last poem i loved
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Lessons from a Mirror” by Thylias Moss
At Redbones. Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged Woman. Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler. Pyramid of Bone. Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky. Small Congregations. Tokyo Butter. The titles alone are provocative enough to evoke curiosity about her poems.…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Figures in a Landscape” by Gail Mazur
Figure, noun, a person’s bodily shape or a person seen indistinctly, especially at a distance. A representation of a human in a drawing or a sculpture, a shape defined by lines, a pattern formed by the movements of groups of…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “God is an American” by Terrance Hayes
When I first read “God is an American,” I was wide-eyed and breathless and thought it might be a love story. To me, Terrance Hayes was the best kind of romantic–the kind of man who uses a German turn of…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Some Feel Rain” by Joanna Klink
While still an undergrad, I was lucky enough to attend a reading by Joanna Klink. We had been reading her second book, Circadian, in my poetry class that week, and I was eager to hear some of the poems that…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Sparrow” by Melissa Kwasny
I’ll be honest: I’m not usually much of a fan of prose poems. I like lineation, form, structure. Give me meter, syllabics, some rules to cling to—if I want a poem that looks like a chunky little square of prose,…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “When he left, how many birds did he leave?” by Jessica Young
I love a poem which opens by grounding me in a particular context, or way of thinking, or regard of the narrative voice, but then uproots me tornado-style and flings me through the air to where nothing resembling a soft…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “The Terrible Angel” by Russell Edson
I love prose poems. Prose poems sacrifice the agility of line breaks for the raw power of the sentence. Poems with line breaks are undersized receivers who run intricate routes. Prose poems are strongside linebackers waiting to unleash a terrible…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “To My Twenties” by Kenneth Koch
“Only this do you know for sure: time is an ellipsis until it is not.”
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Vince Neil Meets Josh in a Chinese Restaurant in Malibu (After Ezra Pound)” by Josh Bell
Turns out, Josh Bell wrote a poem about me. In the poem, I’m eating in a Chinese restaurant when Vince Neil walks in, and my name is “Josh” (it’s cool). I remember exactly when I stumbled on this poem –…
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The Last (Poetry) Book I Loved: Star Dust by Frank Bidart
Everything from the theme of creation to the understated technique resonates; it is a book of poetry which has inspired both reflection and furious meditations of my own as I spin my own arcs from Bidart’s example. It is excellent…
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Would you like to write for The Rumpus?
Of course you would. And fortunately for you, there are a couple of ways you can do it. Check out our two series, The Last Book I Loved and The Last Poem I Loved, and if you have an idea…
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The Last Book/Poem I Loved: “The Changing Light at Sandover” by James Merrill
It took me three months to pound my way through James Merrill’s epic poem, his universe, his vision of the afterlife as told through a Ouija board in a conversation between Merrill, his partner DJ, and the characters on the…