Poetry by Stephen Lindow

                         ​Matt Niemi CC



Start

​How can I be sure the poem starts, here? During the intermission
of my life. My identity is a lost place, so the poem precedes me.
It wanders. It hobnobs. It means well. I have the sensation of
disintegration, but the poem prompts me like a Oujia board.
So many poems have come before, have been shanghaied,
have been plagerized into other poems. I am becoming my
own avant-garde. I am between a dulled current of intelligence
that comes out of me, and an ignorance that comes over me.
Have I conjoured correctly? Should I pray to Erato, the God
of Poetry? A metaphor is a placebo. It doesn't believe in itself,
yet words only come to life if entered. You feel my hand in the
poem. Can I forgive myself the years I've been writing poems?

​

Stephen Lindow took his MFA at Umass-Amherst 2004. Stephen Lindow has been writing and performing poetry since 1986. In 1997-98 he toured with Poetry Alive!, Inc., He took a TESOL cert. in 2008. His poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Bateau & Meat For Tea. He was a poetry editor for The Naugatuck Review from 2010-11 and slam judge at Western New England College. While in L.A. in 2012 he created poetry films from his laptop, & published poems in ARTillery, Bad Robot Poetry & Penumbra. He is a SCUBA diver, urban explorer & noisician[sic] who performed Kurt Schwitters's 'Ursonata' with Dadaist group in Holyoke, MA. He lives in Florida where he is a member of Electric Arugula, an avant-garde band. He also emcees an Open Mic at SpookEasy in Ybor City.

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