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Michael Bazzett

@mikhailbazharov.bsky.social

1.3K followers 390 following 410 posts

Goat herder. Happy poet. Rhymes w/ gazette. Five books, including The ECHO CHAMBER (Milkweed) & CLOUDWATCHER (Copper Canyon) Translator of The Popol Vuh & Humberto Ak'abal NY Times Best Poetry 2018 NEA Fellow in Poetry & Translation michaelbazzett.com

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · May 1

Cover reveal!

I'm beyond excited to share that CLOUDWATCHER, winner of the inaugrual Stern Prize from @ampoetryreview.bsky.social & forthcoming from Copper Canyon, has a cover and is now available to pre-order (link in the replies)! 🌩️ 🌩️ 🌩️

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · 2d

I'm wondering, though, when the movement will have teeth? When will it involve actually witholding labor? General strikes? Interrupting the flow of trade or capital? Disruption of the status quo on a weekday? When will the hundreds of thousands showing up on Saturday afternoons use that as a lever?

Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · 2d

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Senator Ed Markey @markey.senate.gov · 3d

Trump just bombed six more people in the Caribbean, for a total of 27 civilians who have been killed so far by the US military. It’s illegal for the military to target civilians who do not pose an immediate threat. This is murder.

U.S. Military Kills Another 6 People in 5th Caribbean Strike, Trump Says
In a social media post, the president said the people aboard a boat were suspected of smuggling drugs for an unspecified group his team had labeled terrorists.

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Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪 @neonpajamas.bsky.social · 4d

new poem of mine, inspired by the news cycle

Six witnesses
called it
“Horrific.”

Sad news
casters
said,

“There’s nothing
more to see, nothing
more to say.”

The image was
first pixelated
and blurred

before
the public learned
its truth.

Legislators
and state leaders
agreed

it was too
difficult
to know

where
to next pose
with their gold.

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · 5d

Why poetry is inefficient:

I wanted to capture (in a poem) the feeling of reading a novel & kind of dissolving into it & its world, while also tracking what else the mind is noticing and the body is doing in this world. So I imagined an entire novel into existence, for verisimilitude.

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Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 9d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 9d

“Someone” cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second.

We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · 9d

Wow. Readings from two of the best books in recent memory, back-to-back tomorrow night... Lucky Houston!

Wayne Miller @waynemillerpoet.bsky.social · 9d

Can't wait to read tomorrow (Thursday) with @emilybloodwolf.bsky.social at Basket Books in Houston! We start at 7:30. Come say hi!

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Wayne Miller @waynemillerpoet.bsky.social · 9d

Can't wait to read tomorrow (Thursday) with @emilybloodwolf.bsky.social at Basket Books in Houston! We start at 7:30. Come say hi!

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 10d

Need help understanding—or explaining—how Trump is destroying the US soybean market through tariffs and they using tariff funds to helping to bailout the MAGAlike Argentine president who's selling to China instead of US? Here you go: youtube.com/shorts/8Gm60...

A 90-Second crash course in Trump’s betrayal of American soy farmers

YouTube video by Mother Jones

youtube.com

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 10d

Trump would not be treating half the country (well, more than half, but half of all voters) this way were it not for the Electoral College.

It's an artifact of slavery and it has got to go.

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Alison Birch @irishali13.bsky.social · 13d

This poem is stunning. If you haven't read Dressing The Bear, it's a must-read.
Clean
~ Susan L. Leary
-I often worried when I got the call, I'd be unprepared. But the morning my brother dies ——💙

Clean
By: Susan L. Leary
I often worried when I got the call, I'd be unprepared.
But the morning my brother dies, all the good clothes in the house are clean. So I tell myself to get on with it. x later, standing over my brother,
I think whoever
prepared his body must love what they do. Because he looks so clean. Cleaner, even, than when he'd doze on the couch midafternoons to Hank Williams or Johnny Cash.
The fatigue of living wiped from his cheeks. & today, as then, the same stillness stretched across his eyes.
The same tiny shovels for thumbs. & when I find the strength to rest a hand atop his, I shake him a little to tell him I wore his favorite dress: summery & sand-colored with splotches of blue. & while it seems so symbolic, it's all rather simple.
I wear a blue-patterned dress because my brother loved the ocean. & because my brother was lonely & broken, he couldn't kick drugs. But I love my brother & the morning he dies, all the good clothes in the house are clean.
So I tell him: Clean.

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 14d

This by @katmabu.bsky.social is the best speech I've heard yet by any politician about what ICE/Trump/Noem is doing and it's not close.

Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · 14d

I am just so fucking proud of her.

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · 17d

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Sean Thomas Dougherty @seanthomasd.bsky.social · 19d

Bravo to Michael! Bazzett for winning the Stern Prize!

aprweb.org/news/2025/03...

American Poetry Review – News

aprweb.org

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Ryan Vine @ryanvine.bsky.social · 18d

The Cave launches in two weeks! It would be lovely to see you.

"what miracle is possible with finite time"—Mahogany Browne
"beautiful writing"—Ilya Kaminski
"crafty and beautifully crafted"—Mike Bazzett
"compact, driven, urgent"—Bart Sutter

www.facebook.com/events/14069...

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Poetry in Ink @jestabrick.bsky.social · 28d

"Howl", Humberto Ak'abal
Translated from Spanish by Michael Bazzett
Wearingeul - Dracula
Leuchtturm a5 standard
@just-turnings.bsky.social red w/ blue abalone

#poetry #humbertoakabal #kichemaya #guatemalanliterature #fountainpensandink #fountainpensaustralia #30inks30days

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Kate Beall @katebbeall.bsky.social · 28d

Humberto Ak’abal (tr. @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social) // Emily Dickinson

ESTALLÓ
Estalló tu silencio y despertaste al loco que dormía en mi cabeza.
Empecé a buscarte por esos caminos apagados.
Me dicen que te volviste flor, me dicen que te volviste miel.
Por tu culpa siento que soy abeja.

RUPTURE
Your silence exploded and awakened
the madman sleeping in my brain.
I started looking for you down every dead-end road.
They tell me you turned into flowers, they tell me you turned into honey.
It's your fault
I think I'm a bee.

(Humberto Ak’abal, from IF TODAY WERE TOMORROW, tr. Michael Bazzett)

808
The lovely flowers embarrass me,
They make me regret I am not a Bee -

(Emily Dickinson, Franklin edition)

620
Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness - Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail - Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you're straightway dangerous - And handled with a Chain -

(Emily Dickinson, Franklin edition)

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · 28d

He read broadly and deeply, and famously so, so I've no doubt he's conversed with her in one way or another, as your sleuthing seems to suggest...

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · 28d

I love that scene in the movie where Emily Dickinson comes waltzing into the saloon, slaps some money on the bar, takes a long pull of rye then turns to the card table and shrieks, Tell it Slant –– Motherfuckers, then cackles like a hyena and waltzes back out...

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · 28d

Love this! 💜

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · 29d

Or, might I offer:

Accept no order other than that of affinity, no timeline other than that of the heart, no schedule other than that of untimely true encounters.

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · Sep 17

G has a snippet of southern Portugal and Spain, a slice of Morocco, and all the goodness of G-ville...

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Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · Sep 15

Edward P. Jones is the new guest editor for the O. Henry Prize this year and his salty introduction does not disappoint.

A paperback book on a white table, cover is blue-green leaves on an orange background. Text reads: The Best
Short Stories
2025
Edited by
Edward P.
Jones
THE O. HENRY PRIZE WINNERS
"Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction."
—The Atlantic
Monthly

Introduction
There were small reasons, there were large reasons that I was reluctant to be the guest editor for The Best Short Stories 2025: The
O. Henry Prize Winners. I had not been keeping up with the world of published short stories and felt incapable of judging what was now being created and shared in the magazines not only in the United States but in other countries as well. Now and again, I had come across work that I did not care for, that I thought might be representative of what was currently popular-extremely short pieces, in some cases, works catering to societies of folks too busy to take in substantive structures, works that were just Snapchats, works that were, as William Faulkner said, "not of the heart but of the glands." There was, for example, a "story" about a woman sitting in a Starbucks-like shop watching people come and go as they bought sweetened swill-line after line of bland descriptions of people buying. Then, as if the writer had grown tired, the piece ended after two pages. That was it.
And I feared "stories" like the one read by an author who once participated with me at a festival. To explain what he had written and to help the audience see the grandness of his work, this guy relied on a giant screen on which various images were projected. I…

The Best Short Srories 2025: The O. Henry Prize Winners contains.. twenty prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. Guest edicor Edward P. Jones has curated a dazzling assemblage of stories by an array of talented writers. The stories are accompanied by an introduction by Jones, fascinating observations from the winning writers on what inspired their work, and an extensive and useful directory of magazines and literary websites that publish short fiction.
Wendell Berry • Gina Chung • Addie Citchens Michael Deagler • Lindsey Drager • Clyde Edgerton
Dave Eggers • Madeline fitch • Indya Finch • Alice Hoffman
Jane Kalu • Thomas Korsgaard (translator, Martin Aitken) Ling Ma • Anthony Marra • Lori Ostlund • Ehsaneh Sadr Daniel Saldaña París (translator, Christina MacSweeney)
Zak Salih • Yah Yah Scholfield • Chika Unigwe
EDWARD P. JONES is the author of the story collections All Aunt Hagar's Children and Lost in the City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Lannan Literary Award.
His novel, The Known World, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. He has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and a PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story.
JENNY MINTON QUIGLEY, series editor, is the author of a mem-oir, The Early Birds, and editor of the anthology Lolita in the Afterlife.

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Michael Bazzett @mikhailbazharov.bsky.social · Sep 15

😂