[the Writing of Kuypers]    [JanetKuypers.com]    [Bio]    [Poems]    [Prose]

Order this iTunes track from the poetry audio CD Hope Chest In The Attic 13 Years of Poetry & Prose ...Or order the entire CD set from iTunes:

Listen to the DMJ Art Connection, off the CD The DMJ Art Connection Disc One

Listen to the CD recording of this, from the CD Change/Rearrange

Listen off the 3 CD set Live at the Café, now available in a 3 CD set bonus track from Molly Malone’s

Listen: (3:31) to this recording from Fusion ...Or order the entire CD set from iTunes:

Watch this YouTube video live 11/05/08, finale feature in Chicago at St. Paul’s, a desanctified church

Watch the complete St. Paul’s 11/05/08 show in Chicago, with 11 poems live, filmed from above in the choir seating of this desanctified church (23:58, from the Internet Archive)

Watch the complete feature video from the St. Paul’s 11/05/08 show in Chicago (23:58) from the Internet Archive

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem Farmer live 6/12/13 as the intro to the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem Farmer live 6/12/13 as the intro to the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Sony)

See YouTube video of Kuypers hosting the open mic 6/12/13 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago, including her reading this and other poems & prose!

See YouTube video from 4/15/17 of Janet Kuypers reading a portion of her short story “Crazy”, then reading her poems (from a Sony) “Hiding Vices”, “Farmer” and “Haiku (poet)” at Austin’s “Recycled Reads”.

See YouTube video from 4/15/17 of Janet Kuypers reading a portion of her short story “Crazy”, then reading her poems (Canon psSX700) “Hiding Vices”, “Farmer” and “Haiku (poet)” at Austin’s “Recycled Reads”.

See a YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “One Would be Chosen” (written 10/12 for the 1492 date Christopher Columbus Discovers America), “Farmer” and “Verdant Green” (for 10/12, National Farmers Day), “Vacuum of Space” (written 10/11, on and for the day in 1984 when astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan boarded the Space Shuttle Challenger as the first American woman to perform a space walk), “No Bother” (written 10/13, on and for Good Samaritan Day), “Valkyrie attempts” (written 10/14 on 1944 date of the suicide of Erwin Rommel), “Everyone Will React” (written the 3rd Tuesday of October, on and for National Face Your Fears Day), “Know they are Loved” (written 10/16, on and for Global Cat Day), “You Don’t Expect It” (written 10/17, on and for World Trauma Day), “Violent Endeavour” (written 10/18, on the 1967 date the first space probe entered another planet’s atmosphere (Soviet Venera 4 to Venus), “Know they are Loved”, and “Every Day is Sweetest Day” (written the 3rd Saturday of October, on and for Sweetest Day) from the Janet Kuypers poetry book “Every Event of the Year (Volume Two: July-December)” for The Café Gallery 10/20/20 Book Reading in The Café Gallery 2020 book reading series (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera; posted on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr).

See a Facebook live video stream of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “One Would be Chosen”, “Farmer”, “Verdant Green”, “Vacuum of Space”, “No Bother”, “Valkyrie attempts”, “Everyone Will React”, “Know they are Loved”, “You Don’t Expect It”, “Violent Endeavour”, and “Every Day is Sweetest Day” from the Janet Kuypers poetry book “Every Event of the Year (Volume Two: July-December)” for The Café Gallery 10/20/20 Book Reading in The Café Gallery 2020 book reading series (this video was filmed and streamed live from a Samsung S9 camera).

farmer And just north of his corn field there is a college, the university has bought up the property right to the edge of his land. And at that university there is a man studying plant biology, he wants to do research in food genetics, create the perfect ear of corn. And the farmer knows this.                     All he wanted was to be able to make a living, maybe save up enough so his kid could walk over to campus every morning, maybe meet some new kids. The government assistance has run out, the state wants to push the school south an extra mile, put up a research lab, another dormitory. The drought has done nothing good for his field anyway. And the doctors say the lump under his shoulder is from the sun. All of these years he would wake up early Sundays to work, and he would find tire tracks from souped up cars digging in his property edge. Kids leaving beer cans, junk food wrappers, condoms. And he would pick up what he could. In the upcoming years, would his little boy do this to someone else? And this was his labor:         he had sewn the seeds; the plants running, hurdling the rolling hills, sprinters uniform in a marathon. And all the way to the street at the edge of his property, the green sign reading “1800 S”, all the way to the end is his life, his little earth, in straight rows, like the peas on his son’s plate when he plays with his food. And now the rows of corn are less straight, as if in recent years he didn’t care. This year it’s the worst yet, he didn’t bother with the right chemicals, and there are weeds in between the rows. The grass next to his house is almost up to his waist. And he’s awake now, it’s four in the morning, and he’s wandering out in it all, and he’s almost crazy. The grass waves, almost staggers, like him. And he thinks:                         let the weeds grow. Copyright Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.