Eat My Words invites you to a speacial collaborative reading of Resist Much, Obey Little, a poetry anthology for our times.
About the book:
we can’t build a wall. we can only spout pure water again and again and drown his lies. -Eileen Myles
Racism, xenophobia, misogyny and their related malaises are to the U.S. what whiskey is to an alcoholic. The current occupant of the White House won the election yipping, against possible recovery, “Drinks are on me!” The rich, multitudinous voices in this anthology variously call for—having embarked on—the hard work of sobriety, sanity. -Nathaniel Mackey
Poets are summoned to a stronger imagination of language and humanity in a time of new and radical Weathers. White House Inc. is the last gasp of the dying Confederacy, but its spectacle is dangerous and addictive so hold onto your mind. Fascism loves distraction. Keep the world safe for poetry. Open the book of love and resistance. Don't tarry! -Anne Waldman
At a hefty 740 pages, the new anthology Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance symbolically and actually enacts the oppositional imperatives embedded in its title. 50% of the proceeds from the volume are being donated to Planned Parenthood. The assembling of the anthology itself, spearheaded by Michael Boughn and Kent Johnson, represents a model for activism and mobility in a time of political emergency. Boughn and Johnson brought together eighteen other editors from diverse aesthetic and cultural backgrounds to solicit and to curate the work of more than 350 poets in roughly two months. As Boughn and Johnson note in their incisive introduction, "Poetry and Resistance," the book "is not intended as an offering of unique, sophisticated "creative writing." It is first and foremost, a collective, insurgent call that is part and parcel of a sovereign people's challenge to a narcissistic oligarch and his lackeys, who smirk now from their temporary perches of power. Its pages are bound in direct, literal ways, to the historic worldwide marches of January 22nd--and they stand as evidence that the vast majority of American poets (and artists and writers of all kind) revile the new reactionary dispensation."
--Dante Di Stefano, Best American Poetry
About the readers:
John Bradley is one of the editors of Resist Much, Obey Little, the poetry anthology inspired by President Trump. He is also the editor of the poetry anthology Eating the Pure Light: Homage to Thomas McGrath. He lives and teaches in DeKalb, Illinois.
Alice Duggan has published work in Sleetmagazine, Water~Stone Review, SAND, Tar River Poetry, sugar house, and other journals; also a chapbook, A Brittle Thing, from Green Fuse Press and an anthology, Home, from Holy Cow! Press. She's interested in dailiness, now and in previous generations, in conversations and colloquial language; in the idosyncratic corners of life.
Lyle Daggett’s most recent book of poems is All Through the Night: New and Selected Poems (Red Dragonfly Press). His political activities began almost 50 years ago, with a speech against the Vietnam war in his ninth grade English class. He has remained active with peace and justice issues and labor organizing since then. He is the author of the weblog A Burning Patience, http://aburningpatience.blogspot.com/ He lives in Minneapolis.
Morgan Grayce Willow has received a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant for 2017 to complete her fourth poetry collection. Earlier titles include Dodge & Scramble, Between, Silk, The Maps are Words, Arpeggio of Appetite. An award-winning essayist, Morgan’s prose has appeared in Water~Stone Review, Imagination & Place: Cartography, and the anthology Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers, recently re-released in paperback. Her interest in visual elements of poetry and book arts led to her to the Minnesota Center for Book Arts where she completed the core certificate and exhibited her one-of-a-kind artist’s book Collage for Mina Loy in 2016. Morgan teaches at The Loft Literary Center.
