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nathanpspoon.bsky.social
Nathan Spoon 🧠 🏳️‍🌈
@nathanpspoon.bsky.social
320 followers 160 following 75 posts
audhd & queer.
poetry & art.
bloomer 🌼 disguised as a doomer 💀.
https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/8662/importance-of-being-feeble-minded-the/
https://nathanspoon.com/
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nathanpspoon.bsky.social
I'm delighted to be reading poems this Tuesday evening with @naravive.bsky.social!

Link to register here: bit.ly/WTUI_Nov2025
What The Universe Is, featuring poets Nathan Spoon and Vivek Narayanan Tuesday, November 18 at 7:30pm ET Register at: bit.ly/WTUI_Nov2025
November 16, 2025 at 5:12 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
Here are four books on craft, poetics and theory I'm recommending when visiting classrooms to read from The Importance of Being Feeble-Minded and talk with students about poetry. (Image description requested)
November 12, 2025 at 4:10 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
acrylic, ink and gloss on unstretched canvas

#art #painting #acrylicpainting #abstractpainting #expressionism #casualism #metamodernism #metaexpresionism
an abstract meta-expressionist painting
September 8, 2025 at 7:58 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
acrylic on raw canvas

#art #painting #acrylicpainting #abstractpainting #expressionism #casualism #metamodernism #metaexpresionism
an abstract meta-expressionist painting
September 8, 2025 at 4:39 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
new painting - acrylic and gloss on canvas

#art #painting #acrylicpainting #abstractpainting #expressionism #casualism #metamodernism #metaexpresionism
August 22, 2025 at 7:24 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
"One Way," acrylic on canvas, 2025
an abstract meta-expressionist painting
July 18, 2025 at 2:02 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
got to spend my AWP days with the best of poetry besties. + reminder that my book now has a cover!
two smiling faces in downtown LA cover of "the importance of being feeble-minded"
March 30, 2025 at 4:34 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
This is one of two poems in the (still) current issue of Southern Humanities Review. I also have a new collection due out soon in the Propel Disability Poetry Series and poems on the way in the anthologies "Love Is for All of Us" and "I Witness"
Welcome Back While not dreaming what am I doing. Getting lost among the leaves it seems. But why even. Why not let the leaves get lost among me as I lose myself among them enjoying the real effervescence of mutual mutability. One night an owl called out. What is it saying I asked myself as one does in situations like this. As if I could or had a right to know. People we forget remember us all the time. The bench empty under the nearly leafless tree is probably lonely. I could ask it but then I would be left holding one too many things. There are days anybody might feel like rolling up their heart and drawing what goes with it into a shell.
March 24, 2025 at 4:15 AM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
cover reveal!
cover of my forthcoming poetry collection - the importance of being feeble-minded
March 23, 2025 at 7:09 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
March 19, 2025 at 1:07 AM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
painted with big brushes plus one tiny brush
an abstract meta-expressionist painting
March 18, 2025 at 9:38 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
happy weird pride day (march 4th)! here's a poem of mine published in bennington review and included in my collection, the importance of being feeble-minded, due out in a few weeks!
The Winner We were arguing to find out what our real feelings could be. I placed large olives on every other fingertip. You felt the preciousness of the air around your second pair of ears. It was spring until it wasn’t. I never knew people like you could do the things you do you said. Then a knife opened in the heart of your mind. The winner will have to die first I said. Then you win you said. Thank you I said. I always wanted to be first at something.
March 4, 2025 at 3:42 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
reading material caught in a sunbeam while waiting on an oil change
a photo of the books *everything comes next* by naomi shihab nye and *can you hear, bird?* by john ashbery
March 1, 2025 at 1:46 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
i love how manatees have brains the size of a softball and no natural predators or enemies
photo of a manatee
February 11, 2025 at 3:20 AM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
This poem, first published in Gulf Coast and then in The American Sonnet: An Anthology of Poems and Essays, is included in my collection, The Importance of Being Feeble-Minded, due out next month
Kiddo What was it that slid through the field of my hand? A mountain. I will say it was a mountain, although it is no longer here for any other to see. It is elsewhere and doubtless sitting like a toad whose voraciousness desires to be appeased. At a key moment any hand may grow warm and as sustaining as a grove of pawpaw or sassafras trees. I will negotiate moving forward from here, forward into the thickness that buries all but the most willful homing. The seat is leather-like and brown and the back is mint green. What kind of sense does that make? Who knows? But at least people needing to sit have somewhere to do that. There are always turns as entirely unexpected as this. Often a bright pair of shoelaces appears as if out of nowhere.
February 9, 2025 at 7:20 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
Writing about this poem that's so exemplary of Lowell's final, polarizing collection, Day by Day, and happy to be in the same camp as Rosanna Warren as an admirer of the book 🔥
Notice, by Robert Lowell The resident doctor said, “We are not deep in ideas, imagination or enthusiasm - how can we help you?” I asked, “These days of only poems and depression - what can I do with them? Will they help me to notice what I cannot bear to look at?” The doctor is forgotten now like a friend’s wife’s maiden-name. I am free to ride elbow to elbow on the rush-hour train and copy on the back of a letter, as if alone: “When the trees close branches and redden, their winter skeletons are hard to find -” to know after long rest and twenty miles of outlying city that the much-heralded spring is here, and say, “Is this what you would call a blossom?” Then home - I can walk it blindfold. But we must notice - we are designed for the moment.
February 4, 2025 at 2:08 AM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
new paintings
Acrylic and ink on canvas Acrylic on wood
January 28, 2025 at 2:15 AM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
feeling these are cute things from my current sketchbook, might delete later
ink on paper brush drawing graphite on paper drawing ink and acrylic in paper ink and acrylic on paper
January 26, 2025 at 6:22 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
empathy is my favorite sin
empathy is my favorite sin
January 26, 2025 at 12:18 AM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
Here's a little January poem, first published in EcoTheo Review and include in my collection, The Importance of Being Feeble-Minded, due out in March from Nine Mile Books.
To January I open my heart to what is here. A sky. Two kinds of air and sunlight. An entire world. All the endless things I love and the things I disagree with that somehow remain of interest. I open my heart like you open your own. Still, I would rather not put thought into how I remember hidden lakes. We were sleeping when the fog swallowed the woods behind our house. Now that we are awake, it is as if nothing at all happened.
January 19, 2025 at 6:27 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
I'm delighted to be contributing again to Southern Humanities Review. This new issue includes lovely contributions by several Sri Lankan writers! Here's a poem of mine and a poem by Ruwan Bandujeewa.
Welcome Back While not dreaming what am I doing. Getting lost among the leaves it seems. But why even. Why not let the leaves get lost among me as I lose myself among them enjoying the real effervescence of mutual mutability. One night an owl called out. What is it saying I asked myself as one does in situations like this. As if I could or had a right to know. People we forget remember us all the time. The bench empty under the nearly leafless tree is probably lonely. I could ask it but then I would be left holding one too many things. There are days anybody might feel like rolling up their heart and drawing what goes with it into a shell. The Lake By Ruwan Bandujeewa The stream dresses up and struts jauntily through the paddy field. That the lake, there, without sleep had sewn the dress, not a single stalk of paddy had been told by the lake.
January 9, 2025 at 10:26 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
By William Stafford
A poem by William Stafford Friends How far friends are! They forget you, most days. They have to, I know; but still, it’s lonely just being far and a friend. I put my hand out—this chair, this table— So near: touch, that’s how to live. Call up a friend? All right, but the phone itself is what loves you, warm on your ear, on your hand. Or, you lift a pen to write—it’s not that far person but this familiar pen that comforts. Near things: Friend, here’s my hand.
December 20, 2024 at 12:55 AM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
By Naomi Shihab Nye
A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye Hidden If you place a fern under a stone the next day it will be nearly invisible as if the stone has swallowed it. If you tuck the name of a loved one under your tongue too long without speaking it it becomes blood sigh the little sucked-in breath of air hiding everywhere beneath your words. No one sees the fuel that feeds you.
December 12, 2024 at 1:58 AM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
Finished reading this wonderful book yesterday. Thank you, Greg!
A copy of Say Hello to Metamodernism! by Greg Dember
November 27, 2024 at 6:47 PM
nathanpspoon.bsky.social
Ahoy to all the new Bluesky peeps and new followers!

Introduce yourself with
One book 📚
One movie 🎥
One album 💿
One tv show 📺
Wild is the Wind by Carl Phillips Pig starring Nicolas Cage The Turning Wheel by Spellling Extraordinary Attorney Woo
November 24, 2024 at 6:47 AM