Poodle kisses monkey

They're Frenching. But in a totally platonic, non-icky way.

Via Cute Overload.

Laurie Saurborn Young is brilliant, but you don't have to take my word for it

The lovely and talented Laurie Saurborn Young gave a really great interview to The American Literary Review. It was one of the best poetry-related things I've read in a long time. Sure it doesn't hurt that I think Laurie is awesome or that we once hung out in North Carolina. Or that the string of airstream trailer lights she gave to me hang on my porch all year.

In the interview she says that she writes "to figure out the world and to discover a way to exist in the world. A way to explore science and the animal world. As I’ve continued to write, I’ve accrued more confidence. With confidence I’ve allowed more space to enter the poems, in terms of structure and form and also in terms of saying the strange things I am thinking and being able to marry them to the human condition. Places of commonality, if you will."

This is pretty much exactly the reason I love poetry, though expressed in an articulate fashion I am likely incapable of.

Her first book, Carnavoria, will be published by H_NGM_N BKS in 2012. I, personally, expect the wait to be excrutiating.

Taha Muhammad Ali has died

Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali has died. He was 80 years old. I saw him read a couple of years ago at UofM and it was one of the best and most moving readings I have ever been to. I can't help but think that if more people read his poetry then the Palestinians would have a much better chance at getting a state, at living in peace, at being seen as human, even. May he rest in a peace that did not exist during his life.