Raven Taylor – “How to Survive Being a Black Girl” (100K Views!)

“Beware of men who enjoy girls who do not love themselves.
Surely, they will mistake your skin for an eclipse that you are ashamed
to witness.”

Congratulations to Raven Taylor on topping 100,000 views on this excellent poem!
And while you’re here, make sure to check out the rest of our books and merch as well, including our awesome t-shirts and poster and new books by Jacqui Germain and Hanif Abdurraqib!

Best of Button Week 76

“It has taken me so long to say that I am proud to be black.”

Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Dave Harris & Jeremy Radin. Congratulations poets!
While you’re here on our site, make sure to check out our books and merchandise in the Button Store, including books by Aziza Barnes, Danez Smith, Neil Hilborn and our JUST-RELEASED book from Hanif Abdurraqib!

Sam Sax – “Learning to Breathe Water” (100K Views!)

“Learning is just the brain’s neural pathways
being beaten into a new shape by life.”

Congratulations to Button author Sam Sax on topping 100,000 views on this amazing poem! Sam’s book, A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters, is available here.
And while you’re here, make sure to check out the rest of our books and merch as well, including our awesome t-shirts and poster and new books by Jacqui Germain and Hanif Abdurraqib!

Button Round-Up 12

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Welcome to the first Button Round-Up of August! As the summer pushes on and the heat covers us all in a layer of sweat, why not kick back for a little while in the cool embrace of the internet?

Bitch Media Fellowship for Writers
Recently, Bitch Media opened application submissions for its fellowship program’s second year. The fellowship, directed by Bitch Media cofounder Andi Zeisler, is looking for writers with minimal publication experience and a strong voice on subjects like activism, feminism, and pop-culture criticism. You can apply until September 15th!

Nashville Review, Summer 2016
The Nashville Review, edited by the MFA students at Vanderbilt University, has released its second issue of the year. The Nashville Review seeks to share a combination of traditional and non-traditional literature, from poetry to comics. The Summer 2016 issue features not one, but two poems by long-time friend of Button, Hieu Minh Nguyen!!

“5 Reasons to Read: The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, by Hanif Abdurraqib” by Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah
This week the internet was gifted with this stunning review of The Crown Ain’t Worth Much by Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah. Though this may look like a listicle based on the title, this review is so much more, grinding deep into Hanif’s work with voice, time, anaphora, and many more literary techniques and explaining just what Hanif is doing in his work that makes The Crown Ain’t Worth Much the beautiful collection that it is. Get your copy here.

“Venom (ft. Lucien Parker)” by Guante
Guante released a new single, “Venom,” on his Soundcloud this week. If you were looking for a cool new track to throw on your Saturday-night playlist, look no further! “Venom” can be found on Guante’s album, “Post-Post-Race” which is available on Bandcamp.

“Pack These Pages” by Samantha Raphelson & Justine Kenin
Check out this reading list released by NPR! The list was curated by seven different professional booksellers and should fill your last month of summer with some great reads. The list offers selections of fiction, nonfiction, and children & young adult books.

Cataloguing Grief: Nick Flynn, “My Feelings” Book Review by Anna Binkovitz

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Cataloguing Grief: Nick Flynn, My Feelings Review

by Anna Binkovitz

It takes a great deal of confidence to title a poetry manuscript simply My Feelings. It is the kind of confidence that comes with completing one’s fourth collection of poetry, and trust me, this confidence is earned. This book is a shameless claiming of humanity—its death, addiction, and other moments we cannot find words for. To put it simply, this is a book of elegies. Even the poems that do not explicitly contain death are still naming an absence, speaking into the unspeakable.

In his poem, “The When & The How,” Flynn uses the fragmented, multi-voiced style that characterized his collection “some ether,” with greater mastery and more content import. “I asked about your family–you/(like me) had yet to mention any desperate distant/tethered.” The poem, and the visual split between internal and external dialogue, crystallizes the gaps that the rest of the book attempts to speak into. The title poem shows us the enormity of the unsaid. Flynn chooses several images to give us the unnamed feelings: “the shadow inside me,” or “a sign/the judge ordered me to carve hung around/my neck.” The end of the poem physically manifests these shadows, with the speaker attempting to name his feelings, and crossing himself out. Silence can be a relief, in this book, but the respite is short-lived, as we move from loss to loss.
Several of the poems are named for dead public figures, from Kafka to Phillip Seymour Hoffman, with other poems focusing on physical artifacts of loss. In “Polaroid,” we are shown the process of collecting fragments in preparation for loss: “He paints her face from memory./But it doesn’t look anything like me, she argues./Perhaps not, he says– but it will.” At a certain point, it is impossible not to think of even the best moments as merely future tools to pull us through the absence of joy.

As a whole, this collection deals with the naming of loss, how we describe it by what we are left with. Despite all of the physical remnants, at the end of the day, this book, and any kind of death, leaves us with only our feelings. It’s the kind of collection to read on a cold fall day, when your heart has been broken so many times it has passed tragedy and reached pure exhaustion. Because misery isn’t the only thing that loves company; the routine of existing through it does too. So curl up, put on some Blind Pilot, and let Nick Flynn bleed you of your grief by giving it beautiful lines and white pages to run off into.

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Anna Binkovitz is a poet and Button staffer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She loves pizza, red wine, and honest writing with a lyrical twist.

Melissa Newman-Evans – “9 Things I Would Like to Tell to Every Teenage Girl” (250K Views!)

“The world is trying to kill you.
It is trying to do this by stealing your voice.”

Congratulations to Melissa Newman-Evans on topping 250,000 views on this excellent poem! Check out more great work from Melissa here and here.
And while you’re here, make sure to check out our books and merch as well, including our awesome t-shirts and poster and new books by Jacqui Germain and Hanif Abdurraqib!

Best of Button Week 75

“If I were another person, I think I’d still be mentally ill. It’s impossible to imagine a color you haven’t seen.”

Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Neil Hilborn & Ashe Vernon. Congratulations poets!
While you’re here on our site, make sure to check out our books and merchandise in the Button Store, including books by Aziza Barnes, Danez Smith, Neil Hilborn and our JUST-RELEASED book from Hanif Abdurraqib!

Button Round-Up 11

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Another week has passed, which can only mean one thing. It’s time for another Button Round-Up! This week we have some new poems, intriguing essays, and more!

Brooklyn Poets Reading Series for the NYC Poetry Festival
This one is for all our fans back in my hometown of NYC. The festival is open this weekend, and tomorrow starting at 11 AM on Governors Island will be a long feature set by the Brooklyn Poets. Why not enjoy poetry while basking outside in the summer sun?

“Beyond the Benefit” by Guante
Friend of Button and two-time National Poetry Slam champion Guante published an essay on his website this week challenging artists from all walks of life to become more active in building and maintaining various movements for change. Guante write, “I believe that as artists, we have more to offer than our art.” Give this a read, then get out there and make a difference!

“In Service of Staying Alive” by Lynne Procope
Former National Poetry Slam champion Lynne Procope recently published this poem in the Offing Magazine. Beautiful in message, “In Service of Staying Alive” also challenges form and has become one of the more uniquely written poems I’ve seen lately. Be sure to check this out if you’re looking for something a little different!

Three Poems by Nick Flynn
This week the internet was given not one, not two, but three new poems by the ever talented Nick Flynn. Two of the poems are closely tied to the theme of fatherhood, while the third is a critique of the modern day practice of wasting time as we “scroll, scroll, scroll.”

Inside the 2016 Man Booker Longlist by Arnav Adhikari and Tyler Parker
The Man Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious and sought after literary prizes in the world. The 2016 list of possible winners was recently released, and in this article many options are noted and briefly reviewed. Use this to fuel your next reading list! How many of these novels have you read?

“The story’s the thing at the Moth” by Niki Patton
This article is all about a different type of slam, story slams. The Moth, started in 1997, has since spread to many cities across the country and feature slam style bouts with storytelling rather than poetry as the main focus. Check out this article and support The Moth if they exist in your hometown!

And so ends another week’s worth of links and poems and fun times. I don’t know what you’ll take away from this Round-Up, but I sincerely hope it’s something you can use actively and positively moving forward. See you next week, when we’re all older and stronger!

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Spencer Brownstein is a poet, student, and Button staffer living in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He loves beanies, dogs, and a nice cigarette after dinner.

Writing Prompt #2

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Writing Prompt #2 (w/ Jesse Parent)

Hey Button fans! With the chapbook and video contests in full swing, we’re excited to feature another writing prompt to help you with your own writing. If you’re comfortable, please share what you write in response to the prompt in the comments below this post (and feel free to use it for either of your contest submissions!) You can check out responses to our previous prompt here.
Today’s prompt comes courtesy of Jesse Parent. For further inspiration, you can check out some of Jesse’s work on the Button channel here, here and here. The prompt is as follows:

Choose an object that has a lot of sentimental value to you and an object you bought in the last week (or most recently). Write a letter from the sentimental object to the object you just bought explaining who you are and how to take care of you. (Optional: leave a few lines at the end for the object you just bought to respond).

Again, feel free to share whatever you write in response to the prompt in the comments below this post (you can use an anonymous name if you’d prefer, and your email address won’t be public). We look forward to seeing your work!

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Jesse Parent is an award-winning slam poet who was the runner up at the 2010 and 2011 Individual World Poetry Slams, a finalist in the 2012 Ontario International Poetry Slam and 2014 Ill List Poetry Slam Invitational, and a semifinalist at the 2011 and 2012 National Poetry Slams. He is also a touring improv comedian, a veteran of over 40 improv festivals, and was named an Artistic Associate of the prestigious Chicago Improv Festival in 2006. His work has been featured on the Huffington Post, UpWorthy.com, Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze.com, and the television show Lexus Verses and Flow on the TV One network. You can find out more about Jesse at his web site, JesseParent.com.

Best of Button Week 74


“My body is selfish. It knows only how to take and never gives.”

Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Kate Hao and iCon. Congratulations poets!
While you’re here on our site, make sure to check out our books and merchandise in the Button Store, including books by Aziza Barnes, Danez Smith, Neil Hilborn and our JUST-RELEASED book from Hanif Abdurraqib!