Halloween Playlist!

My Playlist for Halloween

Monster Fun, Mammatapee
Nightmares, Dana Dane
Thriller, Michael Jackson
Somebody’s Watching Me, Rockwell
Monster Music, Mos Def Ft Cassidy
The Boogie Monster, Gnarls Barkley
Running With The Night, Lionel Richie
Walking Through the Darkness, Tekitha
Give Me the Night, George Benson
Murder She Wrote, Chaka Demus And Pliers
Cash Still Rules/Scary Hours, Wu-Tang Clan
Black Cat, Janet Jackson
Freaks Come Out At Night, Whodini
Freakshow, Kraftykuts
Dr. Funkenstein, Parliament
Monster, Lady GaGa
Slippin’ Into Darkness, WAR
Right on for the Darkness, Curtis Mayfield
I Hear Voices, The Juggs
Green Eyed Monster Girl , Sly Stone
Nights (Feel Like Gettin’ Down}, Billy Ocean
I Fear The Night, Tyree
Night Of The Living Baseheads, Public Enemy
Monster Jam, Spoonie Gee feat The Sequence
Children Of The Night, Kevin Irving
Berangere’s Nightmare, John McLaughlin
The Night Has A Thousand Eyes, John Coltrane
Boogieman, The Spaceflower Show
Nightmare on Chill Street, M.C. Chill
Ghost of the Past, Prince Lasha
Cold Blooded, Debarge
Monster , Rhianna feat. Eminem
Zombie, Fela Anikulapo Kuti & Africa 70
The beast within, Madonna
Release the Beast, Breakwater

Rest in Peace Galway Kinnell

He was one of the lions of American poetry when I was just learning how to get some of my own down on the page. He was a friend and advocate of Etheridge Knight who was an even greater influence on my work. He was a teacher of some of my teachers and friends. I’m sorry to hear the news of his death. RIP, Galway Kinnell

Last Songs

1.
What do they sing, the last birds
coasting down the twilight,
banking
across woods filled with darkness, their
frayed wings
curved on the world like a lover’s arms
which form, night after night, in sleep,
an irremediable absence?

2. 
Silence. Ashes
in the grate. Whatever it is
that keeps us from heaven,
sloth, wrath, greed, fear, could we only
reinvent it on earth
as song.

Persea will publish my new book in 2016

I’m extremely happy to announce that Persea Books will publish my new collection of poems, Brooklyn Antediluvian, (probably) in 2016. This will be my fourth full-length book working with my editor, Gabriel Fried; Gabe and I go back to 1999, when he published poems of mine in Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. When few houses knew, let alone published, poems at the  simultaneous intersection of traditional literary modes and hip hop and immigrant lit and … and … Gabe believed there was a place on the shelves for Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive (2003), My American Kundiman (2006), and Boneshepherds (2011). Persea published them all and I’m truly grateful. 

More news coming about the book. I’ll post it here. 

Etymology of Duende

The deep etymology of the word duende can be traced to the Proto-Indo-European root “dom”. So, duende is a cognate of Spanish words like domicilio or Don (or domain and domestic in English) Duende comes, then, from house or home.The more recent root is said to come from an old Spanish contraction of “dueño de la casa"—"duen de casa”. Evidently, the Swedes have a word that is closely related: tomte.


http://etimologias.dechile.net/?duende