{"id":1187,"date":"2020-07-09T08:42:17","date_gmt":"2020-07-09T07:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writersrebel.com\/?p=1187"},"modified":"2020-07-16T10:37:12","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T09:37:12","slug":"american-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/american-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"<span>Watch: American Poem<\/span><span>Nick Laird<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GQx0d5KGQRQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>American Poem<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I hoped to visit tropical resorts<\/p>\n<p>to feel that texture of expensive sadness.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to avoid slaughter by growing<\/p>\n<p>so large I would not fit in the machine,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>but thinking everything was magic<\/p>\n<p>was the same as thinking nothing was:<\/p>\n<p>magnets, racecraft, three card monte.<\/p>\n<p>I know nothing of your grief, granted,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>nor you mine, but isn\u2019t that why we\u2019re here?<\/p>\n<p>No philosopher ever went into the deli<\/p>\n<p>on Mercer and Spring and asked Mohammed<\/p>\n<p>just to make her whatever sandwich<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>the universe had preordained. I for one<\/p>\n<p>hope to stop reliving things I said once<\/p>\n<p>that were only mildly funny. I have this<\/p>\n<p>hunch everyone now adult is dealing with<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>the knowledge we are living in a failed<\/p>\n<p>state of bad faith, and hence we shelter in<\/p>\n<p>denunciation, poems of innocence and hurt,<\/p>\n<p>our innocence, our hurt, while happily<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>we\u2019re rapidly extracting rotted bodies<\/p>\n<p>from the earth, all the liquid dead we nurse<\/p>\n<p>our little systems on until they stop their<\/p>\n<p>beeping, until, engorged as ticks, we burst.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland in 1975, <strong>Nick Laird<\/strong> was educated at Cookstown High School and Cambridge University. He worked as a lawyer for several years before leaving law to write full-time. The recipient of many prizes for his poetry and fiction, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Award, the Betty Trask Prize, a Somerset Maugham award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, he has lived in London, Warsaw, and Rome. He is on faculty at NYU and Professor of Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre At Queens University in Belfast.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeff &nbsp; American Poem &nbsp; I hoped to visit tropical resorts to feel that texture of expensive sadness. I wanted to avoid slaughter by growing so large I would not fit in the machine, &nbsp; but thinking everything was magic was the same as thinking nothing was: magnets, racecraft, three card monte. I know nothing [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/american-poem\/\">Read More&#8230;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> from <span>Watch: American Poem<\/span><span>Nick Laird<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[125,126,127,128,104,47],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Watch: American Poem - Writers Rebel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/american-poem\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Watch: American Poem - Writers Rebel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\ufeff &nbsp; American Poem &nbsp; I hoped to visit tropical resorts to feel that texture of expensive sadness. 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