poetry
-
Long Division by Alan Michael Parker
Parker’s voice is so singular and strong that I don’t question it, even when it relies on wit, and in return, Parker rewards me for following him when I least expect it.
-
An Individual History by Michael Collier
Collier’s poems refuse to submit to a culture that has come to hold the individual suspect or in contempt. Many offer poignant but unsentimental family portraits made with vivid detail, with images that are remembered, hence recovered and immortalized.
-
Percussion Grenade by Joyelle McSweeney
McSweeney asks us to inhabit the conflicting edges of that reality, mouthing the power and joy that come with degeneracy.
-
Double Shadow by Carl Phillips
Double Shadow seems to find the poet at mid-breath, or in a time of transition where the voice may be in flux from previous work; but the watchful eye, and the careful hand that crafts these verses, is still ever-present.
-
Madame X by Darcie Dennigan
Madame X pilots the idea that the line between reality and dream is not so much collapsible as it is meant to be collapsed.
-
The Utopian Project
“In relation to the future, a poem is like a note sealed in a bottle and thrown into the sea.” Charles Simic writes on Poetry and Utopia for the New York Review of Books.
-
Watchword by Pura López Colomé
There is spiritual alchemy at work here, making one wish this piece, and many others, could be chanted by choruses taking turns, in both languages, with an audience not responding audibly between poems.
-
Lou Reed, the poet
Lou Reed, member of The Velvet Underground, wrote a poem, “O Delmore how I miss you,” to his college professor Delmore Schwartz in Poetry Magazine. “Reading Yeats and the bell had rung but the poem was not over you hadn’t…
-
Where Are You Reading?
The answer for me, in this case, is among a group of statues on the Drake University campus in Des Moines, IA. I’m reading from our June Poetry Book Club selection, Allan Peterson’s Fragile Acts. I’ve posted video of this…
-
Sinead O’Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds by Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton
It’s 1990. I’ve shut the door to my bedroom, like any self-respecting teenage girl, to listen to my new CD—the one I ordered for a penny from one of those promotional if-you-sign-up-we’ll-give-you-the-world catalogs.
-
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Carmen Giménez Smith
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Carmen Giménez Smith about her poetry collection Goodbye, Flicker.
-
The Silhouettes, by Lily Ladewig
I’m fat. No matter where it stations itself then—against the sunset, unto the dawn, in the most awake and aware of lights at the gas station or drive-thru—my silhouette is thus often a distinct inconvenience, something that, like it or…