Best of Button Week 70


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“My vanity’s insanity unless it helps get you off.”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Shay Alexi Stewart & Mercedez Holtry. 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 Jacqui Germain!

Link Round-Up 6

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Howdy friends! It’s been another great week in the world of poetry, and we are super excited to share some of the gems we stumbled upon online.

Three Poems by Hanif Abdurraqib – That’s right, it is physically impossible to go one week without Hanif absolutely wrecking you with his brilliant writing. This week, it’s three poems up at Public Pool.

Beech Street Review –William James, Angelique Palmer, and Mckendy Fils-Aime are the editors of a brand new literary journal, and they just opened their submissions for the first quarterly issue! Looking for inspiration to send them a poem? Check out our writing prompt from Ollie Schminkey!

“All These Bodies” by Taylor Steele –I was lucky enough to see this poem performed live at Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam in Columbus, and trust me, you’re never going to be ready for this captivating and brilliant writing and performance. Thanks to fellow poetry org SlamFind for the awesome video!

Ten Trans, Non-Binary, Gender Non-Conforming, Gender Fluid, and Genderqueer Poets You Need to Hear – That’s right, in addition to writing and performing beautiful poems, Taylor also has a column over at Medium where she highlights the best of the best when it comes to poetry. This installment focuses on giving some credit to an often uncelebrated and erased part of the poetry community. Meet your new favorite poets!

“A Way of Thanking the Pig” by Emily O’Neill – Emily’s work has been published all over, and this poem about honoring the animals we eat appeared in the initial issue of Tap Lit magazine. If you want to get to know Emily more, you can check out her amazing review of Jay Deshpande’s “Love the Stranger” that she was kind enough to write for us last week.

Thanks for stopping by to spend a little time with us, and thank you to the brilliant folks out there trying to make sense, if not of violence, of what it takes to survive it. Take care of yourselves, drink water, and come back next week for more poetry updates.

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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.

Rachel Wiley – “For Fat Girls Who Have Considered Starvation When Bulimia Wasn’t Enough” (100K Views!)

“My mouth is a music box. A small girl spins gracefully
at the back of my throat.”

Congratulations to Rachel Wiley on topping 100,000 views on her new poem! You can check out more of her work here, here and here.
And while you’re here, make sure to check out our books and merch as well, including our awesome t-shirts (which are on a start-of-summer sale!) and new books by Jacqui Germain and Hanif Abdurraqib!

Writing Prompt #1

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Writing Prompt #1 (w/ Ollie Schminkey)

Hey Button fans! We know a lot of you are writers yourselves, and we’re excited to be launching a new series on this blog featuring writing prompts 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!
Today’s prompt comes courtesy of Ollie Schminkey. You can check out some of Ollie’s work on the Button channel here, here and here. The prompt is as follows:

Write a love letter to someone who has betrayed you.
What have they given you? What have they taken?

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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Ollie Schminkey is a white, non-binary transgender poet/activist/ musician/artist. They facilitate, direct, and host many organizations, including the Macalester Poetry Slam, Well-Placed Commas (a weekly poetry workshop with Word Sprout, Inc.), and OUTspoken! (a queer open mic). They have also represented the Twin Cities in numerous national poetry competitions, and they are the author of one chapbook, The Taste of Iron. Publications that feature their work include Write Bloody and Andrea Gibson’s anthology, We Will Be Shelter, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and 20% Theatre Co’s The Naked I. They have guest curated two shows, Rage, and STARE BACK, at the Fox Egg Gallery. You can find more of their work at http://ollieschminkey.weebly.com.

Link Round-Up 5

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It’s been a heavy week, full of loss and pain. Thankfully, we have beautiful artists out there, doing important work to pull us through and give us new language to cope. This week’s round-up is for those mourning after the homophobic attack on Pulse club during their Latin Dance night in Orlando.

“Surviving on Small Joys” by Hanif Abdurraqib – Back at it again with a beautiful, urgent essay on surviving under oppression, Hanif talks about the value of momentary distraction, silly panda videos, and sharing space with others, even when the grief is too large to talk about.

Two Micros by Safia Elhillo –Micros, at their best, function as a poetic snapshot. In these two pieces, Safia offers us snapshots of grieving, and what it means to mourn in safe spaces and in hostile ones. If this is not enough eloquence on loss, check out her full feature set, “Alien Suite”, from CUPSI 2016 finals stage.

“Labor Day” by Sam Sax –Published in Guernica, Sam’s usual flowing style is turned to history, tracing the path of Labor Day, ending in one of the most gorgeous lines: “ any word / traced to its origin is a small boy begging for water.” Congrats to Sam on his forthcoming book bury it, due out next fall through Wesleyan University Press! You can check out his Button chapbook here.

“Restored Mural For Orlando” by Roy Guzman “…how for me a church is a roof that’s always collapsing.” An MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota, Roy grew up in Florida. This sweeping poem documents how the massacre, Orlando as a city, queerness, and what it is to be a POC intersected for him in this moment. It is a poem to hold grief, rage, and also the things that give us the power to keep living.

30 Over 30: Poet’s Edition by Jocelyn Mosman – If you’ve been to a poetry slam, you’ve probably heard the MC tell the audience about a man who founded poetry slam named Marc Smith and the audience response of “SO WHAT?” But who is this Marc Smith? Who were the folks originally competing in slam alongside him? Who are the current leaders and long-standing slammers around now? This list will tell you, with videos of each poet included.

Summer Classes at the Loft Literary Center – Summer session at Minneapolis’ finest writing center begins next week. Classes include The Art of Imitation, The Craft of Poetry, and more. Not a local? Fear not!! There are online opportunities as well.

Thanks for stopping by to spend a little time with us, and thank you to the brilliant folks out there trying to make sense, if not of violence, of what it takes to survive it. Take care of yourselves, drink water, and come back next week for more poetry updates.

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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.

Victoria Morgan – “How to Succeed in Heartbreak” (250K Views!)

“Do not be okay, because heartbreak is not about being okay. It’s about remembering you were okay before.”

Congratulations to Victoria Morgan on topping 250,000 views! You can check out more excellent poems on love in our Love Poems Playlist.

And while you’re here, make sure to check out our books and merch as well, including our awesome t-shirts (which are on a start-of-summer sale!) and new books by Jacqui Germain and Hanif Abdurraqib!

Jay Deshpande, Love the Stranger – Book Review by Emily O’Neill

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Jay Deshpande, Love the Stranger Review

by Emily O’Neill

I saw Jay Deshpande in the Times Square Olive Garden the Saturday after I turned 26. The Pope was in New York too, or else had been earlier in the week. I spent the whole bus ride down listening to the same playlist entitled “ASTORIA” and reading an endless Rolling Stone article about this new, cool Pope and his impending album release. I spent four hours on the same article because I kept losing my place because I had a dangerously high fever and should not have agreed to travel. Food poisoning. The worst of my life. Worse even than the time I ate an oyster at a restaurant opening and ended up on my knees for two straight days. No, two days would have been lucky this time. This birthday death plague lasted a full seven and nearly killed me.

Smack in the middle of it, all the sweating and crying and fever dreams, is the third floor of the Times Square Olive Garden swollen with people waiting for tables where they’ll eat endless pasta boiled in unsalted water and hovering in the scrum is Jay, who I’d only just met a few weeks earlier. Who smiled at me as if he recognized me too, who was too gentle to interrupt me charging back downstairs to my date after throwing up the three spoonfuls of soup I’d attempted (yes, I was on a date and my deathbed at the same time) and so the only exchange we had was an unspoken “it can’t possibly be you, can it?”
Jay’s book, Love The Stranger, reminds me very much of this moment of recognition. His poems invite me many uncanny places, locations and moments I feel able to stand inside of, his words locating me using the most intangible familiarities. Who is it who said that poetry is to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange? I say it to my students all the time but can’t remember where I got it from. Jay’s writing does exactly that. There are as many bedrooms in this book as castles, but both seem equally possible to inhabit. You feel where he catches his breath in a line and find yourself mirroring the action– “There is nothing quite so alien as being/correct” (from “Strength”) and “how the summer clenched/resolutely not in love with anything” (from “Klaxon”)–not breathing either until he gives you permission to. His words take your body away, then return it to you changed.
“We come here/to press our backs up against the invisible” he writes in “Commemoration” and I remember nearly fainting in the Olive Garden elevator from my own impossible heat. Jay’s poems are ruthless and quiet at once: “we thought/we came for purpose until purpose//came for us.” There are so many bodies, so many moments of dangerous intimacy suddenly absent from the life of the speaker, so much jazz to distract and restructure a person by the the time they’ve made it out the other side of this book. He reminds us “we are holding the lion before we want/to hold the lion” and it is terrifyingly specific, the way all fever dreams are, the way poems must be: asking me to believe my eyes even when I’m certain they’re playing tricks.

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Emily O’Neill is a writer, artist, and proud Jersey girl. Her recent poems and stories can be found in Cutbank, The Journal, Minnesota Review, Redivider, and Washington Square, among others. Her debut collection, Pelican, is the inaugural winner of YesYes Books’ Pamet River Prize. She is the author of two chapbooks: Celeris (Fog Machine, 2016) and You Can’t Pick Your Genre (Jellyfish Highway, 2016). She teaches writing at the Boston Center for Adult Education and edits poetry for Wyvern Lit.

Best of Button Week 68


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“We don’t even call you Dad anymore, just Him.”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Patrick Roche & Aziza Barnes. 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, Danez Smith, Neil Hilborn and our JUST-RELEASED book from Jacqui Germain!