Poetry
Balloon Pop Outlaw Black by Patricia Lockwood
Josh Cook reviews Patricia Lockwood’s Balloon Pop Outlaw Black today in Rumpus Poetry.
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Making’s Progress; or, A Defense of Poetry
“But how poetry can touch this utmost experience of being, before which language falters, I do not know, and can’t know, I am unable to know–unless I turn to poetry again…”
...moreNational Poetry Month Day 21: “Letters from Saint Francis” by Joshua Heineman
Letters from Saint Francis
...moreNational Poetry Month Day 20: “Ruminations on cud from five of my fullest stomachs” by Matt Mauch
Ruminations on cud from five of my fullest stomachs
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Lullaby (with Exit Sign) by Hadara Bar-Nadav
Tova Gardner reviews Hadara Bar-Nadav’s Lullaby (with Exit Sign) today in Rumpus Poetry.
...moreNational Poetry Month Day 19: “The Sturdiness” by Sina Queyras
The Sturdiness
For a long time I was thinking that I had to do more.
The way a dancer looks away from the camera.
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Red Doc> by Anne Carson
Camden Avery reviews Anne Carson’s Red Doc> today in Rumpus Poetry.
...moreDavid Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Boston Stands in a Sahara of Blood
“The old South Boston Aquarium stands / in a Sahara of snow now,” begins Robert Lowell’s masterpiece, “For the Union Dead,” a poem about race and class in Boston. To my mind, it’s one of the great American poems of the 20th century.
...moreNational Poetry Month Day 17: “Brandon Bryant: MQ-1 Predator Sensor Operator” by Jill McDonough
Brandon Bryant: MQ-1 Predator Sensor Operator
He lives in Montana now. Talks to German magazines, plus
Canadian radio shows. He coaches soccer, still has to tell us
everything. How it works, how many screens. How many fly
one drone. Fourteen, and two.
Incarnadine by Mary Szybist
Kent Shaw reviews Mary Szybist’s Incarnadine today in Rumpus Poetry.
...moreNational Poetry Month Day 16: “Darth Vader, King Laios (Fill Out Their Applications as, Across the Lobby, Genghis Khan’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” Ringtone Plays): Fathers of the Year” by Douglas Kearney
Darth Vader, King Laios (Fill Out Their Applications as, Across the Lobby, Genghis Khan’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” Ringtone Plays): Fathers of the Year
...moreNational Poetry Month Day 14: “Sober Lullaby” by Matthew Henriksen
Sober Lullaby
Oak tree in time this story makes no recognition
A photo will not distance music caught in a wind
That entered the room where the child slept
National Poetry Month Day 13: “Ghosts” by Brachah Goykadosh
Ghosts
Ghosts who I loved wandering through the glass doors and the turnstiles
without seeing me walking swiftly behind them.
It’s No Good by Kirill Medvedev
David Peak reviews Kirill Medvedev’s It’s No Good today in Rumpus Poetry.
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Uncanny Valley by Jon Woodward
Andrew Field reviews Jon Woodward’s Uncanny Valley today in Rumpus Poetry.
...moreNational Poetry Month Day 11: “Billy Divine” by Adam McGovern
Billy Divine
The American Primeval
is not the green garden we think we’ve lost
it’s stark white cloudless sky
above a cinder-gray shack
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Politics and Post-Modernism?
No one can know for sure what literary historians will make of it, least of all me as I pound out an editorial about poetry every week. But if I were a betting man, I would wager that the most significant literary event this month is not going to be the Poetry Foundation’s splashy new anthologies for school teachers.
...moreNational Poetry Month Day 10: “Seven Confessions: A Chapbook” by Julie Sheehan
Seven Confessions: A Chapbook
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Song and Error by Averill Curdy
Maya Popa reviews Averill Curdy’s Song and Error today in Rumpus Poetry.
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Post Black? 5 Poems and 3 Notes on Culture, Craft and Race
The following piece was presented as “5 Poems and 3 Notes” in the panel “Post Black? Culture, Craft, and Race in Verse” at the 2013 AWP Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.
...moreNational Poetry Month Day 9: “Stone Cold Jane” by Cornelius Eady
“Stone Cold Jane” is one of the tracks from Cornelius Eady’s new chapbook from Kattywompus Press, Book of Hooks. I say tracks because these are as much songs as poems. “Stone Cold Jane” appears with the kind permission of Kattywompus Press.
...moreNational Poetry Month Day 8: “The American Dream Visits While I Clean” by Julie Brooks Barbour
The American Dream Visits While I Clean
It wasn’t part of me, only something I listened to,
like radio music or dialogue on the evening news.
I was cleaning the bathroom. I thought of nothing,
really, while I watched my hands move.
National Poetry Month Day 7: “Cafe Space” by James Hoch
Café Space
Here comes backwash from apocalypse
gamey as last night’s monastery potluck.
Did you have the goat bleating from the roof
of a floating house, its song as old as warning?
National Poetry Month Day 6: “Swim Lesson No. 3″ by Wendy Willis
Swim Lesson No. 3
Syracuse, New York
June 2012
I can’t find my bearings in this landlocked country,
riverless and briny. Not waterless exactly but curveless
and motionless, a chlorophyll kingdom. A viney