April 2012
122 posts
4 tags
Contrails
Poem submission by Stephanie Pushaw
Our compasses fail us again and again, leading us along the wrong magnetic fields, yet we sail still through quiet seas under the false mathematics of north. What the frontier means. Not conquering. Not masculinity, not like the blank box on a calendar, not the space between numbers on the face of a clock.
It’ll always be like this: the knots that tie me to...
4 tags
May Twenty-Fifth
Poem submission by Sarah Malone
On a day of naval thunder sailor-whites staring through Midtown traffic
I stopped for powder and a perfume the girl who waited on me did not know
In the station office workers hummed away behind a trumpeter I would have had to choose...
7 tags
Dan Chiasson's "Tree"
In a multi-part poem Dan Chiasson calls “Swifts,” the objects and entities who speak to us (a fist, a needle’s eye, a sound at 2 a.m.) have uncanny self-knowledge. Here is “Tree.”
- Knopf Poetry Team
***
Tree
All day I waited to be blown;
then someone cut me down.
I have, instead of thoughts,
uses; uses instead of feelings.
One day I’ll feel the...
4 tags
The Distinguished Gentleman
Poem submission by H. Margaret Slye
In the city in a house with a fireplaced den,
There lived quite the distinguished gentleman.
He awoke every morning at eight on the dot,
Browsed the paper, took his coffee,
With cinnamon—Just a spot.
He was well versed in botany, from willow to rose,
Wore little shoes in the garden,
To keep the dirt from his toes.
With presidents, princesses, and...
7 tags
Jane Hirshfield's "Perishable, It Said"
From Jane Hirshfield’s latest collection, in which time is the thief who steals from us – but not without some gain on our side, as below.
- Knopf Poetry Team
***
Perishable, It Said
Perishable, it said on the plastic container,
and below, in different ink,
the date to be used by, the last teaspoon consumed.
I found myself looking:
now at the back of each hand,
now inside the...
5 tags
Poetry Month Begins with Jack Gilbert!
Welcome to poetry month! This April, we’re celebrating the remarkable career of Jack Gilbert, now in his late eighties, with a Collected Poems - here between two covers we have more than fifty years of his luminous awareness of pain and joy running together, his solitary, bittersweet, tough and at times enraptured voice. It’s nearly impossible to choose just one, but in honor of...
March 2012
3 posts
4 tags
1 tag
7 tags
