Tag poetry

virtual reading this thursday :)

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Just a quick post to announce a virtual poetry reading I’m doing this Thursday with poet Megan Alpert! Here are the deets:

Virtual Event: Megan Alpert and José Angel Araguz
presenting An Empty Pot’s Darkness and The Animal at Your Side

Harvard Book Store’s virtual event series welcomes poets MEGAN ALPERT and JOSÉ ANGEL ARAGUZ for a discussion of their poetry collections The Animal at Your Side and An Empty Pot’s Darkness.

Date: Thursday, January 7
Event Start Time: 7:00pm
Registration: folks can register at https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_1gDiz-wzQTe0yC4U-jesAA

For more information on the event, check out the Harvard Book Store site.

Looking forward to seeing folks there!

ending & starting: shiki masaoka

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment
Photo by Marta Wave of a bench by a building with snow-covered grass.

I’m writing this not feeling great on the last day of the year to be posted on the first day of the year. Feels like I should have something grand to say but I don’t. 2020 had me heart-sick for most of it. Here’s to 2021, may you deserve us. Enjoy some life sketches by Shiki Masaoka. May you sketch out newness from the old you bring with you.

life sketches by Shiki Masaoka

in the evening glow
as they range in a vast sky,
these huge pillared clouds,
each radiant on one radiant side,
all crumbling, all dissolving
together

*

on this long long day
in which the shoots of young pines
have lengthened
my fever has come out
toward evening

*

on these pine needles
thousands of raindrops
all trembling, all swaying,
and still not one,
not a single one, falls

*

beyond this pane
of the closed window
in my sick room,
that pole for drying clothes
and on it a crow crying out

*

my wish:
to be carried
in a glass palanquin
through fields
piled silver with snow

(trans. Sanford Goldstein & Seishi Shinoda)