Poetry Daily

Solitary

John Keene and Cynthia Gray

a solitary human draws charcoal forest words against the inability

from the book Punks / The Song Cave

Review: "Dynamic, radical enjambment; unconventional typography; expressive capitalization: [Bidart's] poems look, emphatically, like no one else’s."
(LARB)
#pdnews
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/at-least-he-reached-consummation-on-frank-bidarts-against-silence/

Report: "In fact, Taylor sees her book as a “bridge” that can hopefully bring a fractured community back together."
(The Guardian)
#pdnews
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/17/poet-joelle-taylor-ts-eliot-prize-lgbtq-community

Essay: "I’ve started thinking of this moment, this chess move where the poet breaks a line and almost resets the game, as the lyric decision."
(The New York Times)
#pdnews
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/books/review/elisa-gabbert-lyric-decision-poetry.html

Report: "Grassroots organizers say central to their mission to abolish prisons is to also build relationships with incarcerated people through book-giving programs."
(NBC)
#pdnews
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/s-basic-human-dignity-groups-work-get-books-incarcerated-people-rcna12777

Essay: "As newspapers were lamenting the labour frittered away on crossword puzzles, they also had cross words to say about another form of cryptic writing and time-consuming interpretation: modernist literature."
(Public Domain Review)
#pdnews
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/beastly-clues

What Sparks Poetry

The Poems of Others

What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature in which we invite poets to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems.

In the series The Poems of Others, we’ve invited poets to pay homage to a poem that first sparked poetry in them—a poem they read that gave them permission to write poetry or the idea that they might write it—a poem that led them down the path to becoming a poet.

Each essay is accompanied by a writing prompt based on an observation about the poem.

This week's issue: Danielle Badra on Diane Seuss’ “Still Life with Turkey”

Catch Up on Recent Poems

January 27, 2022

September

Jordi Sarsanedas (translated from the Catalan by Stanley Moss)

It neighs through small farms and hills. September is the name of this horse. See its eye clear the sharp horizon, ripen the mountains. Its hair scatters sun-pollen over red clay.

January 26, 2022

Beit Anya

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

The name of my father's village speaks of the misery of pilgrims unwelcome for their poverty, a thorn -strewn hillside to keep them at a distance from the house of god for fear of their disfigurement.

January 25, 2022

The Boatman

Gemma Gorga (translated from the Catalan by Sharon Dolin)

To get up early and check chat everything is in place: that the windows have not aged too much overnight, that yesterday's bread remains soft enough for the new day's baby teeth, that the yellow smell of curry lingers in the kitchen . . .

January 24, 2022

Still Life with Turkey

Diane Seuss

The turkey’s strung up by one pronged foot, the cord binding it just below the stiff trinity of toes, each with its cold bent claw. My eyes are in love with it as they are in love with all dead things that cannot escape being looked at.

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B&W Photo of Dana Levin by B.A. Van Sise — Dana Levin

Phillip B. Williams