Tessa Mackey photo and caption

Although it was the first race, the girls in this boat practice hard everyday and have many blisters to prove it!

Nice work by sophomore Henry Pratt, from the student newspaper at The Gunnery. For Henry's article from the first issue of the school year, click here.

nyc poetry festival

...a quick head's up that five frankmatter contributors, some of whom have been featured on this site, will be reading at the NYC Poetry Festival this Saturday at 1:40 (at The White Horse stage). For the poetry festival's website, click here. We're looking forward to hearing Leslie Howes, Emily Sklar, Mebane Robertson, Gabriele Tinti, and Moneta Goldsmith!

The ginger lily

My ‘living’ memory of Uncle Kanjilal are Champa plants (Dolon Champa in Bangla) that produce the most beautiful and intensely perfumed white flowers. This kind of Champa is found in humid tropical zones, such as certain areas of India, and all of southeast Asia. I have even found it in Texas, where it grows in abundance, and characteristically in a kind of wondrous ‘forest,’ all the more beautiful when it is in flower. In English it is also called the ginger lily. I have always loved this flower, which is extremely rare in the dry climate of the Indian region of Uttar Pradesh, but my uncle had it in his garden. When I asked him for a cutting, he laughed at me a bit skeptically, saying that I would never be able to make it flower. I responded that I was sure I could. And so went our good-natured repartee for some time. My uncle has passed on, but his Champa is still here. It has also produced others, and in season, there are abundant flowers. For me, it is as though my uncle were present, and content, still pretending not to give me any credit. He was slender, wiry, and agile, with an alert gaze, a narrow mustache, and glasses. I still feel his great affection. 

People pass away. Whoever can leaves something: a house, land, and who knows what else. But plants that have been left behind have extra significance for me. They bear living witness to who once lived. Indeed, it is as though they live on.

in homage to Devi Priya

with affection and gratitude

an excerpt from her memoir

Più di una vita | More than one life

from the translation in progress by Nicholas Benson

Thank you for maxi-reading!

at The Gunnery on April 26th

Lexi Nanavaty

Matt LoPresti

Casey Siemon

Sam Joslin

Ivy Le

Ataman Uğur

Jake Kantor

Shannon O’Connor

Laura-Delight van Tartwijk

Jessica Xu

Sam Hemmingstad

Henry Palmer

Zafar Mirzaliev

Isaac Reguant Escarra y James Benedetto

Nick Weinstein

Alexis Dominicus

and particularly recognized for their outstanding recitations: 

Alexis Dominicus 

Henry Palmer, Sam Hemmingstad, Jake Kantor, Ivy Le, Sam Joslin, Casey Siemon, Matt LoPresti, and Lexi Nanavaty

Congratulations!

[illustration by Shannon O'Connor]

Poem by Nick Weinstein

Stop

Growing up you used your hands

Taking roll call every time

You needed to count between one and ten

But that never mattered

When you were young you still needed a song

Never were quite sure what came next, was it J or K?

Twenty-six letters put to a rhyme just so you could spell

But that never mattered

Whatever happened to those days?

Did they slip away in backdraft of time’s momentum?

Fall away from our calendars like a dying leaf?

Or are they simply hiding?

Just waiting to be rediscovered, our youthful invigoration?

Lying around our subconscious, a buried treasure trove of wonder?

Our twenty-four hour workday fills itself

Labor after labor after labor

Even Hercules would be put to shame,

He only had thirteen.

What changed us?

Derailed our hopes and dreams?

We used to have literary merit,

So much more than just a story

Now we trudge on desperately,

 Searching for a missing theme

That we will never find.

Imagination flew with freedom

We thought in sound and fury

The Shakespeare of our own minds

An everlasting waterfall of adventures to be had

Take back those “childish” days

Pay back the late fees and renew your sense of wonderment

Embrace what some may call a crisis

Because what everyone else thought?

Well, that never mattered.

Poem by Emma Ward

Go away

Go away

I want to lay

In my bed

Alone

I think it's  best

I skip that test

I've got a nasty

Cold

As for that sport

You make me play

I’m no good anyway

So

I think it's best

You let me rest

Upon my bed today

Gerry Kahari's Spring Break Diary

Dear Diary, 
        Day one of spring break I woke up and went to class. Then I took a nap in that class and I woke up when the class ended, it was great. After that I saw Kevin in the dorm hallway. He told me to have a good spring break. Then I responded with, "you too." My dad picked me up shortly after that riveting conversation with Kevin. A few days afterwards I arrived at my abode. I sailed on my rubber ducky to Panama City. Oh what a paradise that place is. While in Panama City I met some very beautiful dolphins. It was fairly warm for most of my stay. To return home I sailed back using my floaties. Due to the absurd winds it was difficult to return and I ran into a young boy on a boat with a lion. At first I thought it was quite odd that this boy was by himself on a boat with a lion but then I figured that I was lost. Because the circus is the other way. While I was home I worked out, watched tv and played a little lacrosse. My parents made me work, because they thought I had too much free time and that I wasn't doing anything productive, while they were at work....they were right. 

We have this project to / change our silence into the beautiful city of a voice.

— Alice Notley, "Millions of Us"
in Songs and Stories of the Ghouls
Wesleyan UP, 2011
pp. 167-170; 170.

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Notley.php

‘When human beings attempt to come to terms with who they are and who they wish to be, the most effective medium is verbal. Through words we represent ourselves to ourselves, we expand our awareness of the world, we step back, gain distance, on what it is we’ve said. And then we are in a position to change. Images, however exhilarating, do not generally function in this way. Words allow for a precision and nuance that images do not seem, for most people, to be able to provide. In a culture that changes at the velocity that ours does, the power of self-revision is centrally important. Self-aware self-revision is very difficult, if not impossible, outside of language.’

Mark Edmundson, Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education. NY: Bloomsbury, 2013. 207

[...] in order to get the truth to speak, it is not enough to suspend the subject’s active intervention and let language itself speak — as Elfriede Jelinek put it with extraordinary clarity: “Language should be tortured to tell the truth.” 

from: 

The Poetic Torture-House of Language

How poetry relates to ethnic cleansing

BY SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK