Brian Tierney

dreamy to have a “dear nephew” in the latest Poetry Review @thepoetrysociety , alongside the likes of Mary Ruefle and other good company @caesarah @akasomeguy @bizscanlon thanks to Wayne Holloway-Smith and co. . . . . #poetry #americanpoetry #poetsofinsta #epistolary #poem

grateful to @poetsorg and @randallmann , whose August curation of poem-a-day has been legendary. . . . . . . . #poemaday #august #poetsofınstagram #poetry #poem #poetrycommunity #pittsburghpoetry

new one in @psharesjournal . a poem for my ‘90s ghosts. they tried to break us but we had each other. long live Philly💛 thanks to Peggy Shumaker and @john_skoyles and company for including me in this stellar cast of poets. . . . . . #poem #poetry #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #poemoftheday #poemsaboutchildhood #bayareapoet #phillypoet #newpoem #publishedpoetry #poetrytoday #poemgram #poetsociety #poetrylovers #poets #poetcommunity

Celebrating Will Brewer’s new collection NOCTURAMA (milkweed) this coming 1st Friday w/ Adrienne Chung & Brian Tierney. 6pm come early if you want a seat upstairs. #northbeachrenaissance #northbeachfirstfridays #sfpoetry

they can’t stop us from loving each other. @adroitjournal shoutout to Berryman and Ruefle, whose words make cameos . . . . . . #poetsofinstagram #poetry #americanpoetry #poet #bayareapoet

thanks to @tweeterlabird and the folks at @adroitjournal for giving this poem home in Issue 56. two years ago after my nephew was born (the first kid in our family since my own birth, a cosmic surprise), I began writing to him. sort of time-capsule letters. these poems became a series called “Dear Nephew.” I suddenly had the urge to tell him all I could about the world, the truth of this country, what it was like to be a kid in my time, growing up lower-middle-class catholic in the 80s/90s. I wanted to try to tell the truth, to praise beauty and love, and condemn what’s condemnable. And to tell him of the characters of his origins he would never meet, like my father. this is one of the first in that series. For another poem in the mix, check it out at the link in my bio. . . . . . #poetry #poetsofınstagram #poetrycommunity #americanpoetry poem @tierney_stt @tierney.audrey

a year of cooking

40. Pinocchio’s a real boy now.

a few weeks ago a bunch of writers and cool peeps assembled to celebrate @lockthecashbox and @kjmoulton . the weekend was one of the most moving testaments to love and joy that I’ve ever been a part of, and reminded all of us you should bring tissues to weddings. here’s to love. love forever. @megfern @imananimal @theinteriorparamour @bolingbroken @notesonstrategy @jess.eagle @madeleinecravens @laurenemarkham @cowabunga_dudes

turning to Louise Gluck’s “October” as one does . . . . . . #americanpoetry #poetry #louiseglück #october #metaphysical

Brian Tierney (@pleasebreakglass ) reads “Rain Light” by W. S. Merwin #PoemsWeCarryRALP #RALP20th

Today’s poem is selected by Brian Tierney (@pleasebreakglass ) as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry. We share this poem in celebration of W.S. Merwin's birthday today, September 30th. From Brian: “I read this poem for the first time in The New Yorker early in 2008, only a few months after my father died of lung cancer. He’d been haunting my dreams for weeks. In one, I followed him down a long brick tunnel and when we reached the end, a brick wall, he laid his ear to the wall and began to turn around. I woke up before seeing his face. As is true of many dreams of the dead, what I’d wanted most was for him to speak, to tell me something, to hear his voice. Which is the exact power lying at the heart of Merwin’s visionary elegy for his mother: not only in how he dramatizes her voice and reanimates her through speech, thus refracting elegiac impulses away from the self, but the manner in which her speech alleviates disorientation and isolation, inviting a kind of “true sight,” a way of seeing the surface and the depth at one time, the cyclic and interconnected essence of life on earth...” [text truncated due to character limitations] . . . “Rain Light” appeared in The New Yorker, 2008. Shared here with deep gratitude. . . . Brian Tierney is the author of Rise and Float (Milkweed Editions, 2022), winner of the Jake Adam York Prize. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and a graduate of the Bennington College Writing Seminars, he was awarded the 2018 George Bogin Memorial Award from The Poetry Society of America, and his poetry and prose have appeared in such journals as POETRY, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, AGNI, New England Review, & others. Raised in Philadelphia, he lives in Oakland, Ca, where he teaches poetry at The Writing Salon & in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Dominican University. . . . Follow @pleasebreakglass to discover more of his work. Read more at briantierney.net. You can also purchase his latest book, Rise and Float, published by Milkweed Editions. . . . #readalittlepoetry #WSMerwin #BrianTierney #readalittlepoem #poetry #poetrydaily #readpoetry #PoemsWeCarryRALP #RALP20th