Will Alexander
as magical utterance
as roughage self-specified in opening form onto random scholarly dust
thus
asking myself the one-line equation of how astonishment boils
from the book
Divine Blue Light /
City Lights
What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature in which we invite poets to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems.
In Books We’ve Loved, we asked our editorial board members and select guest editors to reflect on a book that has been particularly meaningful to them in the last year, with the intention of creating a list of book recommendations for our valued readers.
- June 6, 2023
Eleni Sikelianos
for dream. Then I remembered language
is a lingering we keep hoping will draw
up exigence like water
from a well, metal...
- June 5, 2023
A. Van Jordan
I ask again, where do the babies come from? And I'm snapped
Back to the spelling bee as the announcer repeats Nemesis
As two tongues dance like a poor child for change
Behind his teeth.
- June 4, 2023
Joyelle McSweeney
in your sleep you repeat the motion
of advancing, retracting
of flinging wide your nets to net the moon
but like every tide you fail
like a pulsing star you signal
like a star you fail to hide behind your signal
- June 3, 2023
Mariana Berenice Bredow Vargas (translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander)
we barely know, who hardly matter to us,
words that only hide us from sorrow, forgive me
for saying so, but facing death, there’s just no place
for dissimulation, and I can’t imagine what...
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