Thursday, September 21, 8:00 PM

"Tim Seibles will get you in his hammerlock and won't let you go till he has taken you into the center of American politics and pop culture, the minds of birds, . . . your so-called color, your so-called race. He lights up everything he touches like the candle at the heart of the lantern. A houseful of voices speaks through him in language so tenable, you'll at times feel bruised, at times made love to. I read a lot of poetry. I've never read poetry like this."

—Reginald McKnight

Tim Seibles is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Hammerlock from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Gifted with a broad-ranging sense of subject matter and style, his poems cover terrain as diverse as basketball, American race relations, dogs, and the inner thoughts of cartoon characters. He has received grants from the NEA and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, as well as an Open Voice Award. A dynamic speaker, he has also recorded a CD, Leaning House Poetry, reading his work alongside other poets. Originally from Philadelphia, Seibles now lives in eastern Virginia, where he teaches in the MFA Program at Old Dominion University.

For Brothers Everywhere

"There is a schoolyard that runs from here to the dark’s fence where brothers keep goin to the hoop, keep risin up with baske’balls ripe as pumpkins toward rims hung like piñatas, pinned like thunderclouds to the sky’s wide chest an’ everybody is spinnin an’ bankin off the glass, finger-rollin off the boards with the same soft touch you’d give the head of a child, a child witta big-ass pumpkin head, who stands in the schoolyard lit by brothers givin and goin, flashin off the pivit, dealin behind their backs, between their legs, cockin the rock an’ glidin like mad hawks— swoopin black, with arms for wings— palmin the sun an’ throwin it down, an’ even with the day gone, without even a crumb of light from the city, brothers keep runnin-gunnin, fallin away takin fall-away jumpers from the corner, their bodies like muscular saxophones body-boppin better than jazz, beyond summer, beyond weather, beyond everything that moves, an’ with one shake they’re pullin-up from the perimeter, shakin-bakin brothers be sweet pullin-up from the edge of the world, hangin like air itself hangs in the air, an’ gravidy gotta giv’em up: the ball burning like a fruit with a soul in the velvet hands while the wrists whisper "back-spin" an’ the fingers comb the rock once—lettin go, lettin it go like good news— ’cuz the hoop is a well, Shwip! a well with no bottom, Shwick! an’ they’re fillin that sucker up."

—from Hurdy-Gurdy