at isjones.com. You can also purchase her latest book, Bloodmercy, published by American Poetry Review.

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