Huang Xiang is part of the City of Asylum project. 24 cities have agreed to take in literary political refugees

A writer cannot live on words alone, of course. He needs a place to write, a house to shelter him and food to sustain him. Reese and Samuels provided the house — two doors down from their own — as well as living expenses, garnered through an “all-volunteer” fund-raising effort. Their devotion to the project was what convinced the NANCA coordinators that Pittsburgh should be a part of the City of Asylum network.

As Ralston said, success requires “a situation like you have in Pittsburgh, where there is a small group of very committed activists who take charge.”

Huang and his wife first visited Pittsburgh in July. When they saw the bluffs on Mount Washington, Huang proclaimed that he would carve the rock into a Rushmore-like poem as a gift to the city. Zhang convinced him to leave his mark on the house instead, so he painted his poetry — in sweeping Chinese characters — onto the exterior.

Full article has more [via Independent Chinese PEN]

The current thick Brick Magazine has a 3 page tribute on Tomas Tranströmer by Robert Hass. Apparently Tranströmer is a pianist too, one handedly since his stroke, and by income, was a psychotherapist, even with work in translation to 50 languages. Other tidbits: He published his first book at 23 and has done 8 since. Hss describes him well: “the terseness and almost classical restraint of style that makes almost all other poets seems garrulous, socially eager – even their most rebellious attitudes – to please.” He does have a remarkable control, density to his freshness.

You know when you get a happy-sad internet find? Alternative Poetry Online at Ditch. How many weeks would it take me to check the links let alone absorb all that? Much quicker is bill bissett paintings

Biosphere Woman
redefine the tingling face of -25 when stepping outside
it’s the parasites diving deeper into skin, crying the mothership 
self-destruct sequence. it’s trying to kill us all.  nothing 
is inert, monolithic, not the x-ray lace of bones on black, 
as sentient as houseplants any cuspid signals, catches
we can be scoped but know no medical scanner 
is comprehensive from crowd to seed to intricate 
root hairs of the chest’s parsnip, the liver,
the meg, gig, google of data
the body intelligence of nerves 
are not mute but speak another kind of tongue
than the composite metal instruments 
and their hum. 
the source of jpg, the retina nebula, see 
how it parses whole body health in sunrise blaze 
veins, the firey bush within the vision, soft egg of eye, 
the white vinegar of hesitancy 
soaks off the crud, that in name, is 
protection, 
we dropped off 
the holy fear of breaking. 
it is only a body, like any
the infinite regression of biospheres
cells, systems, tougher and more delicate both,
freely given to ignorant science 
and sighs