John Ashbery and Dorothea Lasky on PoetryNow!

During our big National Poetry Month blog extravaganza, you may have been dedicating your web-time to reading an amazing array of posts from our 20 bloggers. With a fresh start in May, we're going to be featuring PoetryNow every Tuesday and Thursday from May through the end of June. We'll debut a new poem and a podcast featuring the poet reading and talking about their poem. 9 episodes launched in April, which can all be found here.

This week, we're excited to showcase new work by John Ashbery and Dorthea Lasky. Ashbery's "The Mauve Notebook" was released on Tuesday. The poem begins:

On a set you need bush rebels,
that numbing little chair while passing.
If we knock 'em out
seven precincts are going to show up.
It looks like you don't need oil.
I think it'll be fine.
Did she think that might be good,
or for the man who listens to it,
nothing to be done or thought,
(section pending)?

Listen to Ashbery reading and riffing on the poem below:

 

And today, we're thrilled to bring you a new poem by Dorothea Lasky, "The Birth," which begins:

The birth isn’t about poetry
It is about screaming pain on a Sunday
Hailing a cab and head racing
To the hospital, now so close to the new apartment

 

You can read the schedule of episodes here, and then tune back in Tuesday and Thursday in May and June for each new release.