“Book of Dog” by Cleopatra Mathis
The domesticated dog, evolved 15,000 years ago from gray wolves, is not a reliquary of slavish dependence in Book of Dog, Cleopatra Mathis’ seventh collection, nor is it a token…
Poetry
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“Melancholia (An Essay)” by Kristina Marie Darling
Kristina Marie Darling’s wonderful new book of poems, Melancholia (An Essay)—her fourth—is more than a collection of abandoned footnotes and glossaries (poetic constructs she has been mastering since Night Songs),…
The Last Poem I Loved: “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver
After I finished reading “Wild Geese,” all I could think of was: So what! So what that I am an undocumented person living in hiding, so what that I was…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Is Franz Wright the Rush Limbaugh of American Poetry?
I had intended this week to write about gratitude. To express my thanks to all the new readers of Poetry Wire and The Rumpus and to wish you all a…
“I Growed No Potatoes To Write About, Sir”: a Rumpus Original Poem by Erin Belieu
I Growed No Potatoes To Write About, Sir nor bogs, nor fathers, nor special water that was my place alone to make me hard and wise— I did not sow…
“Baltics” by Tomas Tranströmer
Tomas Tranströmer’s Baltics, a long poem, first appeared in 1974, but this time around Samuel Charters has added a new afterword to his original translation, and his wife Ann Charters…
The Last Book I Loved: “Please” by Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown’s Please explores the way love and violence coexist with each other and how the two sometimes intertwine. The collection of poems is categorized by four sections: “Repeat,” “Pause,”…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Love Poems of David Petraeus
Poetry Wire has learned of the existence of secret love poems by former CIA director David Petraeus.
“The Apothecary’s Heir” by Julianne Buchsbaum
A winning selection in the 2011 National Poetry Series, Julianne Buchsbaum’s The Apothecary’s Heir interrogates the wildness of nature, the decadence of urban sprawl, and the necessity of myth and…
“As Long As Trees Last” by Hoa Nguyen
Seattle’s renowned independent press, Wave Books, recently published Hoa Nguyen’s third full-length collection of poems, As Long As Trees Last. In it, Nguyen once again dares to experiment with form,…
“50 American Plays” by Matthew and Michael Dickman
I’ve visited exactly half of the states that make up our federal constitutional republic. I’m counting states that I’ve lived in, vacationed in, or merely driven through. Some of the…