Tiresias Flies Again

The Public I

One of my favorite things about writing for Newcity is that they care deeply about their authors and our decisions. I’ve gotten great feedback on my work and I’ve never felt opposition to me giving pushback or even asking for ridiculous things like the poem quotes throughout this article. They’re ridiculous because that’s a lot of extra work in design and editorial, but I thought they really enhanced the piece and my editors and the staff listened and they did the thing. You need a copy of this article in print, it sings visually.

I cannot thank y’all enough, Todd, Nicky, Brian, and Jan! You’re a dream team.

Interviewing Mayda and avery was a three-hour experience in joy and camaraderie. I was so lucky to be a part of it and I had a blast. Go read their work today after you read this article!

The Public I: Poets Laureate and Chicago’s Literary Legacy

Big hugs,

-Eric

Robert Eric Shoemaker

Website

A person sitting in a garden surrounded by flowers, holding a dog on a leash. The person has a beard and wears a gray long-sleeve shirt, while the dog appears happy and is wearing a red harness. — Photo credit Olivia Welsh

Eric (he/him) is a poet, translator, and interdisciplinary artist. He is the author of the forthcoming Magical Poetics (Bloomsbury), translator of the forthcoming Saint Catherine of Siena: Prayers (One Subject Press), and author of three hybrid poetry books: Ca’Venezia (Partial Press, 2021), an artist’s book of hybrid writing and visual art; We Knew No Mortality (Acta Publications, 2018), poetry and memoir; and the poetry chapbook 30 Days Dry (Thought Collection Publishing 2015).

Toodles!

I’m 34 now, and here’s a poem to prove it

Poetry, Reviews

Most recent review: *Mother, Daughter, Augur* by Mary Simmons in *Rain Taxi*!

Probably my favorite birthday card this year, mostly because my friend’s little boy picked it out. Thanks, Coop!

Today is March 28th, 2026, and it is my birthday.

The street sun-lined is quiet and cold unfamiliarly. I rest in my bomber jacket waiting for

I am not twenty-one anymore and I do not drink. Do I want to visit a museum? I am

Too easy.

Feeling like the cold air is right. Like my crow’s feet dug in. I should be wise.

Have I lived too many me’s and strung out my soul? Atropos is hanging by a

Restless. Pining, but unwilling to act. I should steal something. I am far too good; I should act out. I could never! Even these thoughts hurt me.

Restless. Nothing I want but to

Move.

The younger me would do something,

Maybe too much, but something.

Is wisdom boring?

Will I fade away

Forgetting the details

Only walking

Never running again?

What do I love harder?

What passion is under the knitted blankets?

Where do I learn about Marcus Aurelius and have a heated argument with a fascist until he falls on his sword from my wit and warmth?

I tell myself if I cared more

If only I cared

But don’t I?

Isn’t the cold street

Empty only in this moment’s eyes

Which I could brighten

To see the jonquils

Peering through the mulch

Open-mouthed and beckoning?

Our leopard gecko, Cheese, in a photogenic moment (one of many).

DVD Poetry Side Quest

We’re gearing up to find a new apartment in June/July and that means purging. I started with books and didn’t really do what I’d consider a “purge,” though I got rid of more than one and that is a minor miracle. However, I did manage to actually purge DVDs.

I’m keeping some, but getting rid of all these. Various reasons. I thought of a fun game for them that’s better than shlepping them all to a store right away. If you would like to purchase one of these DVDs, I will mail it to you

AND I WILL INCLUDE a brand spanking new poem inspired by the film. Or what I remember of it.

How’s that for a weird side quest?

Intrigued? Email me your selection and your address and I’ll Venmo request you for $20 (which includes shipping).

Hugs, Eric

Robert Eric Shoemaker

Website

If you’d like to catch up on previous posts, visit “newsletter posts” from the menu on my website and enter the password: poetryismagic!

Toodles!

Reclamation

Poetry, Reviews

Sometimes, even newsletters are too much. I owe a great debt of joy-seeking cuore energy to poet, songwriter, and life-lover Danielle Gasparro for giving me the permission I needed from the universe (I convinced myself I needed permission) to reject permission and just send whatever moves me in my newsletters and social media accounts. Thank you, Danielle, for telling me to be the artist I am and not manicure my missives.

SO. I’m going to free up my patterns and explain them less.

I’ve begun an experiment in reclaiming my online presence. Thanks for being on this journey with me.

Spent a long time seeking out Saint Catherine at the Art Institute and found her passively cradling these flowers.
This is how an artist portrayed the woman who begged God to crush her and remake her as a vessel of the eternal divine by showering her in blood.

When the light comes

–

Evolution ::

a voice that claims monstrosities,

The body’s inevitabilities.

I claim to know nothing, but in all knowable signs

The plowed field is broken open.

We kill so much

:: or are we sleepwalking?

Everything that falls out

Can be washed into new forms,

Sugarstinking.

We must explain the light

Before we give back what is not ours ::

Nitrogen and phosphorus,

The light’s dirty evolution.

Now we crawl down from

The mountaintop with the others.

Will we bow

To this god,

The light

Of death

And earth

:: our body’s particulate bodies

Every word :: a prayer

The prayer :: a practice

The practice :: endurance

We persist.

It’s not a world

Waiting for disaster

But we who are disaster

And always have been

We dirty our foreheads

Prayers are practices

And bodies are light waiting to disperse

–

A review in poetry of

And when the light comes it will be so fantastic

Poems by Kristen Berget

Translated by Kathleen Maris Paltrineri

Hugs,

-Eric

Robert Eric Shoemaker

Website

If you’d like to catch up on previous posts, visit “newsletter posts” from the menu on my website and enter the password: poetryismagic!

Toodles!

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On the Whatnots of March

Conferences, Journalism, Poetry

If you’d like to catch up on previous posts, visit “newsletter posts” from the menu on my website and enter the password: poetryismagic!

Highlights:

Whatnots

–

Sometimes life sneaks up and says “nope!” and plans get ripped out from under you, like the cozy rug of my planned visit to Louisville to premiere “Tomorrow, Overnight,” my Holocaust memorial poem. Same with the still winter chill in the air here on day one of March in Chicago.

Some days things suck, and then they don’t. I get to expand “Tomorrow, Overnight,” particularly the erasure sequence “On Conduct” (which is now going to be the full page length of the essay I’m redacting). Next week, I’ll be in Baltimore with all the poetry hooligans I could ask for. Magical Poetics is turned in (!) and due out late this year or early next. I’m writing a silly amount and am looking forward to sharing it with you.

Here are some more things that have given me joy lately. I hope you’re finding joy, too, despite the bleakness of the weather, the government, [insert modern horror here].

Dinner and a Show with the Chicago Mob

I interviewed Chicago legend Grant DePorter, owner of Harry Caray’s, about mob history.

These gorgeous orchid babies at the Chicago Botanic Gardens orchid show!

Maybe I didn’t love Richard Siken’s objectively brilliant I Do Know Some Things, but I did love this poem.

(I think I just didn’t need, in my soul, these traumas right now. I’ll come back to this book in a few years!)

So excited to spend time with these lovelies next week! A little scared of AWP paneling, so wish me luck.

Hugs in forever winter,

-Eric

Robert Eric Shoemaker

Website