Poetry
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: You Will Be Judged
About to board a flight from Portland to New York, about to meet with the jury that’s been convening for 12 months by e-mail, Skype, and face to face meeting, to select a recipient from the five finalists for the…
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New Shoes on a Dead Horse by Sierra DeMulder
Winning just about every national poetry slam competition there is, Sierra DeMulder’s words and poetic swagger have won untouchable real estate in my bookshelf. DeMulder’s newest book, New Shoes on a Dead Horse re-defines confessional poetry; in fact, it pushes…
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The Word on the Street by Paul Muldoon
The Word on the Street is not Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon’s first work of writing for music. He wrote librettos for four Daren Hagen operas; Shining Bow, Vera of Las Vegas, Bandanna, and The Ancient Concert and worked in…
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Sightseer by Cynthia Marie Hoffman
Cynthia Marie Hoffman’s excellent debut poetry collection, Sightseer, is part travelogue, part epistle, and part reclamation of the very idea of tourism. The winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, Sightseer briskly circles the globe, from Provincetown to Russia…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Seele im Raum” by Randall Jarrell
Well, hello there, Randall Jarrell. Where you been all my life? And how did you get a real live eland up into a poem? An eland! It came out of the poem and stared at me. I stroked its hot…
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Going Back to 1968
45 years ago was a barricaded, world-rocking year. Both in politics and in poetry. Between January and the end of March came the beginning of both the Prague Spring and the Tet Offensive. North Korea seized the USS Pueblo and…
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Hider Roser by Ben Mirov
The poems that make up this collection are largely about the interior—the speakers alone with their thoughts.
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Insomnia” by Elizabeth Bishop
It is near the time of my college graduation. I’m graduating early, barely 20 years old. Among my friends, the stuff of my romantic self-sabotage is legendary.
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Reluctant Mistress by Anne Champion
Anne Champion’s dazzling first book of poetry, Reluctant Mistress, offers readers a thought-provoking revision of the love lyric, rendering this rich literary tradition relevant to a postmodern cultural landscape. While invoking couplets, tercets, and other vestiges of her artistic heritage,…
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Things I Say to Pirates on Nights When I Miss You by Keely Hyslop
Pirates plunder. Pirates navigate by wit and savvy and force. They intercept us somewhere between where we were and where we think we are going to end up. They are the enemies of intention. Where we might ask, Where is…
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Genius of Adrienne Rich
I’m surprised by the amiable but lukewarm reception Ange Mlinko gives in The Nation to Adrienne Rich’s Later Poems: Selected and New. The 500+ retrospective was published late last year. Mlinko holds at arm’s length the charms of Rich’s later…
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Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva
Dark Elderberry Branch is a collaboration between two living poets and one who is dead but fully present. Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa (former Soviet Union, in the Ukraine), learning English at the age of 16 when his family…