Han VanderHart
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hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Han VanderHart
@hanvanderhart.bsky.social
5.6K followers 2.2K following 10K posts
Hollis Summers Poetry Prize: Larks (Ohio U Press, 2025). What Pecan Light (BCP, 2021). Co-Editor: @riverriverbooks.bsky.social EIC: @moistpoetryjournal.bsky.social Host: @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social Southern. PhD Duke. they/them. Durham, NC. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🇵🇸
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hanvanderhart.bsky.social
W.S. Merwin

poets.org/poem/thanks
we go on saying thank you thank you with the animals dying around us our lost feelings we are saying thank you with the forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives we are saying thank you with the words going out like cells of a brain with the cities growing over us we are saying thank you faster and faster with nobody listening we are saying thank you we are saying thank you and waving dark though it is
November 27, 2025 at 3:15 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
I was just making orange cranberry sauce…and when I went to where my usual recipe is (Rachael Ray’s) it said: add orange and zest to jar of cranberry sauce?! So I used another recipe. But what in the what, Rachael Ray. 🍊 (I added cardamom to the below recipe.)

www.noracooks.com/cranberry-or...
Orange Cranberry sauce in the pot, cooling.
November 27, 2025 at 2:25 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
That is the surprise
That the kindness was not an affect, but a choice
And that kindness in its entirety is very freakish
And weird, the real kind.

Dorothea Lasky
BLACK NIGHT Black night I am in the plane And the horizon can be seen as dark green and pink I am wearing all black except for my teal bracelets And my hair is a pinkish shade of red No not pinkish, an auburn that it always was The plane is soaring through the dark night And I am not I always fly alone Because I gave up several chances to be married And now I just take it all right They say that the people love me out there I can't imagine What me soaring in the black night as just a thing I know that when they might get close to my face They would stop their love Ghoul 1 am when you are close to me - As my niceness does never end That is the surprise That the kindness was not an affect, but a choice And that kindness in its entirety is very freakish And weird, the real kind. But still I leave things open like wood Sculptured wood pieces that adorn my every move. I don't even know how to write a poem anymore. Rattly rattly is my voice, what it once was When I was just a girl, I used to think Of what it could be and now it is nothing (First page of poem by Dorothea Lasky)
November 26, 2025 at 2:05 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Art may want to be mechanized but I am not going to let it Goddamn it

Dorothea Lasky #poetry
THE LEGEND OF GOOD JOHN HENRY When my dad got Alzheimer's all the plants died In the nursing home there are no plants There is nothing to live for Dogs circle the pink painted building The orderly staff waits with the bleach Asking me where the diapers are, I do not know I haven't had a love in a very long time, a true love One that makes you feel all jiggly inside I haven't felt all jiggly inside since I don't know when Still I will not go to work in a factory for machines Art may want to be mechanized but I am not going to let it Goddamn it Not gonna let it all be steel driver without my fist Even the dead plants whisper to me to feed them I feed them, the rabbits, and the dogs I feed the babies bread toast, they are bald and wild And strung out on life, the little igloos Of their heads only cold when you think of all the possibilities of love like waiting I am not what I once was, but who would want to be Who would want to be the same throughout a life, read the same books Drink the same tea, wear the same dress, go to the same movies Oh how I would cry at the same man bent over the same actress in the same dark suit Someone has died in that movie O I have seen that one before Black Life by Dorothea Lasky, Wave Books (2010)
November 26, 2025 at 2:25 AM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
10/10 recommend peacing out with your dog when your migraine comes on fast—just go, baby, go. And yes, take your meds.
POV: soft blankets and brown and white pitbull, Bug, in his ladybug collar, already sleeping, and bookshelves in the background
November 25, 2025 at 10:42 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
How long / can you continue without yearning?

—Burgi Zenhaeusern
#poetry #booksky
NEST IN QUILT My yearning for you long hatched and flown, the heart keeps a small hollow. How long can you continue without yearning? Grains of sand— shoes in the same wrong spot, your nodding off, my droning on, your explosive sneezes, my reloading the dishes— embedded in our soft flesh. Yet, how I love your laugh! Compass hidden in the silk and batting, herring bone and cross stitches tightly sewn to a haphazard star. The heart a threaded space I circle with mother-of-pearl. White Door Poems by Burgi Zenhaeusern Book of poems held up in front of fall chrysanthemum bouquet
November 25, 2025 at 1:58 AM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Cosplayed Scrooge today and I think it worked.
Black coat, bright red scarf, aviators. “You wish to remain anonymous?” “I wish to be left alone.”
November 24, 2025 at 7:19 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Partner sent this to me and…truth 🎶
Photo of table with fall leaf tablecloth and bass guitar with rose strap—also rose colored bra, pepper grinder, napkins Messages below photo: SCENE: the Poet has Departed Precipitously Hahaha
November 20, 2025 at 11:35 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Good morning, Durham. ICE cannot enter private spaces (homes, classrooms) without a judiciary warrant (signed by a judge). Video & report as you are able. Be safe.

👉 School officials have the right to refuse entry without proper documentation.
Chrysanthemums and a mug with the text “a misty. morning does not signify a cloudy day...”
November 19, 2025 at 1:07 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
He’s so good!
FRAGMENT Because at least one couple is making love Somewhere in the world at all times, Because those two are always pressed tightly together, Hatred can never slip between them To come destroy us. poem by Bill Knott, from FSG Selcted Poems, Ed Thomas Lux
November 19, 2025 at 2:57 AM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
I do want this night to end.

Bill Knott
WIDOW / WIDOWER'S WINTER Outside, the snow is falling into its past... I do want this night to end. In the fireplace, a section of ash caves in. The fall day you were buried, birds went over, south, thick enough to carry someone. They took my gapes of breath. -Their fuel? We are together in some birds, who fail. I didn't want to look down, to glimpse your grave, its heroic little mound like the peck of dirt we hope to eat in our life.
November 19, 2025 at 2:42 AM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
I’ve never read this poem aloud, but maybe this week, what with Epstein emails & files & dismissive conversations about children everywhere.
Poem from Larks Carry Your Millstone Softly The one you were given when someone misread scripture, thought the millstone was supposed to be tied around a child's neck. Each day the instructions: now cast yourself into the sea. by Han VanderHart
November 16, 2025 at 3:16 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Hey Durham and Hillsborough friends—I’ll be reading this week with Jameela F. Dallis at Weave & Spin! Weds, 7-9, at Eno House. Hope to see you there! 📚💙🎉 #poetry

@riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Weave & Spin OPEN MIC Photo by SASSS WORLD FEATURING Jameela F. Dallis and Han VanderHart WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19TH FROM 7-9 PM FREE ENTRY ENO HOUSE 903 ENO ST HILLSBOROUGH, NC 18+ WWW.ARTSORANGE.ORG/WEAVEANDSPIN
November 16, 2025 at 3:03 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
It’s a poetry taster on a winter’s evening 📚💙❄️ Hope to see you there!

@amorak.bsky.social @pittella.bsky.social @esylviapoet.bsky.social @martin65.bsky.social #poetry
All our chapbook beauties and then: Join Ast December 7 at 7pm ET on Zoom RSVP FOR MEETING LINK TO RIVERRIVERBOOKSEVENTS@GMAIL.COM
November 16, 2025 at 1:56 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Very excited for this reading in a couple weeks—make a wonder with your friends. ❄️ Celebrate poetry. Have a party for your chapbooks! 📚💙 #booksky #poetry RSVP details in next post.
AMORAK HUEY CARLOS A. PITTELLA CATHERINE ROCKWOOD ELIZABETH SYLVIA HAN VANDERHART A Ainter's Night Chapbook Reading 12/7, 7pm ET (Zoom)
November 16, 2025 at 1:52 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterwards have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of over-simplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life.

A.R. Ammons
less walk. Only uselessness is empty enough for the presence of so many uses, and only through uselessness can the ideal walk come into the sum total of its uses. Only uselessness can allow the walk to be totally itself. I hope you are now, if you were not before, ready to agree with me that the greatest wrong that can be done a poem is to substitute a known part for an unknown whole and that the choice to be made is the freedom of nothingness: that our experience of poetry is least injured when we accept it as useless, meaningless, and non-rational. Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition. It is the mode I spoke of earlier that can reconcile opposites into a "real" world both concrete and universal. Teach that. Teach the distinction. Second, I would suggest you teach that poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterwards have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of over-simplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a non-verbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization. Its knowledges are all negative and, there-fore, more positive than any knowledge. Nothing that can be said about it in words is worth saying.
November 16, 2025 at 1:20 AM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
When I come back to bed, someone’s taken my place 🎶 #catsofbluesky
Stripes, an American short haired tabby,having a bath, in my spot
November 13, 2025 at 2:10 AM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
It’s wintry in NC (coldest day this week, 34 out) and my day off so I’m snuggled on the couch with my good boy doing editing work SO BLESSED OMG) ❄️
Bug, brown and white pit, sleeping as usual after breakfast. No, I cannot reheat my coffee.
November 11, 2025 at 1:56 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
First pushcart nomination 🙏💕 Thank you, Salt Hill Journal! 🎉🎉🎉

“To not save anything. To rush headlong,
fall, collapse.”
Pink and black graphic with the following text: "RUIN PORN" BY HAN VANDERHART... ...SSUE 53 "MY SISTER BLAMES OUR PARENTS, NOT METH, FOR THE LOSS OF HER TEETH BY SAMANTHA PADGET.../SSUE 54 "WHERE WE SIN, WE SING: ON JULIEN BAKER & DELIVERANCE THROUGH SIN" BY ANTHONY THOMAS LOMBARDI ISSUE 53 "SMOKE DETECTORS" BY KEVIN B. /SSUE 54 "FISH FALL" BY CLAIRE ZHOU ISSUE 54 "A RICHER PLACE " BY ALEXANDER FREDMAN ..../ISSUE 53 SALT HILL JOURNAL
November 11, 2025 at 1:10 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Fists made of facts.
Lightning flashes of facts.
Mountains of facts.
Hurricanes of facts.

—Dziga Vertov, 1926
• the FACTORY OF FACTS. • Filming facts. Sorting facts. Disseminating facts. Agitating with facts. Propaganda with Facts. Fists made of facts. • Lightning flashes of facts. • Mountains of facts. • Hurricanes of facts. • And individual little factlets. • Against film-sorcery. • Against film-mystification. • For the genuine cinematification of the worker-peasant. USSR. -Dziga Vertov, 1926 I was originally asked to contribute an essay for a collection called Beyond Document: Essays on Nonfiction Film, edited by Charles Warren, with an Introduction by Stanley Cavell, because of a book I once wrote about Emily Dickinson's poetry. Although this seemed a strange reason to assume I could write about nonfiction film, I was drawn to the project because of the tact of my husband's death and my wish to find a way to document his life and work. David von Schlegell was a second-generation American with a German name. He was born in St. Louis in 1920. His German name embarrassed him, especially the "von," but he… (Susan Howe, New Directions)
November 11, 2025 at 12:48 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
In much better news, I have acquired this beautiful little book on film and poetry and narrative by Susan Howe…
Sorting Facts; or, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker Susan Howe published by New Directions featuring three full and one partial film frame of a partial view of a person, their hair flying in the wind above the book, the dying red roses of November
November 10, 2025 at 9:47 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
wild nights, wild nights

(taking your bra off at 7:45 and getting into bed with Gertrude Stein’s How to Write is freee) 📚💙
How to Write by Gertrude Stein / poetry bookshelves on either side of / view from my bed / I am done
November 8, 2025 at 12:47 AM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Poets on a Friday
Meryl Streep in Shakespearean red gown and blue ball cap in rehearsal for Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare in the Park performance)
November 7, 2025 at 9:16 PM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Fanny and Susan (Sukey) Howe, c1945
Two children with blonde bobs, in trousers and short sleeves, standing on rocks. The smaller one, Fanny, is smiling broadly. The taller one, Sukey, looks surprised, or is making a face at the photographer. She stands more stiffly than her younger sister.
November 7, 2025 at 1:29 AM
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Citing one of my mantras from one of my most prized works of art
I am a buttercat and I do Wat I want with a worm-like buttercat in the center permanent marker and paper art by Anselm
November 6, 2025 at 3:33 PM