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I’m happy to share a poetic reminder of a worthy cause, petitioning for Bill Lavender to remain Director of University of New Orleans press. Please sign at https://www.change.org/petitions/provost-louis-paradise-keep-bill-lavender-as-the-director-of-uno-press


Here is a poem by Anny Ballardini for Bill Lavender:

Erynnis funeralis

             For Bill Lavender

The life of a person is made of nothing: a smile, a little kindness, a peach, an ex-student’s postcard with a thank you, the book of a friend in your mailbox. What disruptive forces can uproot precarious equilibriums steadily, tirelessly built, day by day, year by year, night after day after night: dismissals, cuts, hate growing and growling in increasingly suffocating spiraling guts, thick sticky envy, filthy strangling jealousies. Power, never enough, emerging from stagnant ignorance, the superficial projection of incompetent people, their finger raised, the hammer slammed.

The Moirae will be knocking for you.

Dies Irae, the furies strike madly howling, the clock hits the hour of doom. Homer: “those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath,” Burkert: “an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath.” Born from the power of the Sea with the blood of Uranus’s genitals in black Nyx, Alecto’s, Megaera’s, and Tisiphone’s serpents will slide poisonous in your dreams. Athena, engulfed by the advancing mud does not want to help, the frightening Erinyes will eat you down always at your back.

© Anny Ballardini
Homer’s and Burkert’s quotations were taken from Wikipedia.