#sean thomas dougherty

[typhlonectes]

#sean thomas dougherty #poetry

[litbowl]

From Sean Thomas Dougherty's book, The Second O of Sorrow. (BOA Editions, 2018).

#poem #poetry #sean thomas dougherty #writing #poets #poets on tumblr #poetry on tumblr #poetry books

[gravity-rainbow]

Sean Thomas Dougherty

#Sean Thomas Dougherty #why bother? #wound

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

"half a century // a kind of boulder that I’ve pushed up the hill / & now for a moment, like Sisyphus // I watch it roll."

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

#open polls #polls #poetry #poems #poetry polls #poets and writing #tumblr poetry #have you read this #the second o of sorrow #sean thomas dougherty

[havingapoemwithyou]

grief’s familiar rooms by Sean Thomas Dougherty

#Sean Thomas Dougherty #poetry #poem

[ashtrayfloors]

Ars Poetica

When I am stuck, I walk outside, I breathe, I name the color of the light then walk back in, I start to write. Sometimes just passing through a doorway, just naming something is enough—or I go for a walk. I drink coffee in a public place. What is left to say to the page of the air? An abuela at the bus stop wears a sentence like a boa. I watch the sky: even the clouds are hieroglyphics. & life is work & worry, overtime & bills, silence & music, groceries & dreams. I want to put it all in my poems: All the ordinary that should kill me. All the ordinary things we are. I want to sing. To sing for the average dead: Not those who died young or spectacular, but by diabetes, or my friend Tim by heart attack at 53. Lynn by stroke at 56. All the ordinary folks with fatty livers at the local diner. Who will remember them? Who will write their odes & elegies? Some days the writing is not the writing: it is getting the laundry done, or sitting in a dark room, or feeding the kids lunch, or napping with the dog. A few daily words attach themselves & not today, but tomorrow, or the next they will fall off you & become sentences when you are thinking of what to make the kids for dinner, that ache in your wrist from the weather. Or years of piece work. A poem is a kind of piece work. Remnants of letters we stitch together with bloody thread, crushed coke cans, green plantains, kids banging garbage can lids. Donut shop junkies drinking coffee black with a dozen sugars, a dog growls on a chain as I walk in the light rain—can you hear me whistle a scratched LP of all the world’s lovely & unloved things? Or did I ever tell you this story: During the Question & Answer at the fancy university, the old poet confessed. “I have written all I wish to in this life.” The professor— who had introduced her reading (with real affection, if not exuberant over-praise, being as he was her ex-student from decades ago, looked genuinely bereft.) “But” he stammered. “But you cannot be serious. What would we do without your poems? What will you do if you are not writing?” The old poet touched her exuberant gray curls, then said, “I will eat pie."

—Sean Thomas Dougherty, from Cultural Daily (June 2023)

#poetry #sean thomas dougherty #ars poetica #prose poetry #typography #recently read #i love this so much

[peggy-sue-reads-a-book]

#sean thomas dougherty #poetry #i cried

[onecoffeebiscuit]

Why Bother?

Because right now, there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.

Meme by Karla McLaren, M. Ed.

Words by Sean Thomas Dougherty

#Karla McLaren #Sean Thomas Dougherty #why bother #mental health #awareness

[theregencyreticule]

#poetry #this is me #Sean Thomas Dougherty

[rustbeltjessie]

This January’s BONK! event will be held on Saturday, January 21st from 6 pm to 7:30 pm Central time. The event will be held on Zoom webinar and streamed on Facebook Live at the BONK! Facebook page.

I am so excited. I’ll be performing alongside Sean Thomas Dougherty, one of my favorite poets, and Cindy Emch, one of my favorite musicians. And I’ll be unveiling some brand-new poems! Thanks so much to BONK! for giving me the opportunity to curate this month’s event. It’s free and online, so anyone who wants to can watch. Visit bonkseries.org for performer bios and Zoom login info.

#poetry #music #sean thomas dougherty #cindy emch #jessie lynn mcmains #online event #one week from today! #i can't hardly wait

[poemsforthesehours]

From Sean Thomas Dougherty's book, The Second O of Sorrow. (BOA Editions, 2018).

#poets corner #poetry books #poets on tumblr #poem #poems for these hours #poems #sean thomas dougherty

[manwalksintobar]

Biography of LeBron as Ohio // Sean Thomas Dougherty

When is a poem one word? Even at 17 he was Baraka            on the court, Coltrane gold toned, a kind of running riff, more than boy-child, man-child, he was one word like Prince.             How back in those drunken days when I still ran in bars & played schoolyard ball             & wagered fives & tens, me & my colleague the psych-prof drove across Eastern Ohio              just to see this kid from powerhouse St. Vincent, grown out of rust-belt-bent-rims, tripped             with the hype & hope & hip hop blaring from his headphones, all rubber soled             & grit as the city which birthed him. We watched him rise that night scoring over 35,             drove back across the quiet cut cornfields & small towns of Ohio, back to the places             where we slept knowing that Jesus had been reborn, black & beautiful with a sweatband crown rimming his brow.             He was so much more than flipping burgers & fries, more than 12-hour shifts at the steel plant in Cleveland.             More than the shut-down mill in Youngstown. More than that kid selling meth in Ashtabula.             He was every kid, every street, every silo, he was white & black & brown & migrant kids working farms.             He was the prince of stutter-step & pause. He was the new King. We knew he was coming back the day after he left             his house in Bath Township. He never sold it. Someone fed his fish for years. Perhaps our hope? Fuck Miami. Leave Wade to wade through the Hurricane rain. LeBron is remembering that woman washing the linoleum floor, that man           punching his punch card. He drives a Camaro, the cool kid Ohio car driving through any Main Street. He is the toll-taker, &             he is the ticket out. He keeps index cards documenting             his opponents’ moves. One leans forward before he drives. One always swipes with his left hand. The details like a preacher             studying the gospel. He studies the game like a mathematician conjugating equations, but when he moves he is a             choreography, a conductor passing the ball like a baton. He is a burst of cinders             at the mill. He is a chorus of children calling his name.             The blistered hands of man stacking boxes in Sandusky, the long wait for work in Lorain. A sapling bends             & reaches in all directions before it becomes a tree. A ball is a key to a lock.             A ball is the opposite of Glock. America who sings your praises,            while tying the rope, everyone waiting for Caesar to fall, back-stabbing media hype city betrayed             by white people with racist signs.             I watch the kids play ball in the Heights, witness this they say. We will rise. I watched             LeBron arrive & leave, I walked, I gave up drinking as he went off & won a ring. The children’s chorus calls out sing             brother, sing. Everything is black. Storm clouds gather out on Lake Erie. But the old flower-hatted women             at the Baptist church are heading out praise cards, registering teenagers to vote. To turn a few words into a sentence. He is a glossary of jam, & yes he is corporate             chugging down green bubbly Sprite, running in Beats head phones, he is Dunkin his donut, he is Nike, witness, ripped.             On a spring day in Akron a             chorus of children is chanting his name on the court by the chain-link fence. He is forged steel, turning his skinny body into             muscle, years of nights lifting, chiseling, cutting, studying. Watching the tape. To make a new kind of sentence. He is passing             out T-shirts, this long hot bloody summer he was returned to the rusted rim along the big lake. He is stutter-step. He is             spinning wheel. He has a cool new hat. He is speaking of dead black children. He is giving his time. To make the crowd             sway like wind through a field of corn.             Does LeBron think of dying?             Does the grape think of dying as it withers on the vine by the lake? Or does it dream of the wine it will become? He is wearing a shirt that says I Can’t Breathe. They said he was arrogant. I said he was just Ohio.             He married his high school sweetheart. Bravado laid out on the court. No back down, he is Biggie with a basketball inside             of a mic, no ballistics, just ballet. He is Miles Davis cool, quietly cerebral, turning his back, tossing up             chalk like blue smoke, blue notes, blues. He is Akron, Columbus, he is heart & Heat turned to lake effect blizzards,             freighters frozen in ice, looking for work & no money to eat. He is Ashtabula & Toledo. He is carrying so many across the             river, up through Marietta.             The grapevines are ripe in Geneva.             He returns, Man-child, Man-strong, Man-smart, Man- mountain, Mansfield to East Akron, minus into Man, or should we             say Mamma raised? Single mother fed, shy child, quiet child who grew, who suffered & taught his body to sing, his             mother worked how many shifts, doing this, doing that, never gave up for her son. He is third shift at the rubber             plant in winter, he is farm hands & auto parts piecework & long nights the men at the bar, eyes on the television.             The lake tonight is black as newly laid asphalt. There are no ellipses. He is turning paragraphs             into chapters. Long ago the hoop Gods made this deal at the crossroads, Old Scratch is flipping the pages             of his program & waiting high in the stands—to belong to a place most people would call             nowhere, to show the world how tough we truly are, twelve-hour shifts at the Rubber plant in Akron. How he is, how             he is a part of this asphalt court we call Ohio, & how we suffer, & how we shine.

#poetry #Sean Thomas Dougherty #Ohio #LeBron James #basketball #Cleveland Cavs #NBA #sports poems #Bath Township #america #BOA Editions #ode

[catmint1]

Why Bother? Because right now there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.

Sean Thomas Dougherty, The Second O of Sorrow

#quotes #sean thomas dougherty #why bother? #the second o of sorrow #poetry #prose #text

[cityofchapin]

"Why Bother?"

by Sean Thomas Dougherty from The Second O of Sorrow Because right now, there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words

View On WordPress

#National Poetry Month #Poem #Poetry #Sean Thomas Dougherty #The Second O of Sorrow

[litbowl]

From Sean Thomas Dougherty's book, The Second O of Sorrow. (BOA Editions, 2018)

#poem #poetry books #poetry #poetry on tumblr #poem of the day #poems #sean thomas dougherty

[ashtrayfloors]

When I was about 19 years, I recall this summer night

I put this Etta James cassette on my Sony Walkman

& took a bottle of wine I stole underage from the packy store

in my gym bag & walked down through the mill yard

between the empty mills & the lights from the west side

tenements rising up across the river, I sat drinking that wine,

rewinding this song about her man gone like my friend died at seventeen

drowned at the quarry— one shouldn’t know grief

like that at seventeen, grief a boy’s back is not made to carry

like a friend with a wounded foot, but the blues don’t know no age limit,

it’s sudden & old at the same time it takes who’s left you

with what's left of you & makes it rhyme.

—Sean Thomas Dougherty, “What the Blues Is” (Exile Sans Frontieres)

#poetry #sean thomas dougherty #grief #death #the blues #exile sans frontieres #recently read