
People who are assigned female at birth are conditioned from the earliest moment to think of their bodies as commodities and to value the appeal of their bodies as potential commodities that other people might desire. At its core, that is a capitalist value. (from BOMB or LARB.)
Like when I make album covers for people. There are like four or five album covers, and you got to be close friends, and I do it out of the kindness of my heart, but I want that to be a big deal one day. When people look back, like, “Damn, he did seven hundred covers!” I just want to have a multitude of art everywhere.
Courtney Faye Taylor and Terrance Hayes:
On her website she interviews him and he says this regarding Wanda Coleman:
‘So what I’m saying is when she was sending that work out, some of it wasn’t great, and I think people would be jumping on her saying, “Who does this untrained Black woman from Watts think she is?” And yet, the real poet always knew who she was. I think you can track that. That’s how she got published. That’s how I found her. The people who really understood what a poet is understood that, and that’s the lesson for me: to be a poet, at all costs, be honest; try to bring your truest self to the page, and then the real poets will support you. Not everybody else will, but that’s okay. That’s what integrity is. That’s how I think about it. Just someone with very serious integrity about being a poet.’
“I still find inspiration around the corner.”
Anonymous
“The reason I chose poetry as my writing platform is that poetry requires fewer keystrokes.”
Recommended reading:
Beautiful Days, by Joyce Carol Oates, 2018
The Laughing Monsters, by Denis Johnson, 2014
Walk Through Walls, by Marina Abramović, 2016
The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton, 1908
The Afterlife of Stars, by Joseph Kertes, 2014
In Zanesville, by Jo Ann Beard, 2011
Please visit my website at www.randystark.com.
My books are available on Amazon.