- Letter from the Editors
- Sponsor Messages:
- 'Tis the Season of Poetry...
- 17th Annual Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway
- The Ellen LaForge Poetry Prize Seeks Submissions
- Give the Gift of Poetry!
- Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference
- 2010 SLS Unified Literary Contest
- "Discovery" Poetry Contest, from the 92nd Street Y & Boston Review
- Poetry news links
- Selected new arrivals
- This week’s featured poets
- Last week’s featured poets
- Last year’s featured poets
- Poem from last year
1. Letter from the Editors
Dear Readers,
This week we continue our weekly prose series with Cal Bedient's "Metasexual Poetry," on IT, by Dominique Fourcade, tr. Peter Consenstein, and My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, ed. Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian, from Lana Turner:A Journal of Poetry & Opinion, No. 2.
Look for it on Tuesday on our news page.
We hope you enjoy this week's poems!
Warmest regards,
Don Selby & Diane Boller
Editors
Do you, as Wallace Stevens said, "have a mind of winter"? As the Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest turns with the calendar toward the new year and the 2010 finals, celebrate the season with some chilly POL poems!
January 15-18, 2010, Cape May, NJ
The Winter Getaway isn't your typical writers' conference. Energize your writing with challenging and supportive workshops that focus on starting new material. Advance your craft with feedback from our award-winning faculty including Mark Doty (National Book Award winner) and Stephen Dunn (Pulitzer Prize winner). Our programs fill quickly. Register today so you're not disappointed!
Open to all poets who have not yet published a book of poetry, including small press, chapbook or trade book. The winner receives $1,000 and two copies of the poetry prize Annual. For more information please visit us online, or contact Kevin Bowen (joinercenter@umb.edu) at The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences. Deadline: December 31, 2009.
This year treat your friends and family to a gift subscription to Poetry magazine–indispensable reading for anyone on your holiday gift list who cares about literature. Called "the most important publication in the world of poetry," Poetry publishes the best contemporary poetry, reviews, and essays. With this special holiday offer, you can give 2 subscriptions (11 issues each) to Poetry for the price of one subscription. For a limited time, buy 1 gift subscription, give a second gift subscription for FREE.
For Poets With a Book-Length Manuscript: first conference to provide the faculty, connections, and method necessary to set poets with a completed or in-process manuscript on a path towards publication.
Faculty includes editors and publishers Jeffrey Levine (Tupelo Press), Martha Rhodes (Four Way Books), Jeffrey Shotts (Graywolf Press), Susan Kan (Perugia Press), Peter Conners (BOA) and others; workshop leaders include Joan Houlihan (Concord Poetry Center); Frederick Marchant (Suffolk University), Ellen Doré Watson (Smith College), Steven Cramer (Lesley University), Daniel Tobin (Emerson College) and others...
This year, Mary Gaitskill will judge fiction, and Mary Jo Bang will judge poetry. Contest winners will be published in Fence. Additionally, they will receive airfare, tuition, and housing for any of the SLS-2010 programs – in Montreal , Quebec (June); Vilnius , Lithuania (August); or Nairobi-Lamu , Kenya (December).
Contest Deadline: February 28, 2010.
Please visit the SLS website ...
Now in its fifth decade, the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center’s “Discovery” Poetry Contest (formerly “Discovery”/The Nation) is presented for the third year in partnership with Boston Review. Four winners are awarded a reading at the Poetry Center (set for Monday, May 10, at 8:15 pm), publication in Boston Review and $500 each. Nick Flynn, Susan Howe and Claudia Rankine judge this year. Deadline for receipt: Friday, January 15, by 5 pm. Call to request guidelines, 212.415.5759, or click ....
News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:
- Sherman Alexie's War Dances reviewed by Elizabeth Mosier. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
- A chat with David Biespiel. (The Oregonian)
- An obituary for Dennis Brutus, 85, the South African poet and anti-apartheid activist. (The Washington Post)
- Recent collections by Katha Pollitt, Philip Levine, Mary Jo Bang, and Patty Seyburn reviewed by Eric McHenry (The New York Times)
- Don Lattin visits with Willis Barnstone, whose new book is The Restored New Testament - A New Translation With Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas. (San Francisco Chronicle)
- An obituary for author and poet, Jim Chastain, 46. (The Oklahoman)
- Margaret Avison's autobiography, I am Here and Not Not-There, edited by Stan Dragland and Joan Eichner, reviewed by Joanne Epp. (The Globe and Mail)
- Stanley Plumly introduces his poem, "Off a Side Road Near Staunton." (The Washington Post)
- And more...
These and other new arrivals are available for purchase via Poetry Daily/Amazon.com.
- Slaves to Do These Things, Amy King (BlazeVOX Books)
- Animals the Size of Dreams, Lisa C. Krueger (Red Hen Press)
- Bar Napkin Sonnets, Moira Egan (Ledge Press)
- Black Box Theater as Abandoned Zoo, Dana Elkun (Concrete Wolf)
- Why Me?, Rich Levy (Mutabilis Press)
- Are You Ready?, John Corless (Salmon Poetry)
- Origami Heart: Poems by a Woman Doing Life, Erin George (BleakHouse Publishing)
- Six Lips, Penelope Scambly Schott (Mayapple Press)
- East of Pouring: Collected Poetry 1980-2007, William Drew Weinbrenner (Ahewlu Publishing)
- Slide Shows, Ann Fisher-Wirth (Finishing Line Press)
- Amore on Hope St., Maria Lisella (Finishing Line Press)
- Grateful As a Robin on Fresh-Plowed Ground, Patricia J. G. Ellis (Finishing Line Press)
- Lo & Behold, Shanna Powlus Wheeler (Finishing Line Press)
- How the Hand Behaves, Anne Higgins (Finishing Line Press)
- Farm Life and Legend, Charles A. Swanson (Finishing Line Press)
- Mysteries, Karen Subach (Finishing Line Press)
- The Certainty of Fingerprints, Colette Strassburg (Finishing Line Press)
Monday - Jay Rogoff
Tuesday - Frank Bidart
Wednesday - Catie Rosemurgy
Thursday - Laura Kasischke
Friday - Erica McAlpine
Saturday - Traci Brimhall
Sunday - Joan Kane
6. Featured Poets December 21 - December 27, 2009
These and other past featured poets may be found in our archive:
Monday - Susan Parr
Tuesday - Geoffrey G. O'Brien
Wednesday - Philip Schultz
Thursday - Kimberly Johnson
Friday - Eamon Grennan
Saturday - Valzhyna Mort
Sunday - Anne Stevenson
These poems will be retired from our archive during the coming week.
Gregory Djanikian - "Violence"
Eric McHenry - Two Poems
Nell Regan - "Salmon Fishing"
Tom Disch - "Ghost Ship "
Linda Pastan - "Boundaries"
Martín Espada - "Blessed Be the Truth-Tellers"
Jill McDonough - Two Poems
Violence
Sometimes it can't be avoided
even though you might decline
the invitation to step outside—
sometimes you are outside
maybe in the repose of your garden
among rose petal and fern, but the whole
unvarnished spectacle of do
before you're done unto unfolding
as spider devours beetle, beetle, aphid,
and the cat red in the tooth and claw.
No need to bring up bombs bursting
in synch or the rockets' red glare
or every laser fescue pointing out
all that's erasable, good-bye good-bye.
It's among school children now,
maybe even in your neighbor's house,
eating ravenously at his table,
agreeing with everything he says.
Inside, your daughter is locking
all the basement windows, your son
is drawing a truth machine to zap
the bad from the good, and when
your wife comes home to tell you
of a small injustice she's endured,
the arrow of your steely retribution
thwunks into a soft, imagined heart.
No one immune here, no one
merely a small flash in the pan:
everything hugely combustible.
In the garden, you're deadheading
lilies, the petals spiraling down
like crushed wings, and your fingers,
steeped in pulp, are turning yellow,
orange, incarnadine, damage
creating its own aesthetic,
painting itself on your skin.
And if anyone asked you now
you'd confess you're damage, too,
you're for wreckage of heart and bone
wrenching out the smallest penance.
Above you, purple bruising the edges
of the sky. Even the heavens.
In another moment, someone
might come looking for you,
touch you on the shoulder
and you'd flame up.
Nothing seems so improbable
as the world of a few minutes ago.
Here's the night full of stars.
Behind each one, the darkness
you can never see.
Gregory Djanikian
The Southern Review
Autumn 2008
Copyright © 2008 by Louisiana State University
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
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