Posts Categorized: Poetry
The World Is Too Little | Mónika Tóth
dedicated to my nice Romanian friend Vasile your name so unique I swear your eyes so sweet I swear your lips so soft I swear you are beautiful for me I swear without you the world is too little I swear The post The World Is Too Little | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best… Read more »Porky Pie Positive
It’s a yes.The best of the best.The future looks bright.Looking forward to Good Morning with a Good Night. Anything can happen and it will.It can only go right, Jack and Jill.There’s a hundred reasons why.A change for the better is nigh. Think positive.Is there anything against you can argue with?Love will winand if it doesn’t,… Read more »Let’s Talk Turkey
Related Stories “Buffalo” [by Tom Disch] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryYou | Ananya S. Guha
Unrest in the university campus everyone creates a rumpus some are arrested some molested the university castigated as the worst when it is the best you people will never learn to catch the guilty you high priests of authority. The post You | Ananya S. Guha appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author:… Read more »Protest V | Gary Beck
Protestors marched on Wall Street opposed to abuses of greedy capitalists wallowing in luxury, while millions lose jobs, homes, hope for the future. Demonstrators were clubbed, pepper-sprayed, forcibly arrested, unheralded heroes speaking out for many, supported by few, destined to defeat by hirelings of the rich, elected legislators, appointed bureaucrats, serving the wealthy, forgetting obligations… Read more »Good Mourning Morning
Birds clamouring outside all treed.Trees outside full of birds singing ’bout something you need.Obsessive compulsive birds on play-backplaying back their dawn chorus on repeat track. Only thing for sure is unlikely to happen.Drum rolls roll to a dead standstill.Peace of mind is a mind-piece snappin’with Hitchcock birds gatherin’ over the hill. Go to Source Author:… Read more »WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE NOVEMBER 23
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Enjoy Richard Blanco’s poem “America,” which portrays how his family celebrated the holiday. https://richard-blanco.com/book/city-of-a-hundred-fires/america/ Go to Source Author: Denise Duhamel… and Débussy, too: Josephine Tilloy, Thi Mai Nguyen, Lisbeth Gruwez & Claire Chevallier
“Prémisse”, Thi Mai Nguyen. The Princess soliloquizes the “commemoratio dilemma”. A man of infinite jest. Photo © Danny Willems Etoile du nord and Théatre de la Bastille recently gifted me a little trinity of dance jewels: Josephine Tilloy’s Evila and Thi Mai Nguyen’s Prémisse at Etoile and Lisbeth Gruwez who danced pianist Claire Chevallier’s Débussy’s Piano… Read more »Andrzej Wajda: Ashes and Diamonds (1958) [by Lewis Saul]
Creeping authoritarianism. Teetering democracy. Dangerous political leadership. No, I’m not talking about the U.S. of A. but the centuries of sadness which is synonymous with the historically chopped-up country of POLAND. Specifically, the 24-hour period (May 8-9, 1945) during which this film takes place and the year it was made — 1958. ** Josef Stalin’s… Read more »Divided | Carl Handy
Mother preaches about forgiveness but hates her own son The son she birth under the sun Whose fault is it that his tongue became the gun that tried to destroy you? I’m confused, but I shouldn’t be mother I’m just a child caught in the muse Forced to take sides Not strong enough to break… Read more »Divided | Carl Handy
Mother preaches about forgiveness but hates her own son The son she birth under the sun Whose fault is it that his tongue became the gun that tried to destroy you? I’m confused, but I shouldn’t be mother I’m just a child caught in the muse Forced to take sides Not strong enough to break… Read more »A Waste | Chris Byrne
Skills get wasted over time, become obsolete, wasted, never used, forever idle, never using, forgetting the skills that once made you tick. Forgetting ever more the tricks of the trade, dying trades that will be forever forgotten, trying to remember good times when trades flourished. Remembering the wasted years, those years of hard toil, never… Read more »Employability? | DJ Tyrer
There once was a chap from Southend The Jobcentre decided to send On a course on Employability Which was more like futility And eventually sent him right round the bend! More at https://djtyrer.blogspot.com/. The post Employability? | DJ Tyrer appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe Flint, Michigan Water Crisis | Buff Whitman-Bradley
At the end Of long hot summer afternoons Parents call their children Home for supper And when the young ones come banging Through screen doors To slake their thirst And cool down For the evening meal They pour themselves Glasses of ice water When the kids return from school On frigid winter days And take… Read more »Bouquets for Fall | by Adrian Matejka
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationKit Robinson: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
photo by Eric Breitbard _______________________________________________________ This Poem This poem is incredible You should immediately memorize it and tell it to all your friends If you read this poem over and over You will be better able to read and… Read more »The Infinite Cartography of Etel Adnan | by Jennifer Scappettone
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationFirst Poem in a New Book | Paul Tristram
It’s nice to be able to look back upon those dark times with a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders and a calmness to your untroubled brow. It’s not because it wasn’t unpleasant, it was, but because it’s gone so far back into the past that it actually feels like a previous incarnation. What matters really… Read more »From the Moment I Set Eyes on You | Cristina Belmonte
you had my heart from the moment I set eyes on you and knew that you were the one for me beautiful inside and out I could not wish for more a dream I will never wake from love blooming in a meadow of hope feeling your presence in every breath a life of pure… Read more »A poem from Tony Hoagland on his birthday [ed. Terence Winch]
My Father’s Vocabulary In the history of American speech, he was born between “Dirty Commies” and “Nice tits.” He worked for Uncle Sam, and married a dizzy gal from Pittsburgh with a mouth on her. I was conceived in the decade between “Far out” and “Whatever”; at the precise moment… Read more »In the Rain | T. F. Rice
“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.” –- Marcel Pagnol raining cats and dogs which is better than pet rocks to be better is not always… Read more »Crossing the Race Line | Bryn Fortey
come the late twenties and music, particularly jazz took some small steps in crossing the race line encouraging interracial performances Italian/American Eddie Lang born Salvatore Massaro cut some 1929 duets with African/American Lonnie Johnson bringing together the two men credited with giving the guitar prominence as a solo instrument though Lang had to be billed… Read more »
“Won’t somebody tell me where’s my Bess?” (Sinatra at the Waldorf, 1945)
Recorded for Columbia February 2, 1946. Sang at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Wedgwood Room, 1945. Sinatra Takes Over Wedgewood Room and Wins Crowd Despite His Illness The quality of laryngitis is strained these nights at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Wedgwood Room where Frank Sinatra is making a belated start on a short engagement. It is painfully obvious that he shouldn’t… Read more »Milton Berle (by Mitch Sisskind)
Young lady, does the name Milton Berle Have any particular significance for you? Does the name Milton Berle ring a bell? I thought not, so I’ve got news for you. Milton Berle in the early 1950s almost Single-handedly multiplied the number Of American television sets from only 500,000 to 26 million of the boob tubes; Without… Read more »Upgrades | Stan Morrison
a tattoo, I would say, is definitely not for you especially those with permanent/fading blue and with terrible graphics and artistry too ditto for surgery to enhance your looks after leafing through before/after books photoshopped/enhanced by medical crooks you’re not destined to look/act very smart no advantage for a horse before a cart vanity/deceit do… Read more »Irony of Rains… | TheAPwrites
While the half is drown, And half dry is frown, Half facing a scarcity, Half suffering from availability, Half is waiting impatiently, Half is out due to plenty, On half it’s flood, On half it’s dead bloods, Somewhere hope to dry, Somewhere tears dry, Some are tensed to low, Some are waiting for flow, Why… Read more »Ad-Verse Reactions: Poets / writers Jerome Sala and Jack Skelley quiz each other on advertising, pop culture, late-stage Capitalism and monsters
Both Jerome Sala and Jack Skelley have just released “new and selected” volumes. Both writers have had careers in advertising and PR. Both use pop culture (and many other related subject matters) as thematic material. Now both are interviewing each other. Jerome Sala’s book is How Much? New and Selected Poems (NYQ Books). Jack Skelley’s… Read more »“Ode to the Other Woman’s Ass” [by Denise Duhamel]
Ode to the Other Woman’s Ass You have occupied my husband’s imagination when he otherwise might have been bored. You gave him pretty shapes to behold at the mall, in the supermarket, when he peered from behind his Newsweek at the airport. Oh thong-wearer, the strings rising from your crack like bird’s wings in flight…. Read more »I Am So Glad I Met You | Mónika Tóth
dedicated to my nice Romanian friend Vasile I am so glad I met you You are my inspiration directing me each day. I am glad I have a friend like you to make my life complete. The post I Am So Glad I Met You | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to… Read more »The Evil-Witted | Krushna Chandra Mishra
This harmony and unity In this co-existence in peace Is what leaves you troubled And to end this calm and joy In dubious devilish ways You want to divide us all Into armies to fight your battles With our heads and our blood In ignorance into which to wit You have pushed us for ages… Read more »Cycling | T. F. Rice
old photograph square with rounded edges my mother and her mother walk a pastel beach small frothy waves just reach the sand her belly swells with my looming presence in hand a paper cup with straw from some long gone eatery I notice how she stands her mother the same way interchangeable sandy feet, thin… Read more »That One Elusive Thing | Matthew Borczon
on the farthest side of the evening I’m driving on highways built over the bones of dinosaurs looking for that one elusive thing under a neon blue sky accented by fireflies as beautiful as stars. The post That One Elusive Thing | Matthew Borczon appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry… Read more »Musical Influences
Can’t say I want to sleepthough my eye lids are droopingcommon sense goes out of the windowwhen the mad moon is stooping. I want to see you again and againavoid you again and againlook for you again and againignore you again and again. If there’s time, let’s waste it.If there’s a cop out, let’s go… Read more »Genova (1994) /Genova revisited, or Cagliari (2022)
Genova Orange marmalade busesin a traffic jam along the portside streetwith Vespas and Fiatsand pedestrians on rush-hour feet. Local fishmongers, displaying crab, carpand swordfish, set up stall,while nearby, waterway mermaidswait outside bladderwrackety doors. Columbus’ city of catscobbled together like cobblestonescurled up on car bonnetsor licking on leftover fishbones. While in Centrostoricoin a riotous rundown taverna,a… Read more »
Caravan Palace [by Lewis Saul]
French swing — or “Gypsy jazz” — originated with a group called the Quintette du Hot Club de France, founded in 1934 by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli. Because Reinhardt was from a gypsy family, the term stuck. Perhaps the most important aspect of this early American-influenced jazz, was la pompe —… Read more »Discography (After Philip Larkin) | Jim Bellamy
At last, she yielded up her record, which, Scratched, glossed upon its deck, days thick. Oh, matted with its bakelite, the slick Defections of glib music spin to live. Lies smoke the words of these ‘stereo-images‘. My living eye must hanker after sound- With ponytails colliding with the moon, I lift my heady head against… Read more »Blood Moon’s Truth | Kenneth Vincent Walker
Blood Moon suspended Above our heads like a Cherry pie, all while her Deafening silence sways In the night unpretentious. As the taste for destruction Looms so defiant before Our very eyes as we concur, This world isn’t constructed For the insecure and poor. Blood Moon is the emblem Above displaying our grief, In a… Read more »Bouncy Comprehensive
Shuffling school sandals through soggy autumn leavesbeing told off cos you might get dog shit on themyou wallow in unpunishable sincos the hits keep on coming. Playing kiss chase and British bulldogsand turning into charging frogsyou go as traffic lights to the fancy dress party feeling embarrassingin a mum-painted white sheet with circles in red… Read more »Low Life/High-Rise | Sunil Sharma
Two workers non-descript Heads tied in kerchiefs Sunk cheeks and stomachs But rippling biceps under Their sweat-stained T-shirts Eating a cold lunch kept in A sagging newspaper Spread out on the dusty mound. The daily, their provisional plate and tiffin box, The humble fare being shared. Perched on the freshly-dug earth, Legs crossed, unmindful of… Read more »Meaningless | Chris Way
Can I squeeze the words out that describe what I feel The sounds heard and vocabulary real Is it not a struggle to pour myself out Like a fluid I fill my vessel without a doubt The noises made have to be trained to mean Filling the paper for others to have seen So in… Read more »Poetry in Conversation With Itself | by Timothy Yu
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationMaureen McLane: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
Photo by Laura M. Slatkin, 2016 Paris _________________________________________ Belfast Your velvet hills came to me last night in the pool how they hugged the fraught city the pubs filled and buzzing the Europa unbombed now… Read more »Homeless Moon | Sadia Mehmood Qurashi
O homeless moon! I love the way you shine! I’ll catch thee soon And make you mine! O homeless moon! You aren’t alone! I’ll be with you Till the dawn! The post Homeless Moon | Sadia Mehmood Qurashi appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThirsty Butterfly | Sadia Mehmood Qurashi
Thirsty butterfly! Thirsty butterfly! Takes a sip to wet its throat which was dry Thirsty butterfly! Thirsty butterfly! The post Thirsty Butterfly | Sadia Mehmood Qurashi appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online
Mark Doty, David Lehman, and Michael Braziller Discuss Frank O’Hara
Frank O’Hara (right) with the painter Larry Rivers, with whom he collaborated on “Stones.” In 2010, at the Philoctetes Center in New York City, Michael Braziller moderated a dialogue between Mark Doty and David Lehman regarding the poetry of Frank O’Hara, who influenced both of us tremendously. The evening in question was November 11, 2010. … Read more »Architects of The Hell | Ximena Gautier Greve
They all wanted to be good. It strikes me that about desire. That the lovers incessantly express after all indecision troubadours of nightmares and sorrows under all lunar and terrestrial shadows, They all wore their lamps working on hands clean or dirty, bloody or diaphanous, murderous poetries of hatred and misunderstanding or tender feathers of… Read more »Life | GKaur
They say its from birth to death, I say its from breath to breath . They say its from good to bad, I say its the experience we had. They say its from regret to rejoice, I say its a matter of choice. They say its from easy to tough, I say its sometimes good,… Read more »Remembering My Dad on Veterans Day [by Stacey Lehman]
My dad landed on Utah beach, not as part of the first wave, thank god, or I probably wouldn’t be here, but later, to clean up. He was a soldier in the 94th Infantry Division that fought in the Battle of the Bulge and liberated a concentration camp. It was in Nennig, Germany, that the… Read more »Hail Kelly Full of Grace [by David Lehman]
Born today, Grace Kelly was twenty-six when she married Prince Ranier and became the princess of Monaco. Thus ended a brief but magnificent cinematic career. Astrologically, her charm, beauty, and royalty are all prefigured in her chart: Scorpio is not only her birth sign but also her rising sign! Born on Philadelphia on November 11,… Read more »Song Unsung | Willow
Once there was us In a swirling miasma Two beings finding Each other in The darkness A sound heard Across time Not able to be ignored Times spent in delight Changes coming our way A wave goodbye A song unsung The post Song Unsung | Willow appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author:… Read more »Potluck Poetry | Mary Bone
The poetry was potluck. I brought something to chew on. People were dozing off and falling off chairs. We took our leftovers home, to gnaw on another day. The post Potluck Poetry | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online“On Heaven” [by Ford Madox Ford]
On Heaven –To V.H., who asked for a working Heaven That day the sunlight lay on the farms; On the morrow the bitter frost that there was! That night my young love lay in my arms, The morrow how bitter it was! And because she is very tall and quaint And golden, like a quattrocento… Read more »Two Poems by Nachoem M. Wijnberg trans. David Colmer [Introduced by Thomas Moody]
David Colmer is an award-winning Australian translator who has translated over 15 volumes of Dutch-language poetry, including Even Now by Hugo Clauss, which was shortlisted for a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and Self-Portrait of an Other by Cees Nooteboom. In 2001 he received the James Brockway Prize, an oeuvre prize for translators of… Read more »Bow Figurehead | Ximena Gautier Greve
Cut the seas figurehead, run ominous waves! … Shew us new damned reefs, coral of human vermilion loaded with chunks of rails the ruthless sowed on the high seas. The Pacific roars its distress rises to sky its monstrous waves, as arms that last rocked agonizing bagged bodies on the innocent cradle of sea …… Read more »Fall Runes | Ralph Monday
For nine days a Bradford leaf hung from a single spider filament, slowly turning like seasons on an axis. Suspended like Woden on Yggdrasil it too, speared, spoke in autumnal runes. Yesterday, gravity induced piercings, the rains came; tattooed anecdotes, transparent crayon sketches, filtered down through yet green branches. They packed an old narrative. The… Read more »In-Tray
Unfortunately, a lighthouse blackout tomorrowwith ruddy comic hang-ups of yesterdaywill shed light on polls todaythat old fogeys push upon child prodigies to say: “It’s a wing and a prayernow we’re at the top of the stairwith our world ruled by yoursas we walk like our pets on all fours.” Think don’t think.Blink don’t blink.Stay don’t… Read more »On Election Day, let us recall election years that really mattered. . .
Related Stories “The Triumph of Bullshit” [by T. S. Eliot] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryCompassionate Cordiality | Krushna Chandra Mishra
Let these trying times be over And we shall find our true selves Once again that in shame and shackles We seemed to be fast losing away When the world arrayed against us In its own fabricated lies it told To make people close to us buy Versions they packed in nonsense In their own… Read more »I Love Myself | Mónika Tóth
Stars in my eyes Warmth in my heart Beauty in my soul I love myself The post I Love Myself | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineIntroducing the New and Improved POETRY Magazine App! | by The Editors
Go to Source Author: Poetry Foundation“The Triumph of Bullshit” [by T. S. Eliot]
Did you know that T. S. Eliot wrote a poem entitled “The Triumph of Bullshit”? Neither did I until I started reading The Poems of T. S. Eliot, volume one (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), the massive tome edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue in an heroic act of scholarly dedication. Of its 1311 pages, approximately nine… Read more »Ballet de Lorraine Season 2022-23 #2: a tale of sentiment and feeling [by Tracy Danison]
Loîc Touzé’s “No Oco”. Photo © Laurent Philippe There’s a lot of contrast – in chronology, in genre, in philosophy – in Ballet de Lorraine’s 2022-23 season. I expect that’s why it has opened with Loîc Touzé’s No Oco (Portuguese for “Not empty”) and Maud Le Pladec’s Static Shot. Though the choice of Le Pladec, born… Read more »Ballet de Lorraine Season 2022-23 #2: a tale of sentiment and feeling [by Tracy Danison]
Loîc Touzé’s “No Oco”. Photo © Laurent Philippe There’s a lot of contrast – in chronology, in genre, in philosophy – in Ballet de Lorraine’s 2022-23 season. I expect that’s why it has opened with Loîc Touzé’s No Oco (Portuguese for “Not empty”) and Maud Le Pladec’s Static Shot. Though the choice of Le Pladec, born… Read more »Richie Hofmann: Pick of the Week [ed.Terence Winch]
___________________________________________________________________________________________ Male Beauty I bought a bag of hard green pears today. I came home and sat in our room listening to music for hours,… Read more »Chimeric Entanglements | by Alina Stefanescu
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationLemonade | Baris Semerci
crystal clear water ordinary autumn day plan from outer space lemonade without lemon in case of emergency More at https://twitter.com/hwl76/status/1180781115017224197. The post Lemonade | Baris Semerci appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineIgnored Identities | Krushna Chandra Mishra
Ignored in ways conceived by crooks only these mighty masters building others’ fortunes have never tried to stop and ask if their own destinies could in definite ways be given certain shape and design through their own passionate and dedicated involvement as marked in their generous contributions in all these magnificent instances in raising which… Read more »Sonnet, 11/5/2019 [by Mitch Sisskind]
Sonnet, 11/5/2019 (by Mitch Sisskind) In the old days working at Republic Steel We gathered nightly at Moose Cholak’s Calumet Inn on 99th Street and Ewing. It was when polyester double-knit pants Were coming in and one night this guy Said to me, ‘No reason to worry about ‘Pants anymore what with the way these ‘Double-knit… Read more »So Lucky | Mónika Tóth
I see, the unique beauty of your soul I like your soul you are always such a beautiful kind-hearted person I am so lucky to have in my life The post So Lucky | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineWhat Is Love | Envein
Love is something that can’t be controlled. More than a feeling, it’s a part of me. Brought out by the beauty than only i see. Yet is caged like a bird. Should i set it free? To fly through the air, to explore the skies. To perch on my shoulder and wipe the tears from… Read more »Every Moment
Every moment makes me think of a minutewhen any one of them might have changed in sixty seconds.If I was never good enough, that’s too bad.If happiness never made it, that’s sad. Evenings that went pear shaped in a moment.Days that could have been saved if nights hadn’t left them for dead.I never said anything… Read more »From Marsh Hawk Press: The Chapter One Project for November
November 2022 The Chapter One Project for November: David Lehman: “The Birth of The Best” Every September a new edition of The Best American Poetry appears, quickening pulses, provoking arguments. From one year to the next, the editor’s name on the cover is different, as is the cover art. The series editor is the one constant…. Read more »Unprepared | Geosi Gyasi
I live under a Chinese-made bridge in the city Unconcerned about the cracks of life in its walls Many years ago, before the crackdown of mushroom Houses, in city places like Sodom and Gomorrah where I used to live; my body would have rested on pure Rubbish-like mats woven by Hausa women In my new… Read more »One Day | Fotoula Reynolds
I will climb to your highest point I will stand at columns so grand I will trace your footsteps in the sand And my eyes will drink your Aegean beauty I will take in your serene landscape I will slow down and bask in the Warmth of your summer sun and I will drench myself… Read more »
Lee Wiley, “Looking at You” (1939)
“Looking at you, I’m filled with the essence of, the quintessence of, joy. Looking at you, / I hear poets tellin’ of lovely Helen of Troy.” — Cole Porter, lyric writng at its most inspired The great jazz singer Lee Wiley was part Cherokee Indian. A tall, handsome woman with olive skin and blonde hair,… Read more »Serendipity (by Mitch Sisskind)
Gramps applies unguentine and a mixture of baking soda and super glue with desenexand cera-vu moisturizing lotion over lidocaine with benadryl vitamin e vitamin c zinc andwhat have you nothing works until by chance in a littleside drawer in the bathroom looking for something elsehe discovers an old tube ofrite-aid brand cortisone-based anti-itch cream that had never been opened. what are the odds! … Read more »Mum, Why Did You Go? | Claire Mills
Mum, I miss you with all my heart. Life isn’t fair, Life took you, we had to part, I look around and don’t see you through my eyes, Now it’s just goodbyes. Mum, why did We have to say goodbye? I don’t know. What is my life now without your insight? Inside, I begin to… Read more »I Am So Glad | Mónika Tóth
I am so glad I know you in your arms I feel strong you are my hope I feel like I am born again how I love you The post I Am So Glad | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineDimensions of a Rejection | Vera Ashton
It’s not the little memories that hurt the most, It’s not the future memories that could have been, It’s not the physical touch of your firm hand, It’s not even the lust in your eyes when I strolled through the door. It’s knowing that you have cast me aside. It’s knowing I’ve been thrown in… Read more »Child Trafficking | Ananya S. Guha
Mortgage bodies, transport children to another area for domestic work, pimping, begging and whoring. This is how we bring a new dimension to the education of child slaughter. The post Child Trafficking | Ananya S. Guha appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online“Band Practice” [by Terence Winch]
We have three bottles on the kitchen table. One is filled with the music of a hundred old hornpipes in the key of D that no one plays anymore. We drink and play. Pretty soon they’re no longer hornpipes, but tricky little reels from long-dead masters remembered by no one but us. We play them… Read more »Here comes the new “Hudson Review”
A magazine of historic importance, which published A. R. Ammons back in 1960. The Hudson Review, Autumn 2022 (Volume LXXV, No. 3 ESSAYS The Art of Betrayal: Translation in an Age of Suspicion Tess Lewis A Donne Deal Meg Schoerke FICTION The Hottest Summer Laura Freudenthaler Tess Lewis, trans. Two Stories Mark Jacobs POETRY From Ithaca David Lehman The Purple Box Jeffrey Harrison Limestone, with… Read more »Lucky Times | Krushna Chandra Mishra
When nothing is understood And people’s ways hold out great warnings Rule of law as rule and law only reigns When people find out how some of these were made To perpetually suppress them into silence and vivid action When they are sure that people who need think of them Instead of doing things for… Read more »Lucky Times | Krushna Chandra Mishra
When nothing is understood And people’s ways hold out great warnings Rule of law as rule and law only reigns When people find out how some of these were made To perpetually suppress them into silence and vivid action When they are sure that people who need think of them Instead of doing things for… Read more »Fish Rain | Mary Bone
A waterspout rained fish. The fish got a wild ride in a vortex, saw the clouds and some returned to the sea. The post Fish Rain | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlinePotluck: Editor’s Discussion, November 2022 | by Robert Eric Shoemaker
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationFriday Night Binge in the City of London | Rose Mary Boehm
His big sweaty palm leaves a mark. She barely notices his touch. She’s on her fifth Rum and Coke Rum to get that tension down, Coke to keep you standing. Old-fashioned drink but who cares and she doesn’t do stuff. He wishes for a large ungulate and a shiny armor. It’s a sweet summer night… Read more »Before the Storm | Rose Mary Boehm
Lattice is the delicate but firm separation between two worlds. The evening sun lets almost black silhouettes undulate on her small blankets. Her tiny fingers pick holes into the stiff layer of wallpaper, where pink flowers meet pink leaves. Father has told her the story, has sung her the song. He now stands cut out… Read more »Taking a Walk | Ananya S. Guha
I walked in my little home town, after Christmas dwindling streets, people and houses. A friend shakes hand. I look the other way forgetting to wish, wanting to love and say many ecumenical things. But I have just come back from the bar, after downing two and a half gins and burying my dreams into… Read more »The Shore | Elissa Capelle Vaughn
I had a nice stay at the bottom of the ocean I fell in love with a ghost who was my only light in the darkness I followed them deeper into the sea Past the anglerfish, urchins, and eels We met a Coelacanth on the same journey to the bottom A giant squid who told… Read more »Smoke Rings (For Natalie) | Rp Verlaine
The once was is gone a rumor like smoke rings escaping your lips on a summer’s day where those thought to be in love admit defeat exhaling it As if it were the temporary renamed as forever. The post Smoke Rings (For Natalie) | Rp Verlaine appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author:… Read more »Of a Piece | Rp Verlaine
“Tell me,” she says Not wanting to know What I do/ don’t A first date since you… …as Inquisition or decision on hold To be dissected inspected or left In checkmated dread several moves ahead And I’m willing to lose If at the end, the gain Tells me I’ve achieved Something close to feeling again… Read more »Reconnaissance | Ananya S. Guha
Winter trees spiral and the grading slopes of these hills take you downhill for another reconnaissance. The post Reconnaissance | Ananya S. Guha appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineWeathering the Storms | Mary Bone
Watching the sun rise over the horizon, we had a beautiful view of the ocean. Children were finding sea shells and other treasures along the shore. We had weathered many storms before the sunshine came our way. The post Weathering the Storms | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best… Read more »Selling on the edge, g’bye hoopla and two contributions: Rituel N°5, Françoise Dupuy, Laura Sheleen & Elizabeth Regina (by Tracy Danison)
The humus fanatic has it right. Once dead, our contribution evolves. Photo © Romy Alizé Rituel N°5: La Mort by Émilie Rousset and Louise Hémon produced at the Atelier de Paris earlier this month drolely and elegantly highlights how commercial culture manages to spew up a honey-mouthed and optimistic “business of death”. It has a… Read more »Quadruple Abecedarian: His First Solo Vacation” [by John Deming]
Quadruple Abecedarian : His First Solo Vacation Ancient, it seemed, Zach’s mama listening to Diz’ blow his horn; yams, cob corn, and savory chicken cooking to xantho-brown; stoic Zach on coccyx down in that wonderful yard, smelling deeply. Now everything was different. Viciously labyrinthine, the age XXXV. Formerly wed, now uncommitted, off alone to Honolulu…. Read more »Some Great Country | Celestine Key
i didn’t think it would ever come to this where I literally could not breathe because some heartless people in a faraway place were so selfish that they cared more about giant corporations giving them money and keeping them in power than for a little person like me to be able to breathe some great… Read more »Communion | Ren-Ren P. Montano
We are natives of a land that none of us owns. Yet this world offers no place; none except the outskirts, where the abominations of our kind are left undisturbed. Privilege is as rare as desert rain. The pigment of our skin is darker than fair. We are unlettered. We are voiceless. We have nothing… Read more »WITH THE SUN [by Mary Gilliland]
Want more shade? Want more sun? A plant demonstrates its answers—via height or sturdiness or angle of inclination. About the spring ephemerals, though, there’s no need to worry the question. They emerge when trees are bare of leaves. The thing about bulbs: they are easy to plant and, when conditions optimize for new growth—the slant… Read more »“Seasons in the Abyss” [by Michael Robbins]
Seasons in the Abyss Du Fu, you doofus, that’s not a goose. You’re drunk. Please allow me to introduce… no, that’s not your horse. (No, nor woman neither.) Into every life a little Freud must fall. I’m a fraud. I stole that pun. Like I said: I’m afraid. Into every light a little moth must… Read more »Photonic Heartbeats | Ron Vesci
Opening Eyes… To the Mystic Forefront… Truth’s Storefront… Indivisible Byproduct… Mass Produced… In Infinite Quantities… Only derailed by doubt and fear… Prior to self contraction… Is the Heart’s Treasure Trove of Abundance… Inside the Flow of Breath… The Peaceful Delivery… Chilling Enterprise… Dancing with Her Presence… Singing… From the Mythic Plateau… Photonic Heartbeats… Lighting the… Read more »The Girl the Birds and the Boy | Jenny Middleton
Parakeets, jade bright and lit with watery sunrise lean swiftly to their reflections as they soar through dawn, born seemingly from the tongue like twirl of willows and a tangle of dun branches that trail the river and its way. All night they have sat here- the girl, the birds and the boy, blanket wrapped… Read more »What Picasso Saw (1940)
after fifty-nine years he saw the woman with two faces there was no such thing as an ex-Catholic or an ex-Spaniard living in France first Paris with Max then back to Madrid an old guitarist what can you do with blue, blindness and the female nude with two faces Ma Jolie Fernande Eva, Gaby, Pacquerette,… Read more »It Was 50 Years Ago Today [by Lewis Saul]
And the Band didn’t begin to play anything. Actually it was 51 years ago today, which adds an extra, unwanted beat to an overworked couplet … The Composer (me), The Poet, The Joker, and The Fencer were café-hopping on a beautiful autumn evening. The place was Paris, and there were great cafés on each corner… Read more »New Departure | Stan Morrison
children fighting get adult interventions you really hurt him, so say you’re sorry give him back his toy, never do that again take turns, be kind, share with everyone time out to reflect on your behavior nations fighting seek out new alliances time out and reflection signs of weakness might makes right the eternal anthem… Read more »My Muse | Mónika Tóth
dedicated to my nice Romanian friend Vasile you are my best friend the joy shine in my eyes you are my muse the happiness shine in my eyes you are my soulmate my life is enriched like a ray of sunshine I adore you The post My Muse | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best… Read more »Parts of a Whole | Bradley Knebworth
we were never similar about as different as could be possible yet somehow we managed to figure it out and give each other the space respect and love to blossom always there for each other two parts of a whole The post Parts of a Whole | Bradley Knebworth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go… Read more »Moon | Nancy May
moonlit skies upturn boat on the shore The post Moon | Nancy May appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe Amateur | by Austin Allen
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationKC Trommer: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
__________________________________________________________________________________________ Off the Roosie after O’Hara I get off the 7 and head home, past the Chase and the Jackson Heights penguin that, last week, someone dressed as a bunny, and I’m thinking of Frankie’s I-do-this-I-do-that poems, and my phone is dead again and I can’t afford to replace… Read more »Courtroom Drama | Stan Morrison
one expert identified the sneaker treads another testified about the blood spatter a producer of “forensic frenzy” took notes it was a perfectly purulent television matter a hostile witness reluctantly took the stand exhibits a to z and everything else in between the jury was either excused or sequestered objections and overrules peppered the scene… Read more »Chennai Floods | Ananya S. Guha
When rains lashed Chennai city in India, floods washed children and offered tears to them so that they could weep again, for sorrows of their ancestors and the city slept peacefully after that, as after every holocaust, there is baleful silence. No one is talking about it anymore. No one is weeping, No one is… Read more »Auden on critics
“There are people who are too intelligent to become authors, but they do not become critics.” Related Stories Three Poems by Amy Gerstler Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryFrom the Heart | Lynn Long
We are but two strangers Across a distant shore Who share hello and nothing more Yet, still… there is beauty in this My sometimes friend My sometimes muse My light within My soulful truth Alas, of this- You know not- for I keep it secret Within my heart… More at https://www.facebook.com/beneaththemoonlight/. The post From the… Read more »Pure Creation | Heath Brougher
If you were to give us feedback on our cultivated and sincere ideas we would sooner starve to death rather than swallow one bite of your outside and unwanted mediocrity that you always attempt to poison us with. More at https://www.facebook.com/heath.brougher. The post Pure Creation | Heath Brougher appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to… Read more »Three Poems by Amy Gerstler
My Ego is a dented suit of armor, a designer gown with grimy lining. She’s the cause of false beliefs. She fucks up my ability to love. She’s prickly and tender as an artichoke heart. She proposes to me so frequently I can’t hear other people speak. She’s a self-annointed guide who materializes at my… Read more »now-then
Listening to a compilationThe Passions – I’m in love with a German film star.A song that takes me backIt really moved me and there you are. Go to Source Author: aprettykettleofpoetryMigraine | Ananya S. Guha
A migraine is nothing less or more than spilled- over memories that gnaw the mind like a rattling snake. Whenever I have one, I look for remedies like picking at my ulcers or discussing gastronomics with doctors who finally prescribe medicines And when it recurs like the proverbial last word I take refuge in wholesome… Read more »Rather a Flaccid Child | Jim Bellamy
Rather a flaccid child. Not good with his hands, he chose the high up clouds for his deceptions. Yet now he never seems to feel or smile nor any of the rainbowed raves of living placate the westward ravel of his guile, neither might the clowns of heaven save him. Once above a mind, I… Read more »star struck down
pop forgetyou earn what you getand throwing awayyour throw away lineswon’t save youlike some self-proclaimed saviouralready in printin a fish ‘n’ chips newspaper spouting off, drowningin free-flowing wordsgoing to towningthey say: ‘serves you right!’cos you couldn’tkeep your mouth water-tight facts get fictionalisedin your eyesand you say ‘really?’that’s not what I meantno comment Go to Source… Read more »Missing (2022)/Missing Person (2003)
Missing Where is she? Look for her!Why aren’t you looking for her?Her bedroom is how she left itthough a crime scene, every millimetre. Someone knows something.People don’t just vanish into thin air.Runaways might. But homebods don’t.Everybody’s going spare. Let’s look at it this way.Her face is on every street.It only takes a second to recognise… Read more »Dark Poem and or Lecture; I’m Starting to Think Some of the World’s People Lack Something; Don’t Know We Hate Our Madness, Darkness, a Poem, or Lecture | L Lawliet
I often realize this throughout my 23 years alive, what seems like many other lifetimes, past live’s in the world of people, humankind as a whole seem not to reach out to others they don’t get to know the real person behind what they show others they could be angry at the world or at… Read more »Blind Love | Mónika Tóth
your beautiful eyes pierce my heart The post Blind Love | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Onlinefrom “Modern Love”: XVII by George Meredith (1828-1909)
At dinner, she is hostess, I am host. Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps The Topic over intellectual deeps In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost. With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball: It is in truth a most contagious game: ‘Hiding the skeleton,’ shall be its name. Such play as this, the devils… Read more »from “Modern Love”: XVII by George Meredith (1828-1909)
At dinner, she is hostess, I am host. Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps The Topic over intellectual deeps In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost. With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball: It is in truth a most contagious game: ‘Hiding the skeleton,’ shall be its name. Such play as this, the devils… Read more »“Abecedary” [by Tom Disch]
Abecedary A is an Apple, as everyone knows. But B is a …. What do you suppose? A Bible? A Barber? A Banquet? A Bank? No, B is this Boat, the night that it sank. C is its Captain, and D is its Dory, While E – But first let me tell you a story…. Read more »Dwyer & Lehman at Parkside Lounge (317 E. Houston) Wed October 26
Related Stories Alex Perez Takes his Leave — from the “Literary Community” or from his senses? Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryMoss Covered Shoes | Mary Bone
A pair of moss covered shoes were found in the forest. Had someone walked a mile in them? There had to be a story here. Perhaps the moss felt like carpet between someone’s toes and they left their shoes behind. The post Moss Covered Shoes | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to… Read more »Alex Perez Takes his Leave — from the “Literary Community” or from his senses? [by David Lehman]
It’s no secret that literary people and humanists are reluctant to take an unpopular position that deviates from the party line. So it is noteworthy when someone pops off, refusing to yield to the forces of self-censorship. An enterprising editor named Elizabeth Ellen [left], the poet and writer who runs Hobart magazine, undertook an e-mail… Read more »Let There Be Darkness Thick | Krushna Chandra Mishra
The day dawns clear Dispelling darkness dim With eyes regaining the power They seem losing for long To see things near and far In a joyous satisfaction. Throughout the day Changing views good and bad they settle their scores To impose on the din of life a silence of death And rejoice in the blinding… Read more »Footsteps | Shelly Blankman
They didn’t hear the footsteps, not at first. The street dark, hushed, just the steady tapping of raindrops against the asphalt. Hand in hand, they ambled toward home, one immigrant, both gay, celebrating a year of firsts, a life of forevers. So much to plan before they married. Visas, lawyers, whom to tell and when…. Read more »It’s Easy to Say You Believe in Love | Samantha Davis
So you mean they’re married? The simple question leads to a complex answer of an eight year old girl, a long explanation which she is tired of answering she has nothing to be ashamed of, right? So why does the cute boy sitting next to her on the bus not understand? He isn’t dead. The… Read more »“Beauty is No Show” [by Bill Hayward]
Just in: Berlin International Art Film Festival… Related Stories Amaud Jamaul Johnson: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryLimbo Land
Showers splatter unfinished sentencesdown from hot air word cloudsto a thunderous monotonous boom.Nothing gets better or worseas people floathanging from stringless balloons. City ring roads go round in vicious circlesand mayhem motorists get nowhere.Ring a ring a roses school children sing incessantly on repeatand no one ages beyond the moment the traffic jam stuck them… Read more »About Love | Mónika Tóth
I softly lay my lips on yours Maybe love I hold you within in my heart In my soul Every season Maybe love Dear With a simple look You took my breath away I don”t know I cry like a child The post About Love | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to… Read more »Mountain | Spencer Bock
Males are your superior. The ones you look to for answers. They are your father, your brother, your son. But above all They are your boss. No matter your age, man is your boss. No matter your color, man is your boss. As long as you’re a woman, a man is your boss. You will… Read more »A Belated Congratulations to Emma Trelles, 9th Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, CA
Our valued contributor Emma Trelles is the 9th Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, and in August 2022, she was named one of 22 Poet Laureate Fellows across the country by the Academy of American Poets. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she is the author of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize and… Read more »Amaud Jamaul Johnson: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Spirit of the Dead Watching “Men are apt to idolize or fear that which they cannot understand, especially if it be a woman.” —Jean Toomer Like so many stones, a handful of jasper or black opal scattered along the banks of the Papenoo, Gauguin has fixed his eye upon a native… Read more »blood fellows behind me from my knees | L Lawliet
i one time ponder why i cant stand on my own two legs all the time i often contemplate why my knee’s are so weak that i speak these words for all to be heard. i look down at my weak knee’s , i say why are you so weak when i have all this… Read more »Love Is Everything | Raquel Averill
Love is everything Love is all Love is the thing that gets you up in the morning Sustains you through the night Provides sustenance to your soul Fill your life with it Enjoy its wonderful bounty Relish it Without love there is nothing And it starts with you The post Love Is Everything | Raquel… Read more »“Dictionary of Omissions” [by Boris Dralyuk]
Dictionary of Omissions “The chief shortcoming of the Dictionary is, paradoxically, that it is so good that one wishes it were larger…” — Modern Language Review The atlas of my sunken continents, the empty bowl I used to keep my fish in, the shoebox of expired pawn tickets, and this, my Dictionary of Omissions…. Read more »Prod. Tox | Raven Van Blizz
A place filled with toxicity. Influence speaks with fluency. Flaws are under scrutiny. Opinions are mutiny. Gossiping is trendy and always up to date. Colleagues are user-friendly, greedy and full of hate. If only I could stay at home with no worries or headache, I would. But it would be best to stay calm while… Read more »When Princess Sleeps | Mary Bone
When Princess sleeps there is no sound. Her dreams are deep. Castles in clouds on mountain tops. She gets waited on when her shoes drop to the ground. This is what dreams are made of. The post When Princess Sleeps | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe Waste Land at 100 | by Robert Eric Shoemaker
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationPlatonic Love | PYG’s Whisper
True love never dies Loyal souls never change Don’t distort the beauty of fairy tales Don’t blame it on life Don’t blame it on you Don’t fake your heart ‘Cause I won’t do Thought you were my angel So I gave you my wings Now you’re ready to fly? I whined hey wait But you’re… Read more »Time’s Burden | Satish Verma
I am not too well, he felt. The flames chased him in charred landscape. Fighting over, he pondered about the crime within, the surge to find a nest hole. A wounded pride where the salmonella hits. You enter a slot for more enticements. Any patch of vague tragedy among the barren desirability, shares the accident… Read more »“Double Agents: Lynn Chu and Glen Hartley” [by Kelly Jane Torrance]
Hartley recalls the course’s “wonderful teacher,” Donald Levine, AB’50, AM’54, PhD’57. He has even more vivid memories of his feisty fellow Burton-Judson resident. “Lynn was always very good at debating,” he says. “I’m a very argumentative and opinionated person,” Chu agrees. He studied English, while she majored in geography and went on to the Law… Read more »On Richard Howard’s Birthday
Twice, for the fall semesters of 1991 and 1993, I rented Richard Howard’s flat (5X, as in Xanadu) in the Waverly Mews (“but in your case it should be spelled m-u-s-e”). Richard taught at the University of Houston in the fall and I needed a place in the city and was wilgling to be kidded… Read more »Just Once | Michael Tasker
just once i wish something would work out that there wouldn’t be some problem that things would go smoothly that i wouldn’t have to jump through extra hoops that luck would go my way instead of against me The post Just Once | Michael Tasker appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best… Read more »Armed and Dangerous | Maddie Paulus
Two men run down the sidewalk, white chases black and a gun cocks The white man yells stop, bystanders hear a loud pop, and the front man drops Witnesses call cops and stand in silent shock, The cops come but They ignore that the street pools with red; they handcuff the man who lies still,… Read more »“Poem of a New Driver” by Belinda Rule [Introduced by Thomas Moody]
Last weekend, the Bathurst 1000, Australia’s most famous race, was won by Holden drivers Shane van Ginsbergen and Garth Tander. It was a historic victory as it was the final Bathurst 1000 to feature Holden, the iconic car manufacturer of Australian classics including the Kingswood and Commodore. Holden was the last remaining Australian car company,… Read more »LATER FLOWERS FOR THE BEES [by Mary Gilliland]
I garden at the end of a one-block cul de sac. This area bordering the woods is classified on the municipal maps as vacant land. Yes, it’s poetry. The gardens are anything but decorous, or planned. Strays are welcome. Wild volunteers turn out whimsical or handsome. Some alight of their own volition, or via bird… Read more »“Ode to Poking Around” [by Catherine Woodard]
“I wish to speak a word for the art of poking around,” begins philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore in a fine art book beautifully built around her essay by lone goose press. I wish to speak a word for the artistry… Read more »Where I Can Breathe… | Ananya S. Guha
The day is at once at tandem with tepid sun, winter’s discomfiture, or feature. Outside the room music blares, Christmas is near children squabble, then singing. Sighs, life takes historical movement, years lapse and then these visuals. The town hasn’t changed much except for the number of boisterous cars, and pedestrians manipulating ways, hands up… Read more »Where I Can Breathe… | Ananya S. Guha
The day is at once at tandem with tepid sun, winter’s discomfiture, or feature. Outside the room music blares, Christmas is near children squabble, then singing. Sighs, life takes historical movement, years lapse and then these visuals. The town hasn’t changed much except for the number of boisterous cars, and pedestrians manipulating ways, hands up… Read more »Making It to the Top | Mary Bone
We’ve made it through a hard, uphill climb, just to make another dime. We do what we have to do, putting up with hullabaloo, just to make it to the top. After we get there, we never stop. The post Making It to the Top | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to… Read more »Three Amateur Poems [by Lewis Saul, Rachel Saul and Jordan Schifino]
MEMO FROM THE BIG G Dear Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot crowd: Your tin-foil hats are melting My glaciers And dripping down your Collective Consciousness Raising hell with my hosts You’re mucking around in the mud And I’m thinking about breaking my promise To Noah And bringing about a flood A Hallelujah-type event that only Four people will… Read more »Marsh Hawk Press Presents: Joanne Dominique Dwyer and David Lehman, Wed. Oct. 26, 2022
Marsh Hawk Press Presents: Joanne Dominique Dwyer and David Lehman Wednesday, October 26, 2022 6:00 – 8:00 pm at Parkside Lounge 317 E Houston St, New York, NY 10002 “Joanne Dominique Dwyer is an exceptionally talented poet, whose mind in motion on every page in Rasa gives pleasure. She writes that “Intimacy means profoundly… Read more »Your Lips | Mónika Tóth
your soul is lyrical line your heart is magnanimous your eyes are fire your look is great your lips are wonderful path your smile is beautiful shining The post Your Lips | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlinePolitician’s Speech– an Indian Story | Ananya S. Guha
I will give you freedom and of course bread with freedom some money with money some honey laced with wine with the best sets to dine your homes will be changed you will have parlors and beauties, and change, transformation will be key words of your ditties the ballot box is very near innocent creature,… Read more »Not Rocket Science
I’m not the type to make a scene now maybebut little things might make me go just crazy.I keep myself to myself.It’s good for my healthbut may well like just kill me. The funny thing is that I joke about itbut something tells me that my smile’s just carpet.I have no need to impressjust need… Read more »Good Day
If you were me, what would you be? Would you be recounting?Lying on the carpet with my box of scrap-metal matchbox cars,counting blocks and abacus beads for countingthat never did me much good later on in bars. Today, I thought to myself as I was happily driving alonghow great life is and how thinking otherwise… Read more »Censorship | Baris Semerci
surfing internet reluctant self censorship rewritten poems sarcastic sense of humour hidden in innocent words More at https://twitter.com/hwl76/status/1170299695702454272. The post Censorship | Baris Semerci appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineFrom Poet to Critic and Back Again | by Timothy Yu
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationElisa Gabbert: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
photo by Adalena Kavanagh _________________________________________________ Bright & Distant Objects I read a headline that said, “Human hair behind pigeons’ lost toes, study finds.” I thought it meant that pigeons were growing human hair. . . behind their… Read more »Stop the Rain | Envein
The girl i loved left me just the other day. My visions and dreams have all been taken away. Leaving me with grief and sorrow to bear. Life ain’t easy and love isn’t fair. My tears are falling like the rain Clouding my visions of tomorrow Darkened skies add to the pain No I’ll never… Read more »No Relief in Sight | Envein
My life is like a tunnel and I’m searching for an end. Walking in the darkness alone without a friend. Looking for an answer, searching for some light. I cant escape the misery. There’s no relief in sight. The post No Relief in Sight | Envein appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author:… Read more »The Cartel Acadamy [by Armin Rosen]
One key difference between now and the 1920s, when the last largescale movement to exclude Jews from American campus life happened, is that Jews now lead and hold prestigious tenured chairs at major American universities, which host entire academic departments devoted to Jewish life and learning. That thousands of Jewish faculty and administrators, as individuals… Read more »In the new “Southern Review”: Poems by Terence Winch
Fallen World You never cry anymore. The trees don’t make you weep. The baseball season has almost gone missing, but you aren’t really concerned. You can’t go anywhere. There is a world of free love, grocery stores, off-track betting shops, and farmers markets. But that world has slipped into another dimension, like when you hang… Read more »Slums; All Years | Jim Bellamy
slums, all years; and the stars which rise console you if they would. words are said which sully with fears their fled disguise. and the night must blood the lunacies it lives. to these faceless passions, i make word thief:- even so distant, i can taste the grief, bitter and sharp with stalks, he made… Read more »Nightmares | Craig Warburton
I go to bed and want to sleep And wake up when alarm goes beep Some nights they do just stay away On others they come out to play Bolt upright and grab my head Screaming loudly in my bed I’ve been attacked I’m pretty sure I nearly break the bedroom door To a mirror… Read more »Ron Charles in the Washington Post on BAP 2022
Want to read more contemporary poetry but don’t know where to begin? For expert curation and variety, you can’t do better than “The Best American Poetry 2022,” edited this year by Matthew Zapruder. These 75 poems are arranged alphabetically from Aria Aber to Jenny Zhang, including Terrance Hayes, Sharon Olds, Louise Glück, Diane Seuss, Ada… Read more »Angry Father | Craig Warburton
An open palm descends on back Dealt with force a hefty smack Then another just as bad I’m scared, upset, a broken lad Stinging skin that’s turned bright red What goes on inside his head? For him to hit me quite so hard Then tell me not to be so mard The anger in his… Read more »Little Turtle | Mary Bone
Little turtle peeked out from underneath his shell. He decided to venture forth on a stormy day. He had a little flashlight to light his way. The post Little Turtle | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineSteady My Laden Head [by Mary Gilliland]
The hours don’t count, I don’t count the hours. This is not a task but an activity. Unassigned. A practically involuntary part of the day, sowing itself in my unconscious during times I might not be physically involved. I’m winging it, without formal education. It looks like I have chosen to engage, but really the… Read more »Yom Kippur, Grand Concourse, Bronx, 1948 [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]
Renee and Huy Harwood, my parents, eager to end the Yom Kippur fast. — sdl Related Stories BAP 2009: The Gala Launch [by Liz Howort] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryScurrying Home | Ananya S. Guha
You have never known serpentine streets which backlash winter’s withering cold, and the hills grow, tall masts overhead summoning that change will outgrow change and metamorphosis will be people in jackets in armoury, look strange behave with poignancy their smile takes a blast with the wind, they scurry home beggars on streets can only hope… Read more »Silent Symphony | Kandice Johnson
Do you honestly believe I am your muse? To write and compose The melodies of my agony I’m not your sheet of music My suffering is not Your notes for you to choose And to be honest Only a man Of dishonor And bad taste Would conduct a symphony Playing my tears of pain Boasting… Read more »In Praise of Bruno (1983)
Two redheads having a much-needed snooze in Ludlowville (July 1983). Related Stories BAP 2009: The Gala Launch [by Liz Howort] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryThe New York School Diaspora (Part Thirty-Six): Clarence Major [by Angela Ball]
Photograph of a Gathering of People Waving –based on an old photograph bought in a shop at Half Moon Bay, summer, 1999… Read more »Tweet Dreams | Ivan Jenson
A revelation will dawn on civilization like the second coming or the twelfth hour arrival of the prophecy promised by various dusty non-digital books and this sermon will amount to a hill of hallelujahs and certain sects will say “I told you so” and others will say “how could I know?” and the stoners and… Read more »
REBEL, Jean-Féry (1666-1747) [by Lewis Saul]
Les Élémens 1. Le Chaos listen: Stuttgarter Kammerorchester Thomas Zehetmair, cond. Baroque music is pleasing to the ear. Bach was the master of delicious polyphony and beautiful part-writing. Handel, Telemann and Vivaldi are crisp and to the point. Rameau and Scarlatti wrote some of the greatest, technically difficult, and exciting keyboard works of all time…. Read more »Labyrinth | Eliza Segiet
In the vortex of dance, wandering in the labyrinth of time she saw the ephemerality of existence. Today turns into yesterday as in the Heraklite river – fluid, smooth. Although trees live longer than humans, slouching between them one can see the scattered dandelions. And behind a tall wall of boxwood there is everything one… Read more »I’ve Tried to Tell You | Matthias Rupertsson
I’ve tried to tell you But you won’t listen, That’s the way you are, You say what you want to say And nobody else’s opinion matters. I see your face shut down, How hard you become when You close your heart and Block out all the sunlight, Hanging on to the illusion of control. I’m… Read more »Demolition | Mary Bone
Underneath bark and wooden planks, termites gnaw and chew destroying homes, making burrows. Tunnels appear as they make their own homes. The post Demolition | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineCelebrating POETRY at 110! | by The Editors
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationA Petition to Recognize International Porcupine Quill Poking Day: Editor’s Discussion, October 2022 | by The Editors and Robert Eric Shoemaker
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationThe Failed Azaleas | by Alina Stefanescu
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationJack Skelley: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
Jack Skelley, photo by Gary Leonard ______________________________________________________ Green Goddess Who made the salad Whose tangy vinegar made me wince Who played pouty Venus to my impudent Caesar Who taught me to renounce meat Who flowed forth lubricants… Read more »I Disappear… | Jim Bellamy
i disappear into the nape of my head wide birds hiss after ashen gates- kids peer under worm-wearied ghost gibs o as we suck a burned nut then lost light drops us under golden graves- & night scatters female power? berried saints stopped here. More at https://jimbellamy.simplesite.com. The post I Disappear… | Jim Bellamy appeared… Read more »If You Knew | Mikayla Wyndham
If you knew where I’ve been I bet you would turn away, Avert your eyes, move Imperceptibly farther away, So unpleasant is my story. I’d like to share it with you But I know you can’t handle it, Just like most things. I guess I’ll just continue pretending That we’re a couple and Dream of… Read more »
Quote of the Day: Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz (1903-1989)
Born on this day, 1903, in Kyiv, Ukraine. “Always there should be a little mistake here and there – I am for it. The people who don’t do mistakes are cold like ice. It takes risk to make a mistake. If you don’t take risk, you are boring.” — sdl Related Stories BAP… Read more »Over and Over | Vera Ashton
She sits at her desk, refreshing the page. Over and over again. Trying to gather information. From the empty pages. The black and empty void, The terror in her heart, The anxiety in her stomach, The fog in her brain. She knows she is torturing herself. But she sits at her desk, looking at the… Read more »Oceana (Redux) | Kenneth Vincent Walker
Dare I enter the ocean Of your tranquil eyes Submerging its depths Like a delirious diver? Upon holding my breath An intense passion arises As I bask in sheer beauty Soaked in all its surprises. I’m entranced by your kiss Loitering about in my mind. My heart fiercely beating a Pitter-patter out of time In… Read more »A Brighter Burn | Jenny Middleton
That night the light was slow A faint glimmer before a brighter burn. The singed green shade twisting in the faint breeze mouthed through half open windows. I’d got up, too hot to sleep, too tired really, for those ends of things that tangle a mind’s late thoughts when a moth traced the vagueness at… Read more »We Meet | Mónika Tóth
dedicated to my nice Romanian friend Vasile The ink The ink flows I write for you and I confess The truth is We meet Two beautiful heart Two beautiful soul Together we compose The best of poems The post We Meet | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry… Read more »BAP 2009: The Gala Launch [by Liz Howort]
The Best American Poetry 2009 gala launch reading on Thursday, September 24 [2009] featured prize-winning poets (such as John Ashbery, Billy Collins, Mark Doty, and Richard Howard), but it will also be remembered for the record-breaking number of readers, twenty-one poets in all, some traveling from as far as California, Seattle, Cincinnati, and Kalamazoo. The… Read more »Wednesdays with Denise [by Denise Duhamel]
For this ‘Wednesdays with Denise,” I point you in the direction of Gulf Stream, Florida International University’s national literary magazine for which I am a faculty advisor. Here’s a throwback to Ashley M. Jones (an alum of FIU’s MFA program and now Alabama’s Poet Laureate) interviewing David Lehman about the prose poem: https://gulfstreamlitmag.com/archives/online-archives/online-8/features-8/gulf-stream-interviews-david-lehman/ Our latest issue… Read more »HomeHumanMachineFailureSpiral | by Anthony Cody
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationNested | Christine Emmert
Without wings I sit, high in the palm of the tree, looking down on earth beneath where others walk. I would fly away as snow drops but the white chastity of winter spreads around the landscape until it is lost. And what have I found here? A perch above that which is taken. The post… Read more »Paris I’ve Never Visited | Ananya S. Guha
Paris I’ve never visited only the uncanny wind whispered how a city was embattled with ashes coming out of a theatre. Where music thundered to heart beats where men sieged a house set it on fire immolated a lost civilization, and meanings of life, beauty, love were left smouldering, in ashes of ruin. Where politics… Read more »
György Ligeti (1923-2006)
How many of you listen to “modern music” (i.e. Boulez, Stockhausen, Cage, Kurtág, Xenakis, etc.) for sheer pleasure? I’ve been into this stuff since very early childhood so it’s just as pleasurable for me to listen to a Mahler symphony as a Stockhausen opera. But I completely understand the fact that our 21st century ears… Read more »Heard | Hino Black
Through my bed room window.. I’m aimlessly looking at the sky… Thinking of my life so far.. I’ve only knew things.. I didn’t want to know.. I lost my voice and only their words.. I’m now speaking.. There’s a voice in my heart… Telling me ..Don’t follow the orders of society… And be free like… Read more »My True Love | Aurora Teel
I’ve never felt this way before, You’ve brought out of me A hopeful, joyful being, Someone so different from Who I was before, A new person Unafraid of life and bounding Forward with courage and hope, Floating on air. I feel safe in your arms, You’e the one for me, My one and only, My… Read more »Learning | Ananya S. Guha
Picking up tears from cobbled streets and hutments, the road winds to a “slum” crows pecking at garbage is there blood anywhere? children gather leftovers food, bottles, beer cans children of the street school is no happening and we teachers, we learn. The post Learning | Ananya S. Guha appeared first on Best Poetry. Go… Read more »Humanity | Ananya S. Guha
In hutments we see in equal measure humanity betrothed to pangs of hunger. The wind blows the roof whistling an augury hard to comprehend. Little children in shades of blue, weep forgetting the toys they left in heaps of garbage. The post Humanity | Ananya S. Guha appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source… Read more »A Crow Among Crows | by Yaccaira Salvatierra
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationLaura Orem: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
__________________________________________________________________________________________ Bald Remember, remember that boy who could not love you because you were not pretty, whose terrible honesty you’ve carried for thirty years, the truth you mined from him like… Read more »Extending the Image | by Shayla Lawz
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationA Vision of Just a Dream | Vincent Von Ellesmere
I had a vision of the future as I looked into my black mirror, I saw a world consumed with a metaphorical darkness of negativity, I saw an unlikely army emerge, An army, legions upon legions of spell-casters & poets from around the globe emerge from their slumber, In Mother Earth’s darkest decade of pain… Read more »Dying for Love | Envein
Listen to the sounds of mother nature’s cry. Should we not mourn as we watch our mother die? Raped by father time. Her innocence has been torn. Conceived by all mankind corruption has been born. Negligence and pollution, famine and acid rain. Listen to the thunder, she’s crying from the pain. Will no one save… Read more »A Definition of Wan-Hua Street | Zihong Chen
The name of Wan-hua Street is the signifier or signified, I hesitate, what attracts me is not interpretation, but the changing poetic sentiment. Which exact meaning can be located for the Hua, a Chinese character? paces of one or two people, or a belle and furbelows of her? If we use adjectives like extravagant, prodigal,… Read more »Our Story | Mónika Tóth
our story on this page rain drops our story on this page tear drops The post Our Story | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineWhat are the Scariest Poems in the English Language? [by David Lehman]
What is the scariest poem in the language? I wager that many would select Poe’s “The Raven,” and it is unquestionable that Poe has the ability, in his verse as in his stories, to scare the dickens out of you. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” will get votes,… Read more »End [by Susan Brind Morrow]
I like having a fierce dog Who barks and bites And leaps at your head The beauty boy who sleeps at my thy Red fox red My beautiful Ted. What carnivore brought down the deer Whose rib-cage stands red In the brown spring fields below Venus rising… Read more »Alert | Stan Morrison
while you were napping other stuff was happening your dog rover took your trike went for a spin on the turnpike when you were upstairs and resting you missed more that was interesting your new teacher visited your mother talked about this, that and the other a rocket ship landed on the lawn but you… Read more »Why Does It Never Work | Ainsley
why does it never work i try try try try again then try one more time after that and it never seems to happen maybe there’s something wrong with me maybe it’s blind chance i attempt not to think about the possibility i might not make it but it creeps in once in a while… Read more »Lotus Flowers | Sadia Mehmood Qurashi
Dancing souls, On a watery stage! No fear of death, No surety of age! The post Lotus Flowers | Sadia Mehmood Qurashi appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineMy blog ‘A Pretty Kettle of Poetry’ on other blogs
My blog ‘A Pretty Kettle of Poetry’ with my illustrations still gets on other blogs and is always a pleasure to realise that my blog has its admirers. Since 2019 on top 100 poetry blogs on https://blog.feedspot.com/poetry_blogs/ plus https://blogging.org/top-poetry-blogs/ and https://eztoolset.com/top-blogs/110-top-poetry-blogs-websites-to-follow-in-2020/ and a great mention – ‘The best poems served through this poetry blog will… Read more »End of an Era II
I’ve just published my latest collection ‘End of an Era II’ in the menu above with the last collection ‘That Magic Call?’. None of the poems are new as I have been posting them since June when written. Quite spontaneously. With a few tweaks since though. The reason for the title of this new collection… Read more »Beyond the Night | Lynn Long
Deep beneath the dark, vast ocean blue I grew weary, drowning- in thoughts of you… So like the Phoenix, soaring on high I too shall soar, shall touch the sky In search of hope In search of light I too will rise- beyond the night… More at https://www.facebook.com/beneaththemoonlight/. The post Beyond the Night | Lynn… Read more »I Am Lonely | Mónika Tóth
I am lonely a cup of black tea helps fill out the emptiness The post I Am Lonely | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe Unforgettable Forgotten and Forgetful Memory Man
What was I saying?oh yeah that reminds me.It’s on the tip of my tongue.You’ve been great to see me! I’ll get it in a minute.No, don’t give me any clues! It’s easy!I can’t believe I can’t rememberWhatever happened to thingy? Ok I give up.Oh yes. Of course. Silly me!Yes, I know, it’s been quite a… Read more »Calm
Like listening to Moonlight Sonata.Reflection without being distracted.Looking at nothing reflected in a mirror.Deep in thought without an idea enacted. Darkness of the night.Waking up before everyone.Minutes buried to candlelight.Lying in wait and fitting a silencer to a gun. Go to Source Author: aprettykettleofpoetryShe | Sofia Hellgren
She. Her brown long hair And her dress, purple. Fairy wear. Shes a girl With glitter on her cheeks. And she walks the beach under the moon and sings in Greek to the old Gods to whom she belongs. Shes a pirate and a gypsy. And a beauty. She is a goddess. Her beauty is… Read more »Poetry Foundation Appoints Five New Trustees to Join Board |
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationSplintered Eyelid, Gem of Sleep | Stephanie
Splintered eyelid- gem of sleep, crude Imaginings, sentient lump- trail of Unkempt sorrow and storm biding By moon of sheen and starlight, creed- Emporium of white-washed scales and Skeins, lithely brushing dints and dreams That cruelly fade and frown to gleams, Heaven’s nymph of sprayed glint- And this sickness pervades my being Like folly to… Read more »Liquid Statues | Jim Bellamy
When thunderheads spiral into space, then a wild drome Is nailed inside a church-chidden city To move, a masking venus will suck naves from Bound devils and angelled sleep Trilled trees dip laxative leaves inside a berried grave And starry silver men scatter a swelled sun Against luminaries and liquid statues? More at https://jimbellamy.simplesite.com. The… Read more »On Víctor Jara’s “The Right to Live in Peace” | by Achy Obejas
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationThe Spectacular Sunset | Pushmaotee Subrun
Amazing sunset Awesome red and orange tint Lovers entranced. The post The Spectacular Sunset | Pushmaotee Subrun appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineWitness | Ananya S. Guha
Atrophy in a country is barren, though history is now less than tautology, the pickax is a useful weapon to cut it to size, so do it till its blood soaks and becomes a shade less pale. Less sickly, and we are witness to troubled times. The post Witness | Ananya S. Guha appeared first… Read more »Susan Brind Morrow Guest Author September 19-23
Susan Brind Morrow is an author and poet who has written extensively on language and metaphor drawn from the natural world. Morrow studied Greek, Latin, Arabic and hieroglyphic texts as an undergraduate and graduate student in Classics at Columbia University in New York. Morrow first went to Egypt as an archaeologist on the Dakhleh Oasis… Read more »“Jack Benny’s Violin” [by James Cummins and David Lehman]
Jack Benny’s Violin I have always wanted to write a poem called Jack Benny’s violin. How often have I begun a poem with that title. At a key moment a mugger intercepts our man in sin with a gun. “Your money or your life?” There follows the longest pause in the history of stand-up comedy. … Read more »The Wild Winters of Imperfect Grace | James Diaz
No shouting please I toss the roots into the pit of winter watching how slowly our hands tangle in sheets and dreams of migration this little pill in the center of the eye listen: there are intruders everywhere when you live outside skin and bone and memory of struggle kicked – shouting I can take… Read more »Summer | Mónika Tóth
summer moon the scent of tulip spreading in the night The post Summer | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineWhen Insults Had Class [by Terence Winch]
With thanks to Terence Winch, here are some well-turned insults from back in the day before the era of the ubiquitous four-letter word. Lady Astor: “If you were my husband I’d give you poison.” Churchill: “If you were my wife, I’d drink it” [Note: it has to be said that Churchill is the Yogi Berra… Read more »from “Duke Rhino,” a work in progress (by Mitch Sisskind)
Louie Balin When my nephew Norb Berlowitz was drafted into the army, Norb’s younger brother Seymour enrolled at the University of Wisconsin. That was in 1943. If there was no father in the home, the government at that… Read more »The Trouble with Harry | Ricky Garni
At the coffee shop, I was marveling at how much the acorn resembles both the pineapple and the artichoke. So I took a picture of it and showed it to my friend. He looked at it for a moment and then he said “You know that’s not an acorn – that’s Harry Houdini, who was… Read more »Meaningless Existence | Michael Andreas
i’m not sure what you were trying to accomplish by not looking in those dark corners they weren’t going to go away things like that can’t be ignored into oblivion instead you chose to live a shallow, meaningless existence never getting close to anyone surrounded by many unsuspecting people all of whom would build up… Read more »Applause Learning [by Dara Barrois/Dixon]
Hello, from western Massachusetts. Just this past Thursday night we were entertained by notnostrums film WHEN YOU THINK OF IT. (admission: two of notnostrums editors are related to me) The beauty and exuberance of this 50 minute film of poets reading where they choose to read: one shoulder deep in water (yes, the poem she’s… Read more »Pulling Strings | Ananya S. Guha
It started with Vietnam. Then Bangladesh, then Iran, Iraq, Palestine, sub-continental Africa, what about India? Guess. Who is pulling slimy strings of favour and disfavour? The post Pulling Strings | Ananya S. Guha appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineFather and Son Love Redux | G. S. Katz
Fathers and Sons: Love Redux My dad wasn’t wordy I can’t remember affection He never told me he loved me If he did, I don’t remember it Strong silent type he was I grew up quiet Till I started to speak more Then everyone wished I’d shut the hell up My mom told me my… Read more »When Bad Lines Happen to Good Poems [by Laurence Goldstein]
(Ed note: David Lehman’s Bad Line Contest post of September 2 reminded me of this earlier post by Laurence Goldstein. Follow this link to read the many comments on the post when it ran in 2009, then add your own take. sdl) If you were empowered by the gods to travel back into the canon… Read more »In the Dead of Night | Mark Andrew Heathcote
I’m an oak with rings ingrain My heart is a woodcut carving My soul a gnarled wooden cane No longer prevents my falling. I’m a mountain-pine-forest A field of flattened wheat: A no-man’s-land, a gauntlet Thrown, down in beseech Of-war, of-madness or friendship Take your pick; I am ready, for all. I have sharpened and… Read more »City Life 2 | JayM
Lone, among millions Solitary eyes seek souls Kindred, to behold The post City Life 2 | JayM appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineEthelbert Miller Reviews “The Best American Poetry 2022”
Read it here https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/best-american-poetry-2022 and for a foretaste, here are a few paragraphs from Ethelbert’s review: “If you are reading this and don’t read much poetry, or feel uncertain in relation to it, you are more than welcome here. Maybe you are browsing in a bookstore, or have been assigned this book for a class, or… Read more »Zoom! BAP 2022 Launch Reading on Thursday, September 15
Also featuring Major Jackson, Camille Dungy, Jake Skeets, Dara Barrois/Dixon, Shangyang Fang, Brionne Janae — and surprises! Dara Barrois/Dixon Camille Dungy Shangyang Fang Major Jackson Breezy Janae Ada Limón Yesenia Montilla Cynthia Parker-Ohene Matt Rohrer Diane Seuss Jake Skeets Related Stories Sommer Browning: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch] Go to Source… Read more »For You | Mónika Tóth
Dedicated my nice Romanian friend Vasile Sweet soul, Sweet heart in the chest, A sweet symphony Sweet heart, Sweet heart in the chest, A sweet symphony The post For You | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineSlum Dwellers | Ananya S. Guha
Slum dwellers are erratic why look dwelling in slums they smell their food is molten ash why look turn your faces (off them) your bodies must not come close to theirs why look slum dwellers die with the hurricane, calm the storm and before it dies banish them. The post Slum Dwellers | Ananya S…. Read more »Cie Les Orpailleurs: practicing the dangerous art of thought in muscle & blood, skin and bone
“Failles”, Jean-Christophe Bleton, Laurence Bertagnol: Dance for all. Photo: Patrick Girard © couleursurlaville Through their dance troupe cie Les Orpailleurs (“Gold-Panners”), Jean-Christophe Bleton and Laurence Bertagnol run an annual open dance program called Groupe de recherche chorégraphique Intergenerationnel et participative. GRCIP, for short. The course, which includes participants ranging in age from six to sixty-nine,… Read more »Hot Lunch Plus a Wow | J. D. Nelson
a chalky stew the hungry stare yellow is a while the news is blurry layers of chocolate sauce and fiberglas insulation we ate the flowers and they were delicious and now we are floating above the city in a bubble once I was a hen using magic an onion kiss from the cook More at… Read more »Hot Lunch Plus a Wow | J. D. Nelson
a chalky stew the hungry stare yellow is a while the news is blurry layers of chocolate sauce and fiberglas insulation we ate the flowers and they were delicious and now we are floating above the city in a bubble once I was a hen using magic an onion kiss from the cook More at… Read more »Kissing Clouds Used to Be Cool | J. D. Nelson
this is the continuation of the earth this room here is the starlit nightery ripe for the moon earth is bursting with eggs one rice for the oil derry oil to program better peas earth is a long way from earth More at http://www.madverse.com/. The post Kissing Clouds Used to Be Cool | J. D…. Read more »Sommer Browning: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
________________________________________________________________________ Great Things from the Department of Transportation My mother desires to track my location on her phone. My mother announces that she’s “latex intolerant.” My mother is horrified that the children’s cartoon character Caillou is bald. My mother to the server… Read more »Who I Am | Sharise Wellesley
I wish you hadn’t done All those things, but I’m Not going to let our history Dictate who I should be. You have no power over Me any longer, nothing You say can make me do Anything I don’t want to. I will walk with confidence, Look at myself in the Mirror and remember Who… Read more »Academica | JD DeHart
Is the answer to our ills in the fluttering of pages, the volley of discourse, or the dust of the library? Education is the invitation to a thoughtful existence, sometimes to revolt and liberation. Sometimes to the ability just to read, to plant those first nascent seeds of idea. Soon grown to full bloom. The… Read more »from “The Fraying of America” [by Robert Hughes]
It took a while but Time got around to reporting Nietzsche’s brainstorm announcement. The question mark is merely a rhetorical cover-up. And here are some thoughtful paragraphs from “The Fraying of America” by the magazine’s art critic, the late Robert Hughes, thirty years after he filed the article (Time, February 3, 1992). Newsmagazines are usually behind… Read more »Missing | Stan Morrison
Red hair and black leather My favorite color scheme I miss the way you danced with me But missing is not enough I miss the way you held me close Yet missing is not enough I long for more of everything And nothing is enough I miss the way we laughed The post Missing |… Read more »Sign Your Name Here | Mamyaw
words blur together congealing before eyes brimming with the sea held back by clustered lashes a stream spills down pockmarked cheeks lined with years spilling onto crisp paper lips tremble in silent defeat as a vice grips the chest caved in from decades of memories a wet gaze looks up at an apparition from the… Read more »Skyward | Joan McNerney
Another hot day at the playground filled with shrieks from kids tumbling down slides. Shouting boys hop on and off the whirling carousel as girls sing songs to double dutch jump rope. Waiting for my chance on the swing. Finally one is free as I clutch the metallic link chains. I pump myself up pushing… Read more »Hearts | Mónika Tóth
love Your heart and my heart …. Talking to each other …. The post Hearts | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineLilibet
You’re ‘a good egg, Lillibetand we’ve grown up with you all our lives.In an era not long goneLillibet you’re the one. Black or white, rich or poorElizabethans all.With your profile on all those coins and noteswho wouldn’t want more? On an island in the seaand around the world spinning in spacenewspapers today are drizzly soggyor… Read more »From a work in progress (by Mitch Sisskind)
The dry cleaning business was extremely important on my mother’s side of the family. My Uncle Nate hadn’t been a combat soldier like Norb Berlowitz, but Nate had still been in the army during the war. He was assigned to a snack bar at a large training base in Texas. When he left the army Uncle Nate opened a store… Read more »The Great Paradox [by Lionel Trilling]
“Some paradox of our natures leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the object of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion.” — Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination Who can explain it, who can tell you why?… Read more »Brave Hearts, Brave On | Vivian Belford
Don’t mind the names called and bashed Ugly, Stupid, useless, worthless nonetheless Profanities spewed from noxious tongues These adjectives, though hard to bear Brave hearts brave on Don’t mind the put-downs, letdowns and use Nothings, nonsense, babble, baloney All low lyrics from irate depths Though they hurt this much to hear Brave hearts brave on… Read more »City Life | JayM
Blistering Pace Set Inconsequential Days Set of Penrose Stairs The post City Life | JayM appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlinePleasure Pieland
On Pleasure Pielandislanders live life under a system called pie-in-the-sky.Plumbers fit pipe dreamsand statistics on counting your blessings are always high. Opticians sell rose-tinted glassesto see good things over the horizonand in every house, doors are fittedso that when one closes, another one opens. Every silver cloud has a golden liningand everyone’s glass is always… Read more »Poser (or ‘Just one in a series’)
look at that bodythat is some bodybut now goneand nobody blood red tearsstick like gluetwo glass eyespeep out of the blue don’t care ifmeant something to othersmum’s the wordthere’ll be none of them closures Go to Source Author: aprettykettleofpoetryI Find It Harder to Love in Korean: On “Wavelength // Waveless” | by Jessica Kim
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationKrzysztof Kiešlowski: Three Colors Trilogy
Krzysztof Kiešlowski was born in Warsaw, Poland on June 27, 1941. After two attempts and two rejections, he was finally admitted to the Łódź Film School on his third try. His first major success came in 1989, when he made the stunningly brilliant Dekalog, a series of ten films made for Polish television – each… Read more »Inspiration’s Tears | Sandra Henry
The spirit of beauty blossoms year ’round As the spirit of love shines down from above. One crystal tear of joy fills the aching heart One delicate thought gives imagination flight One tender touch causes the soul to sing One sweet smile shall be felt forever more. Let all the oceans be crystal tear drops… Read more »You Are the Most Beautiful Thing… | Mónika Tóth
dedicated my nice Romanian friend Vasile every morning your name is honey on my lips every afternoon your name is flower on my lips every night your name is beautiful melody om my lips You are the most beautiful thing, in my life The post You Are the Most Beautiful Thing… | Mónika Tóth appeared… Read more »Expanding the Political | by Kim Moore
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationKeyboard | Baris Semerci
synthetic diamond alphabet revolution permanent carte blanche expressing all emotions with the same worn out keyboard More at https://twitter.com/hwl76. The post Keyboard | Baris Semerci appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineOppression’s Face | JD DeHart
Let me not wear the brass mask of oppression or raise the rod of correction to the weak and sincere. Let me not dress in cotton to cover a course inner fabric. Let me use words as a freedom and not as an expression of distance, creating chasms out of sentences and chaos out of… Read more »Richard Vargas: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
_________________________________________ 13 Angels Rising “Starting early in February investigators recovered 13 sets of skeletal remains from a once-remote section of mesa now being developed as a residential subdivision. Four have been identified… They are among a list of 16 women… Read more »Five Years On: The Day JA Died
[Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, and John Ashbery – (Photographer Unknown, circa 1965)] “….exquisite mind cartoons that could be heard with eyes closed, the voice perfectly ordinary with the slight edge of extravagant conversational camp, a mind artifice not unnatural to hypnagogic revery, deceptive, till you hear the chasm landscapes and awkward universes created and contradicted… Read more »An Urban Tale: First Job Interview | Donal Mahoney
Let’s check the terminal and see what jobs might be available to match your skill set, the interviewer said. The young man sitting next to the desk was wearing a plaid shirt and his first tie. I know you’ll take any job but let’s see what we can find. A young man like you, Deon,… Read more »They Were Refugees, Too | Donal Mahoney
They were refugees, too, back in the Forties, settled in Chicago, learned English, some a lot, some a little, found jobs of some kind, made do like their neighbors until things got better. And by the Seventies, on hot summer nights they were loud and happy gathering on Morse Avenue around parking meters in the… Read more »On John Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) [by Geoffrey Young]
It’s four a.m. on Labor Day 2017 and a voice on the BBC radio says as I lay in bed awake that John Ashbery died yesterday in Hudson, NY. He turned ninety a month ago. A dreaded moment had finally come. John’s career was long and exemplary. We’ll be pondering his works and admiring his… Read more »No COLA Raise Next Year | Donal Mahoney
No question the refugees in Europe have it bad as do the garment workers in Bangladesh as do the migrants herded to America for a fee and dumped at night to find their way through brush beneath the lights the border patrol has whirling. Millie and Tillie are ancient sisters who live in Iowa and… Read more »Sophomore | Ananya S. Guha
I remember ways that stood still in the midst of canny waves. When waves abated, a flicker in the mind said it is the sea. Recapitulating dreams. A sophomore. The post Sophomore | Ananya S. Guha appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Onlineand here’s the graph
you’ve got bills to payand you won’t be able toup to your giraffe in itsomeone’s having a laughand here’s the graph you can’t feed your kidsthey’ll go withoutback to scrooge’s surplus pop by halfsomeone’s having a laughand here’s the graph you’re strugglingto make ends meetthe rope for your graftsomeone’s having a laughand here’s the graph… Read more »
An Evening with the Poems of W. H. Auden [by David Lehman]
Back in 2008, Michael Braziller invited me to give a talk on W. H. Auden at the Philoctetes Society. They made a tape of the proceedings, and here it is. Among the poems we talk about are “September 1, 1939.” Every year without fail I think of that poem on the first day of the… Read more »The Lettuce Workers | Donal Mahoney
Somewhere in California a midnight one-eyed bus shoots lettuce farm past lettuce farm to abutment and a kiss. Now the morning papers cry 15 sleeping Mexicans glowed an hour or more. More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. The post The Lettuce Workers | Donal Mahoney appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe Unbraiding | Donal Mahoney
Had he seen the psychiatrist then, nine years and six children ago, the doctor would have said, “Never mind whether you should marry the girl. That’s not the question. Go home, go to bed. Come see me next Tuesday at ten. We’ll begin to unbraid you.” More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. The post The Unbraiding | Donal… Read more »Joy: Editor’s Discussion, September 2022 | by Robert Eric Shoemaker
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationPsychedeliKat
When I use my headto stick under the sandit”s a goody that beats evilwith comic heroes getting out of hand. miaow miaow miaowwow wow wowis a chorus to forgetbut one you’ll remember I bet. I got a low boredom thresholdbut I can’t be bothered to work out whatever that means.A tongue I can’t holdand a… Read more »Alien Visit
This place is outer spacewhere aliens arriveand they love slumming itin this exotic dive. Where they come from is pure,unspoilt, and as it’s always been.They beam images back homeand pose in concrete and green. They’re too clever for anyone hereand do their touristy invisible thingcos where they come from is pure,unspoilt, and as it’s always… Read more »A Moment to Swim | Mónika Tóth
dedicated my sweet Romanian friend Vasile a moment to swim in your eyes in your smile the flavor of life The post A Moment to Swim | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineBugs and People | Donal Mahoney
No season of the year is best for being homeless though autumn warns the worst is near and those who sleep in doorways want to learn their options as to where it might be best to spend the winter while those who spend summer in the garden sneak under doors and over transoms. Folks step… Read more »
Performance art meets literary étrangeté: Lina Lapelytè’s The Mutes makes my uncanny familiar [by Sean Ashton]
Behind the nettles, the wandering un-choral of Lina Lapelytè’s ”The Mutes”, turned the strangeness of ”I have never driven a 7.5 ton truck” into the normative, authoritative, of a Pater Noster. Lafayette Anticipations. Photo © Rasa J. When Lina Lapelytè asked if she could use my novel Living in a Land as the basis for… Read more »Life in a Barrel | Donal Mahoney
When we were kids growing up in the city we had prairies and a little hill and we’d put Stevie in a barrel and push him down the hill. He’d laugh and scream all the way down. He loved the whole trip and wanted to do it again. As little boys we were happy to… Read more »His Mount Everest | Donal Mahoney
Bug no bigger than a comma scales the wall next to my recliner. He’s climbing his Mount Everest and headed for the ceiling, a solo climb, no bug in front, no bug behind him. He has no gear and miles to go. He may fall at any moment. Let’s hope he signed up for Obamacare…. Read more »Mitch Sisskind presents “The Big Bang,” a poem by Nevin Schreiner
A poem by my writer friend of many years — The Big Bang This took place when they were half asleep The way you look when you roll over and say Huh? Dead brained, dream soaked Lava eyed. While engaged in making a baby Neither spoke much Or cared much what the other… Read more »Finally Free | Annika Kerner
today is the day i’m finally free of that jerk who only thinks of himself who does everything he can to make everyone else miserable who hasn’t done anything nice for anyone ever who is incapable of being kind in any way who wears a phony persona only when it benefits him who made my… Read more »Maybe I Had It Better in 1955 | Donal Mahoney
In 1955 there were four newspapers published every day in Chicago. I was one of hundreds of kids in the city who rode bikes seven days a week to deliver one of them. I had 100 papers or so in a canvas bag mounted on my handlebars. Had to deliver Saturdays and Sundays, too. I… Read more »Beggar | Lucia Daramus
I am alone. Alone. Alone! I’m crying in the middle of the street and my howl is green the madness which I am growing is black my father kept my hand and he said me you will eat a bread from the place where is your soul ! How truth and how untruth I’m hungry… Read more »A Circle | Lucia Daramus
sheep are running, and running, and running to the light bumps of the sun which is falling down on the yellow-grass nature is alive! Alive, alive , alive…. a woman is carrying a bottle of milk she is thirsty , she is drinking in her vein is dripping grapes of life from the milk her… Read more »Abbie Bradfield Mulvihill: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
photo by Ciara Mulvihill ___________________________________________________ We Can Move Forward Now My nose is burning from the Urine Destroyer. I’m speaking to the judge with my bare feet Perched on the cedar chest in front of… Read more »Woman | SB Moore
They tell her to wear a certain kind of clothing, and that she should smell a certain way. They mention kindly that she should smear herself in make-up, and that the person she wants to kiss may not be the right type. They tell her that she may want to consider “getting some work done,”… Read more »Chloe Calling | Donal Mahoney
The problem with Chloe is she moved to San Diego where the weather’s fair but hasn’t found anyone who’ll listen to her so she calls you or me at midnight. Back here she had folks who liked to listen to her and if someone got fed up someone else stepped up with a problem to… Read more »Spontaneous Aphorism: Hope
“Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.” — Mignon McLaughlin The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960 via The American Scholar (Summer, 2008) The line (which has also been attributed to Jean Kerr) makes it easier to grasp why Emily Dickinson [pictured left] ends with “despair” when “hope” is expected at the end of her… Read more »The Allure of the Enigmatic: Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” [by David Lehman]
From The American Scholar (August 25, 2022). Here are the oepning paragraphs of my latest “Talking Features” piece: When it was released in 1966, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up blew the minds of student cineastes and literary intellectuals at Columbia University—including me. Having just entered the college as a freshman, I sat at the feet of the elders at The Columbia… Read more »Breast Cancer Is Our Boardwalk | William Zink
Breast cancer is our boardwalk. Why not a cold morgue or a field fallow with bitter mustard? Why not an abandoned mansion turned into a crack house, or some listing ship taking on water, about to sink? Because this breast cancer, of all things, has lit the wheezing vapors of our marriage. Cancer, with its… Read more »Happy Hours | Gopal Lahiri
Borrow those Happy hours I want to count The time layers Smell the minutes And tiny seconds Float like petals In dense tequila under the blue Death light Soaking in past images And late evening metaphors More at https://gopallahiri.blogspot.com. The post Happy Hours | Gopal Lahiri appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author:… Read more »A Phone Conversation with David Shapiro in 2009
David Shapiro: Today I was thinking that the only time the Beatles sang a Broadway song was when they recorded “Till There Was You” from Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man,” and then a few thoughts occurred to me about poetry readings. [DL: Tell me.] As a violinist I can’t imagine reading the score alone, though… Read more »Papal Bull
If someone had stoppedPope Gregory IX persecuting catsthe plague may never have happenedwith all those rampaging ‘cat’s away, mice will play’ flea-infested rats. Now, that’s my kind of cat-propaganda Netflix doc fact!But later, shooting my mouth off about it on a beach sunbed,the sunbathing papist friend next to me shoots backand googles what I’ve just… Read more »Death Penalty | SB Moore
It’s easy to say, easy to spell out. When we don’t like a concept, we usually rename it. Then we can accept it more. I can be angry about crime, but not be the one who presses the button, injects the fluid, makes the call. The post Death Penalty | SB Moore appeared first on… Read more »Served Cold | Clive Oseman
I read your statement through eyes of rage- now my words will rape feigned innocence, imprison you in vengeance and violate your self esteem until you wish to fly into oblivion away from gawping eyes and rapid fire potshots at your worthlessness. Who are you to slash at me with lies designed to shield your… Read more »
Studio Takes: Leonard Bernstein (born August 25) Rehearses “West Side Story” with Opera Singers
Related Stories Theme Music: Claude Debussy’s “Danse Tarantelle” Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryReading Died | JD DeHart
Reading, I tell them, used to be the benefit of the very wealthy. Folks like them wouldn’t even be able to read anyway. Still, sometimes, I hear, Nobody reads and Why do I have to read and I think about those who do not hold the power of literacy, whose hands are kept from its… Read more »Abandoned | Michael Lee Johnson
Indiana farmhouse abandoned except old grandfather clock dusty corner pendulum motionless- still all family memories remain hidden behind that face. —– Michael Lee Johnson is a poet, freelance writer, and amateur photographer. He has been published in more than 850 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites. Author’s website http://poetryman.mysite.com/. Michael… Read more »Lear is Real: “Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are. . .”
Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend youFrom seasons such as these? O, I have ta’enToo little care of this! Take physic, pomp;Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,And show… Read more »“Snow Gold” by Emma Lew [Introduced by Thomas Moody]
Here is Melbourne poet Emma Lew speaking to the Australian Book Review in 2019 about her approach to writing poems: “Writing a poem, for me, is an experience that blurs consciousness and the unconscious – the one relentlessly and obsessively advancing and checking the other. It begins usually with a line or a… Read more »Matchless | Elaine Meredith
Winter passed, shadows fell foreshortened, snow patches yielded sight of forest floor depth, early morning’s sunlight blazed on tree tops, in motionless calm of nearing spring; evergreen’s burgeoned leaves where songbird’s trumpet clear piping followed far cirrus banners along chilled blue skies. Distant summits rose above high plateaus, ascending sweeping arcs; capped stone spires cleaved… Read more »At the Hop | Donal Mahoney
Two robins hopped across the lawn at dawn, one behind the other. The first one hopped to get away. The second hoped to be a father. More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. The post At the Hop | Donal Mahoney appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe New York School Diaspora (Part Thirty-Three): Jane Zwart [by Angela Ball]
Poem with a Hole in It My great-aunt had a typewriter that knocked the belly from every O she wrote. Every poem has a hole in it. A rifle’s sight, the peg of lens in a motel door. The circle cut in a kaleidoscope so we can see colors petaling down the straw… Read more »A Petty Bud | Mehak Gupta Grover
A little kernel in the mother’s womb, I lie sheltered in her protective amniotic fluid, dreaming of a calm and joyous futurity. But, alas, I’m roused from sleep. “I”, yes I am a girl! Let me acquaint myself- I have the same flesh, same bones, same eyes, same nose. I am also a human, is… Read more »By Mistake He Later Said | Donal Mahoney
Every once in awhile over the last 40 years Ralph wondered what might have happened to the guy who had moved in with the mother of his children and drank all the time. He remembered the kids saying when they were small the fellow got up one night to go to the bathroom and got… Read more »“Confession” [poem by Charles Baudelaire tr. Sandra Simonds]
Confession Once, and only once, Sweet Girl, my hand on your ass, I felt my spirit. It was late and snow fell against the moon, while all of Paris slept, and the cats passed before the houses, gliding like ghosts. Suddenly, in the middle of our intimacy, I heard a rich instrument vibrating, radiating, from… Read more »Your Home | Danijela Trajkovic
Come To your home No one knows Except you Where its door is What its walls look like Its windows Its roof If there is a terrace or not And from which material was built Come Whenever you feel Like coming home When you get tired of Wandering People Noise Whenever you crave Smile of… Read more »Emic & Etic | JD DeHart
I am outside and inside at the same moment, a life and a watcher, a participant and observer. The mob moves around me, a dislocated, disjointed voiceless shouting monster. I agree with them and don’t, at the same time, living in this dynamic of tension. The post Emic & Etic | JD DeHart appeared first… Read more »Beyond This World | by Shayla Lawz
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationJeffrey McDaniel: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
_________________________________________________ The Narcoleptic’s Marathon The hetero married version of a 69 is: she does the dishes while he folds the laundry. The sadomasochistic version of a hand job involves sandpaper gloves. My body is… Read more »The Lower Depps [by James Cummins]
The Lower Depps Amber is HOT but Johnny is NOT. Yes, I’ve Heard she dropped a turd in Johnny’s bed to get in his head. Okay, that’s fraught– I kid you not. To think the slippage from her equipage has soiled the sheets and both his feets, I cannot countenance. It’s enough to renouncenance… Read more »Sleep Issues | G. S. Katz
Drank a pint of Smithwicks around 7pm Split a plate of nachos with a friend Drank 2 fingers of Wild Turkey 101 at 9:30pm Ate Chicken and pasta around 10pm Small arugula salad too Hard some coconut sorbet at 10:30 Fell asleep watching political rhetoric at 11pm Went to official bed Dreamed about Mister Ed… Read more »Tragic | JD DeHart
In the old days, performers wore masks to show their emotions. We have microphones. How we move through the sea of tragic events, the constant rattle of news stories, says something about us. I have a box I like to put ideas in and then I come back to them when I am later able…. Read more »The Tracy K. Smith Poetry Forum in 2012 (photos by Lawrence Schwartzwald)
Tracy K. Smith, guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2021, was the guest of honor at our New School poetry forum on December 5, 2012. Here is photographic evidence, courtesy of photographer Lawrence Schwartzwald. (Great thanks to Lawrence Schwartzwald.) Related Stories Larry Rivers, August 17, 1923 – August 14, 2002: A Master of… Read more »You Didn’t Think I Would Know | Sasha
I bet you didn’t think I would know. It wasn’t difficult To figure out. All the clues Were there. You don’t cover Your tracks very well. I liked the way you Looked me straight In the eye And lied about it. It shows me What you’re really like. I guess I knew Deep down inside… Read more »A Previous Life | Donal Mahoney
It was their wedding night and Priya didn’t want to tell her new husband all about it but Bill kept asking where she had learned to walk like that. Finally she told him it was inherited from a previous life, a life she had lived many years ago in India, not far from Bangalore. She… Read more »Nostalgiarama
Join me down the waterfront at The Prospect.Millions of memories going introspect.Well maybe not millions but quite a few.We’ll have a couple of pints or the proverbial one or two. The world spins round at such a pacewith its starter pistol at the start of its rat racethat before you know it, your day is… Read more »“Calendars” [by Boris Dralyuk]
Surely, I must turn a new leaf. I am a new leaf turning . . . —Henri Coulette One to a cell, some thirty to a block, they spend long hours staring at the clock, while all their constant motions and appeals go nowhere, nowhere, and their three square meals are left untouched. There’s… Read more »Three Poems by Sean Singer from “Today in the Taxi”
Rites Today in the taxi I brought a woman from Morningside Avenue to 38th and 8th. She said “I’m going to be singing back here…I have to rehearse.” She sang up and she sang down, the alto-flutter and the tree stump cut from a hill. A writer said: We call ourselves not only what we… Read more »The Pumpkins | Angel Edwards
The pumpkins are a familyjust as it soundsa fun family of pumpkinsa four piece familyMom PumpkinDad Pumpkinand their childrenJolly PumpkinGrinn Pumpkinidentical twinsThey all likedto wear a fancy hatbut their headswere too roundto keep a hat on Green stems and rootsserved as shoes and bootssteadily on the groundthe pumpkins got around There was a lot to… Read more »Ballet over the Border | Donal Mahoney
Every summer they come, a ballet over the border, without papers, a mass migration of ruby-throat hummers, beautiful birds that devour millions of flies in North America, birds we welcome because we love their beauty and their ballet. We do everything to help them, hanging and cleaning feeders of nectar to plump them up so… Read more »Larry Rivers, August 17, 1923 – August 14, 2002: A Master of Rhythm and Hues [by David Lehman]
Happy birthday, Larry Rivers. You’d have been 99 today. Yitzchoch Grossberg, your given name, translates as Isaac Big Mountain (on the model of Giussepe Verdi equals Joe Green) and I love you and your saxophone, and how you sang “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me” in the green room with Ashbery, Koch, and Jane Freilicher for an… Read more »Twinkling Lights | Ian Lewis Copestick
The sky is dark purple And I can’t see a single star The only things twinkling Are faraway orange streetlights On the horizon It still looks pretty good though Even if they are man made And not the type of things That people usually get Romantic about A twinkling light is a twinkling light At… Read more »On Cannon Beach | Stan Morrison
a feather in the sand how i envied the bird takes off lands at will free of the gravity on earth unfettered by such cliches repulj madar, repulj fly bird, fly! The post On Cannon Beach | Stan Morrison appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineLeather Winged Angel | Judge Santiago Burdon
Bathroom confessions Back door redemption Black moon promise From a leather winged Angel Temptations blade Slicing the tongue of deception Ego’s fingers in the fan An avalanche of apathy Envelopes passion blossoms Buried under a shallow indifference Swallowed flaws found in perfection Choking on their taste of shame One undercooked summer of indiscretion Results in… Read more »Resurrection Tuesday | Judge Santiago Burdon
The subversive scheme of benevolent intention Fades with the last smile of summer Sounding an aluminum voice With an echo of fragile breath Silence interrupts the Applause of thunder Sentiments of affection Now a crippling disability Unable to outrun the future Your long ago in pursuit On the heels of memory’s shadow. Littering an already… Read more »Vaudeville Music Hall Seaside Town Murder
Are you still therewalking the pier’s wooden boards?Sat in your deck chairwith your wonderful theatrical frauds? Anyone’s word counts for the number of letters in it.Scripts thrown into the sea.Armbands round little arms doing their bitto keep a silent movie pianist afloat above anonymity. The sawdust footprintsmatch those left in the sand.Under a punch ‘n’… Read more »Yeah
Send away for a bullet proof gloveto catch every bullet, yeah.Turn every head, yeahand fall in love, yeah. Somersault underwaterand walk in a straight line, yeah.Turn back the clock, yeahand wind it forward to skip bad times, yeah. Subscribe to a new club.Blush and get a buzz, yeah.Get discovered and make loads of money, yeah.Disappear… Read more »Happy anniversary to us!
Happy anniversary to us. With thanks to Mahinder Kingra, who snapped this shot of us at Simeon’s in Ithaca on August 10, 2022. Related Stories Tales of the Eighties: A Moment with Mal Waldron [by Alan Ziegler] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryTales of the Eighties: A Moment with Mal Waldron [by Alan Ziegler]
August 16 would be Mal Waldron’s 97th birthday (he died in 2002). I spent a moment with him in 1983. “Look,” I say, pointing to a sign in a Greenwich Village club window, “Mal Waldron is playing.” Mal Waldron (when I first saw his name in print I thought it was a typo) was… Read more »Book Signing | Donal Mahoney
Keep writing, a famous writer once told me signing his novel, until you have said something true. The thing of it is, he cautioned, some never do yet find no time for life as it is. They find no time to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, care for the… Read more »Lady in the Snow | Donal Mahoney
I turn the porch light on at 4 a.m. to see if a miracle’s occurred and the paper’s landed somewhere in the snow blanketing our lawn. Instead I see a clump on the mat a one-eyed cat dazed by the cold looking at me as if to say “Are you the guy I saw a… Read more »The Deli on Granville | Donal Mahoney
I lived in the attic back then, and late those evenings I had to study and couldn’t afford to go drinking I’d run down to the deli and buy bagels and smoked lox. I’d watch the lame son wrap each item in white paper while his father, coughing at the register, pointed to the cans… Read more »My Funeral Arrangements
I If by natural causes First of all, don’t wear black.Have an egg and spoon race, or a race in a sack.Get together on the coast (near the countryside) somewhere at your convenience.Anywhere will do; a seagull residence. ‘A Day in the Life’ is the song for me, but play what you like.Peddle what you… Read more »Tuck Shop
Queuing up for a snackit takes me backback to the end of the queueand everything I would still might well can’t do. Go to Source Author: aprettykettleofpoetryKenward Elmslie, 1929-2022 — Poet, Lyricist, Publisher
What I want to know is: When I’m dead and gone. Who’ll prop me up in the dawn? — Kenward Elmslie Born on April 27, 1929, in New York City into a distinguished family—his grandfather was Joseph Pulitzer—Kenward Gray Elmslie grew up in Colorado Springs, CO, attended St. Mark’s preparatory school, and then Harvard, receiving… Read more »Alfred Hitchcock’s Fate Was In His Stars [by David Lehman]
At 3:15 in the morning, in London, England, one hundred and twenty-something years ago today, the great film director Alfred Hitchcock was born, a solid Leo with a macabre imagination (moon in Scorpio). When August 13 falls on a Friday, as in 1993, 1999, and 2021,you may expect bats to fly in through the slightest… Read more »I Fall in Love | Mónika Tóth
her touch warms the heart warms the soul.. I fall in love The post I Fall in Love | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe Last Goodbye | Mary Bone
My bittersweet thoughts of our last goodbye, still brings tears to my eyes. The last dregs of coffee, the end of a performance, one last encore in our own blue sky. The post The Last Goodbye | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineDante, Near and Far [by Robert P. Baird]
There is much strange in La Vita Nuova, the libello or “little book” that Dante composed fifteen or so years before starting in on the Divine Comedy. Take, for starters, the form of the book, an alternation of prose and poetry that produces effects as dizzying as any in Williams’s Spring and All. Or take the… Read more »Cursed Hatred | El Sane Ken Silencer
She is the rejected stone that not even moss felt her long presence under, nor earthworm. Neither is there a root of any grass that leaks her buttock, not also ants Whilst rain fall, fall and fall not t’watch away the hatred of her cursed hatred, the cloud remain tall. The moon comes and fade… Read more »No Retreats | Jonathan Abayo
I sat beside The quite stream Tortoising and calm Thrilled in mind Aha! I heard a tune A baby on mummy’s laps Such was a giant spirit No longer utter Should I! Would I! Could I! State of winning composure Overwhelmed with failures And discouraged with petty gains I’m an ant, I’ll move on I’m… Read more »Under Fire [by Terence Winch]
Under Fire Stop looking at me. I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t know the words to the song. That’s all. I wandered around the mall with my broken watch. I had all my receipts. But no one would take anything back. I am stuck with the whole mess. Saved phone messages, archived email, notes… Read more »Ben Jonson tells investors to face the music [by David Lehman]
Ben Jonson, England’s first poet laureate, wrote great poems conjoining wit and powerfuly feeling. Consider “My Picture Left in Scotland”) about which I have written this little essay) His poetry, his plays. his great influence has overcome its one-time state He is a great poet and I should do a little column on his elegy… Read more »Maggie and Max | Donal Mahoney
Our son married a flibbertygibbet, my wife says, and I agree, but he loves Maggie very much so I say let’s keep quiet. It’s not our place to criticize. Max is 33, and not long back from Iraq. I remind my wife that Maggie can cook better than most so let’s give her a chance…. Read more »Sand in Time | Kenneth Vincent Walker
A twinkling sea And sand in This morning’s Spectacular Display for Our pleasure. This foaming, Bubbling land Smiles at me. For our leisure Is the source of Our vernacular. The daily grind We left standing In the bitter cold As we’ve traveled Long and hard far Away from home Before we’re too old To fully… Read more »
Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom) [with Perry Como and the Ray Charles Singers, 1956]
This was high on the charts when I was eight and riding a bicycle to impress a little girl. I am still fond of the song. If you’re hearing Emmanuel Chabrier’s España (1883) you’re not wrong O America we serve hot dogs to the King and Queen of England and did you know It was… Read more »Jersey City | G. S. Katz
Got customers there Take the Path train to Journal Square Lyft rides from there JC is old City that time forgot I tell my driver about the diners All leftovers from an unknown era Like being in a Bruce Springsteen song I tell her She just looks at me and nods Getting it even though… Read more »Mixer | Mary Bone
While painting, the colors met, mixed and blended. The party had just started when a splash of brilliance emerged. The post Mixer | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe New York School Diaspora (Part Thirty-Two): Diana Goetsch [by Angela Ball]
YOU COULD I stood in the middle of my kitchen eating butter. It was 11 a.m. on an overcast morning I was wearing—well, let’s not worry about what I was wearing. I don’t make a habit of this— I’d never done it before. It wasn’t a whole stick, though a good half inch. Popped it… Read more »Human- Miners | Christos Tsagkaris
I. I’ll tell you the story of a place. A place full of trees, winds, water, lovely villages and people I’ll tell you the story of a place which is a part of history and from which Life blossoms. II. Every place is a sculpture. Over the land, the mountain picks the trees on their… Read more »If I Could Stop the Time | Jim Bellamy
if i could stop the time, then there would be a way to join the faceless child in fields of yesterday, and there would be such dreams for children to unfold; dreams of endless burning in meadows manifold. if i could stop time, then trendless youth i’d see, and every trendless season would be a… Read more »The Lovely Women of My Life | Donal Mahoney
If I met the same women now I probably wouldn’t know them. They’re missing teeth, I bet, and have gray Medusa hair. Their eyes no longer dance, I’m sure, and they have liver spots everywhere. They likely wobble in their flats and haven’t worn heels since adding fifty pounds. Some of them, I’m certain, wouldn’t… Read more »One Afternoon | Jenny Middleton
All everything loaded to one afternoon the grass itself printing to our limbs and clouds washing sky, the birds below us reeling and unreeling climbing in arced waves and wonder is a moment burning skywards- cut away from all, time fettered and tethered at bay. We exist a May flown day hour glass full sated-… Read more »When Life followed Art, which returned the compliment
Life magazine, August 8, 1949. Jackson Pollock: “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” The artIcle that changed the art world. On the cover: Deborah Reynolds. Related Stories “The Prophecy of an Assassination”: On “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) [by David Lehman] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryThe Definition of Gardening [poem by James Tate]
So many people in my various social media feeds are posting pictures of their gardens these days. I’m reminded of this poem, by James Tate, from his wonderful book Shroud of the Gnome. sdl The Definition of Gardening Jim just loves to garden, yes he does. He likes nothing better than to put on his… Read more »Words of Wisdom | Sunita Sahoo
Hey You! The one reading my message, Have you discovered something new? After overcoming life’s wreckage! Why do you cry? You are not alone! You can still soar high, Walking on varied paths unknown! You may fail a million times, But never give up trying! See how your spirit climbs, No wonder, it feels so… Read more »Newberry Library, Chicago | Donal Mahoney
Despite the digital holocaust of computers and cell phones, Newberry Library remains the Vatican of books with the right sounds, a cough now and then, a page turning, while out on the street a beggar asks for spare change. Workers with none walk away. More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. The post Newberry Library, Chicago | Donal Mahoney… Read more »“The Prophecy of an Assassination”: On “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) [by David Lehman]
When The Manchurian Candidate, based on the novel by Richard Condon, was released in 1962, Pauline Kael called it “the most sophisticated political satire ever to come out of Hollywood.” Six decades on, the judgment holds, and I’ll go further. With its mind-bending plot, its celebrated brainwashing sequence, and stellar performances from a cast led… Read more »“A desire to capture events”: Nick Courtright & Cynthia Good in Conversation [by Kristina Marie Darling]
I’m excited to introduce this conversation between Cynthia Good and Nick Courtright, who I’ve paired because of their shared investment in travel, documentary poetics, and entrepreneurship in literature and the arts. Here, they discuss their latest collections, as well as the intersection of lived experience, craft, and the business of writing. Cynthia Good is… Read more »Toxic Algae | Mary Bone
Toxic algae blooms killing wildlife as red tides roll in. A sign reads, “No swimming.” Birds don’t know of the danger. Cows drink the red sludge.. The stagnant, dead fish smell permeates the air. The flowers along the water’s edge are pretty for now. Picking them could be deadly. The post Toxic Algae | Mary… Read more »Alone Against the World | Wayne Russell
Out on his own, ravaged like a weathered ship that washed ashore a millennium ago. Awoken one morning by lone seagulls cry, the world seemed so very cold now, not knowing love. It’s frightening growing old, out on your own listening to seagulls cry, and shy away from looming thunderstorm, that lashes out for all… Read more »Auden’s Predictions in “For the Time Being”
Idealism will be replaced by Materialism. Priapus will only have to move to a good address and call himself Eros to become darling of middle-aged women. Life after death will be an eternal dinner party where all the guests are twenty years old. Diverted from its normal and wholesome outlet in patriotism and civic or… Read more »Another Shooting | Cassie
Another shooting… No one will do anything about it It’s as if we’ve decided that A few greedy gun companies that Care more about money than Human lives matter more than Children, moms, dads, sisters, brothers, friends The loudest voices win the day The bullies willing to intimidate And coerce others because of Some horrible… Read more »Sahara Blues XV | Ajise Vincent
I. Anytime, I peer at the wind fondling the nudity of the Sahara. I see bombs, dynamites, Shrapnel, being defecated on the the walkway to peace. Propagandas being etched on the nucleus of politics. Termites of corruption feasting on the root of development. II. Anytime, I listen to whispers blaring forth from the larynx of… Read more »My Cup of Tea (1997)
Vittorio Emanuele II turns in his graveAt the right royal turnout of riff-raff on his ‘corso’.A fashion designer’s funeral collection is all the rageAs celebrity paparazzi police ferret out paparazzi lying low. Obituary page bound,A favourite 60’s Britpop star has just popped his clogs;His life was mostly ups crossed by one terrible down.Your average got… Read more »Untitled
On Its Own I woke up to flashes of what I’d dreamt.They were flashes I fell asleep to in my head.I woke up to flashes of what I’d dreamt of that night.Flashes I’d fallen asleep to, snuffing out the candlelight. You can have success and failure in publicand a failure in private and all alone.It… Read more »Our Friendship | Mónika Tóth
dedicated my sweet Romanian friend Vasile our friendship is like a beautiful book enriches our lives The post Our Friendship | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe Bridge | Krushna Chandra Mishra
This is the very same old bridge. I remember every bit of what once happened here to be a matter to be repeated time and again over several of these past thirty five plus years, You think perhaps I have forgotten everything you said the first time we met here unknown to each other. I… Read more »“The Dreyfus Affair” [by David Lehman]
Louis Begley writes well and is a good guide to one of modern history’s great tragic causes celebres, the court-martial of French artillery Captain Alfred Dreyfus [left] on trumped-up charges of treason in 1894. The evidence was fabricated, the trial closed to the public, and Dreyfus was convicted and imprisoned on devil’s island off the coast of… Read more »“Intellect, anxiety, philosophy, history, art”: Rachel Abramowitz and Tina Cane in Conversation [by Kristina Marie Darling]
It is a pleasure to introduce this conversation by two outstanding and generous literary citizens: Tina Cane and Rachel Abramowitz. In both writers’ bodies of work, we see a poetics powered by community, enriched by conversation and emboldened by dialogue across genres and mediums. Rachel Abramowitz is also the author The Birthday of the… Read more »Icicles | Nancy May
new day melting icicles on bare blossoms More at https://twitter.com/Haikuintraining. The post Icicles | Nancy May appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThey Were Kept in the House or They Disappeared | Donal Mahoney
After World War II, I grew up in a neighborhood where most people made it but some did not. I don’t recall social services being available then but they may have been. It’s possible adults may have chosen not to access them or perhaps did so very quietly, without telling neighbors and other family members…. Read more »The Nest | Krushna Chandra Mishra
They were all very sure their nest there Was not broken despite the storm and there Still in the same old good condition to Welcome them in smiling for the rest They knew best they needed having not slept Ever since they heard of damages the storm had Done to most houses in the neighborhoods…. Read more »Photogenic Fakes
Share momentsReal momentsNice momentsNatural moments. But not with them.Unless you clear it with them.Only post what compliments them.Whoever’s snapped in the group, it’s about them. They look good.Of course they do.You’d post it, sure you wouldbut photogenic fakes aren’t like you. In the end, what you seehas no currencybecause once you’ve seen one great poseyou’ve… Read more »Announcing the Twelve Finalists for the 2022 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships |
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationPermission in Poetry | by Kim Moore
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationRenaissance: Editor’s Discussion, August 2022 | by Robert Eric Shoemaker
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationAlicia Jo Rabins: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
Photo by Alicia J. Rose _________________________________________________________ Sunday School Look around this cafe, everyone is reading the New York Times and talking, which all adds up to a clamor of breakfast noises and a mosaic of… Read more »2022 Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony [by Greg Pattenaude]
On Sunday July 24, I made the trip to Cooperstown to be part of the induction ceremony of this year’s class to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I was there to watch Gil Hodges, who I wrote about in January, be inducted posthumously. In addition to Gil, there were six other former baseball players being honored:… Read more »The Cruel Raven | Megan Ryan
Decrepit soul how blind are thee To see the world so cold and cruel From the blood shed of lost lives Like crushed cocoons of butterflies Not given the chance to take flight. You judge so quickly Of what you can’t understand Than given the chance To see through the mask. Why must you be… Read more »Poetic Sunroom in Rain | Angel Edwards
Sitting here in this pagoda In the rain Is beautiful I am full of sadness also pathos is poetic sorrow inside a poetic sunroom watching rain More at http://angeledwardspoetry.com. The post Poetic Sunroom in Rain | Angel Edwards appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online2022 Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
On Sunday July 24, I made the trip to Cooperstown to be part of the induction ceremony of this year’s class to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I was there to watch Gil Hodges, who I wrote about in January, be inducted posthumously. In addition to Gil, there were six other former baseball players being honored:… Read more »Gonna Go Gothic
A ghost came into my dreams‘Someone’s gonna goand you’re gonna miss them’is what it said and went off again. See how being the life and soul of the partycan leave you in the dark shadowsburied with the roots of a tree.‘Someone’s gonna goand you’re gonna miss them’is what it said and went off again. The… Read more »Myasthenia Gravis Can Affect Rich and Poor | Donal Mahoney
Perhaps there should be a hard rock band called myasthenia gravis. A rare disease for which there is no cure, MG doesn’t kill anyone right away but unmanaged it’s hard to live with. In time, it can affect the lungs, breathing, and can become a medical emergency requiring hospital treatment. Untreated, it can be fatal… Read more »Sunny Side Up | Elaine Meredith
If we shut the door there’d be some paths to choose between, and tomorrows every time, yet to live unto our yesterdays will only do once given ‘way the troubles we sorely seem to mind. If it was only right or wrong, decisions are ever to hand, yet none really lives that save in aftermaths… Read more »“I look like I paint. Who am I?” [by David Lehman]
Rhapsodic blues. . taciturn Cal Coolidge. . .”you lose” as the market reaches record highs, speculators buy on margin, Babe Ruth makes more money than the president, having had a better year, Lucky Lindy to Paris, Showboat on Broadway, Al Jolson on screen, Bernice bobs her hair and wears the diamond bigger than the Ritz,… Read more »The Ashbery Park of Amusement Initiated on His Birthday
I interviewed John Ashbery more than once. Sometimes it was for a newspaper or magazine. Later, when I hosted “poetry forums” at the New School, at which the visitor would read for thirty minutes and then take questions from the moderator for an equal amount of time, John appeared in our series maybe half a… Read more »Arrow in My Back | Hino Black
I can get up out of my bed… I can wash my hair and look good.. I can start my day just fine… I can drink my coffee.. And do my work.. But what can I do… When I can’t pretend… When I can’t force a smile.. Like nothing happened.. What can I do.. When… Read more »Rumour | Ananya S. Guha
Canard spreads that life is episodic with sniveling rife stock piling of cash and blue skies once were are changing into tinges of red. The post Rumour | Ananya S. Guha appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineBoum! More Birthday Wishes for John Ashbery (On July 28)
Related Stories Arthur Mitchell [by Marianne Moore] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryThe Hierophant | Jessica Wiseman Lawrence
A crowd of kneelers is before him, and I watch him from behind their bowed backs. He raises his hand as an object of heaven. He does not like the world changing. They get married young. They save every un-tithed penny, even if it means no shoes for the children and most meals out of… Read more »The Girl with Fear | Keith Russell
She was always living the life of horror and fear, In this world she was living in, nothing about her seemed too clear. Everything she came across in her life, she was petrified, She believed in God but always thought in her heart the devil was alive. She was scared to kiss, hug, scared to… Read more »“Tennis Court Ode” by Hazel Smith [Introduced by Thomas Moody]
John Ashbery, whose birthday is tomorrow, has been an important figure for several generations of Australian poets. This influence was acknowledged by the poet Michael Farrell, who in 2019 edited an anthology of Ashbery inspired Australian poetry, Ashbery Mode. With over sixty poems, of whose poets span fifty years, the anthology is as much a… Read more »Making a name for yourself (or Alas poor Alias, I pseudonymed well)
You have a first, middle and surnamebut none of them stay the same.Some get shortened being a mouthfulor get punned right from school. You lend yourself to nicknamesthat you get known by.Some know you as this, some as that.Some just get your name wrong and you let it lie. You even changed it and took… Read more »In the Service | JD DeHart
They claimed to be in service of a heaven or a regal king, descending on clouds or some such notion, but once I listened to their chewing sounds, malicious slander and gossip, I understood they were only serving self. More at http://jddehart.blogspot.com. The post In the Service | JD DeHart appeared first on Best Poetry…. Read more »Haiku | Laljee Verma
a misty morning clouds floating on tree-tops art of becoming! thunderstorm and hail has just passed away stormy silence! raindrops falling on the roof trees are but signature of nature on the orb. More at https://www.facebook.com/groups/SIMPOETRY/. The post Haiku | Laljee Verma appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online“Fairy Tale” [by Robert Desnos]
Fairy Tale Once upon many a timeA man loved a womanA woman loved a manA man and a womanDidn’t love The ones who loved themOnce upon many a time. Once and maybe only onceA man and a womanLoved each other. -– Robert Desnos (1900-1945)(trans. from the French by David Lehman) from the archive; first posted… Read more »Autobiography | Stan Morrison
I gave mrs fields my recipes, advised ann landers I later served in the army under colonel sanders I went to junior high with dr sholls, and then I graduated rice university with uncle ben I also dated Julia child until things got too wild she said she was on a mission and I had… Read more »Lucite Earrings | Mary Bone
Lucite earrings in bamboo green, matching my eyes behind sunglasses- not seen. The post Lucite Earrings | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlinePutin Versus Obama on the Phone [by David Lehman]
Putin (in Russian): Barry, what can I do? Putin’s translator (in English): The president of Russia sends his noblest respects and sentiments to his American counterpart. Obama (in English): This bullshit of yours — Crimea, the Ukraine — couldn’t come at a worse time for me. It is so nineteenth-century. Obama’s translator (in Russian): President… Read more »On the Fire That Creates Light | by Shayla Lawz
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationSilence | Debra Sasak Ross
So Still So peaceful Like water traveling down a free-flowing stream. You can hear everything Crickets Concerto’s Rhythm & Blues Anything you choose, But most of all You can hear your own heart And the beautiful memories it brings With every single beat. No need for words No need for sound Listen to the silence… Read more »Forgotten– for Syria | Ehizogie Iyeomoan
i saw this lean lipid face of a nameless once chubby child scribbled on the dust of memory –a whirlwind too in a hurry to erase it, to wash his face from the sands leaving only specs in history books –a tattered flag, a soon forgotten anthem More at http://iyeomoan.blogspot.com. The post Forgotten– for Syria… Read more »The Importance of Martin Guerre — Part One [by Joe Lehman]
“Martin Guerre: Now and Then; Then and Now” [by Joe Lehman] PART ONE “Land to last, as it’s passed, man to son, when it’s done as planned. Then we’ll pray it will stay as good Catholic land.” After the experience of living through the past four years, this lyric sounds a lot like Make America Great Again. At… Read more »Mark Wunderlich: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
______________________________________________________ Proposition That the smell of cows drifting through the open window is, indeed, that of a living beast. That I too am a living beast. That the body I possess is inhabited only by me. That… Read more »Epitaph | Tandem
here lies the poet you once knew, now the verse is closed while living the poet gave us rhymes, words to drape around our cold shoulders now we must bring flowers and a few lines of our own. The post Epitaph | Tandem appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineWomen’s Equality Day | Lee Anne G. Hall
See this woman Truly see her beyond skin see her strength and worthiness then let your dreams dare to match hers The post Women’s Equality Day | Lee Anne G. Hall appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online
Deems Taylor introduces Frank Sinatra on V-Disc “for the men overseas” (1944)
Sinatra at the Stork Club, 1944 “If You Are But a Dream” “Sunday, Monday and Always” as “Dick Haymes, Dick Todd and Como.” “Why should it get their goat, each time I bend a note, Dick Haymes, Dick Todd and Como?” “The fact that girlies scream they say will bring me… Read more »You Are My Muse | Mónika Tóth
Dedicated my best Romanian friend Vasile You are my muse Your name A tiny tattoo On my neck You are my muse My words are endless Happiness in my soul How precious you are The post You Are My Muse | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineNorman Doesn’t Go to Ferguson, Missouri | Donal Mahoney
Not far from Ferguson aflame are quiet leafy neighborhoods Norman Rockwell might have painted when subdivisions first appeared. These neighborhoods are beautiful because Norman still comes back four times a year, some say, for touch-up work here and there during the changing of the seasons. He paints russets on the leaves in fall, crystals on… Read more »Limbo [by Mitch Sisskind]
Limbo is a place or an idea that crops Up fairly often like if you’re in Starbucks Someone will say I’m in limbo about it Or I was in limbo about it until recently. But what do we really mean by limbo Or by in limbo since limbo itself is Pretty much always… Read more »“Famous Last Lines” [by David Lehman]
from The American Scholar, today’s “Talking Pictures” post features a quiz — with clues and answers — having to do with memorable conclusions of movies. For extra credit, who in the picture on the left, is the blonde situated between Anne Baxter and Bette Davis?: Nearly all classic movies end on a note of exceptional… Read more »Still in Love with You | Debra Sasak Ross
Moonlight dances like gold Across my field of dreams. Some past. Some blue. Some forgotten. Some new. They all have one thing in common, I’m still in love with you. More at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fallenangelpoetry/. The post Still in Love with You | Debra Sasak Ross appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry… Read more »Loud Flag | Lee Anne G. Hall
All can see the loud, loveless flag flaunted off the bed of your rowdy pickup, representing nothing but an abrasive lack of empathy, shallow, selfish. Only an empty soul could imagine his rights of attachment to a “symbol” outweigh anyone else’s rights or desires of a free and secure life The post Loud Flag… Read more »Landlubber | Mary Bone
Landlubber lived in the forest. He built homes and splatted his tail in the stream when danger was near. Landlubber’s gnarly teeth chewed branches creating shelter for his little ones. Life was good until the owner arrived and blasted his home to pieces. The farmer was glad he got rid of the beaver. Landlubber moved… Read more »How Much | Mónika Tóth
everyone knows my name, everyone knows my face, everyone knows my smile, everyone knows my laugh, everyone knows my voice, but it doesn’t matter cause, they don’t know my story, they don’t know my scars, they don’t know my lies, they don’t know my pain, they don’t know, how much I’m breaking down, how much… Read more »Detention
She walks down that streetlooking like a star I’m gonna meet.My jaw dropping heart stopping.Seen it all before but I was blind. Regrets I’ve had a few, Frank.Strangers in the night, Frank.Love your songs, Frank, and you were always way ahead, Frank.So how come you kept me behind, Frank? Go to Source Author: aprettykettleofpoetryEmotional
When you watch a gritty mother saying she’s told the kids their house has burned down.When you watch a Borg -McEnroe doc on their struggles, rivalry and friendship.When you see how much sacrifice a women’s England football player made to get to the top.When you see a friend struggling with bureaucracy diagnosed with cancer. When… Read more »A Sadness in My Heart | Debra Sasak Ross
There is a sadness In my heart That never goes away. It follows me Like a shadow Every night and every day. It has become A play- thing of sorts Like a long-lost teddy bear It makes me shed tears When I need to And it brings me a little comfort When I need that… Read more »Bag Lady | Donal Mahoney
(Chicago’s North Side) This senior citizen whose face is Rushmore still squats with pigeons on the steps of the Rogers Park Masonic Temple. She wears a shawl this snowy day and is beneath the visor of a hunting cap a woman who has paused along the way. Her shopping bags, stuffed, frayed, and each square… Read more »Make a Wish
If you ever doubtgood can last for goodcos it fades faster than it shouldmake a wish, baby. Light the candleson your birthday cakea big breath takeand on your big daymake a wish, baby. Love is easy if you let it win.All you need do is give in.Take a deep breathand make a wish, baby. Go… Read more »From “The Liberation of the Arabs from the Global Left” [by Hussein Aboubakr Mansour]
In Tablet, a fascinating essay on the intellectual merging of religion and politics in the form of Islamism and Marxism: The first self-object of neurotic obsession was Arab culture and Islam. Imitating the Frankfurt School’s analysis which exonerated revolutionary thought from the possibility that it produced Nazism and fascism and instead identified them as manifestations… Read more »Conundrums and sweet embrace: Aurélie Gandit’s “Visite dansée” with La Dame à la licorne [by Tracy Danison]
Aurélie Gandit’s Visite dansée adds movement to a mix of fact and informed commentary, adding spectrum to the understanding of “The Lady with the unicorn”. Photo © Michel Petit Life can seem grim lately: radical nostalgia-ism rampant in the homeland, pestilence sweeping the globe, war in Europe, betrayal everywhere. There is nothing especially odd about… Read more »Conflict and Participation | Lee Anne G. Hall
Conflict requires participation. Its unfolding depends on what you’re holding: wits or weapons. One leads to resolution, the other to escalation. One leads to conversation, the other to combat. One leads to explanations, the other to hostility. Don’t battle when you can barter. Bring your trade bead abacus And show the true accounting… Read more »Vacillating Benny and Monsanto Max | Donal Mahoney
Vacillating Benny, an ancient chemist now retired from Monsanto, must decide if a poem his friend Ron has sent to him is good enough for his hobby journal. Benny finally decides to let the poem marinate for another month without sending Ron a reply. Maybe it will sound better later on. A month later, Benny… Read more »Olena Kalytiak Davis: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
________________________________________________________ Hello Poem Aren’t you supposed to be all alive and tell me what is going on? What is A-happening? Poem, why so nonplussed? So hors-rendu? So hasard? So misérable? Poem, you are supposed to be for… Read more »Kicking up Dirt | Scott Thomas Outlar
Another twist of the knife with pinpoint precision to bleed the world’s angst upon the already drenched ground as division flares across the airwaves with a corporate media pimping and pumping the problems one right after another in a steady stream of chaos to keep the people afraid and at each other’s throats Another gunshot… Read more »What Do I Love? | Ananya S. Guha
I love the poem taciturn love the voice love the roots taking space within me love the crisp turn of the phrase the vile love the hauteur of importunate words strip teasing me into surrender I love rainbow in your eyes What do I love but barking times of restlessness? The post What Do I… Read more »The Unspoken Word | Jim Bellamy
It’s an unspoken word at the base of the brain that everybody deserves just what they constrain; an unspoken word that children suffer time: O it happens world over, but no-one seems to mind. It’s an unspoken word in the centre of the dust that each of us perverts just what consoles our lust; an… Read more »Love Me My Love | Laljee Verma
My eyes search someone in the crowd Vision has dimmed but not the hope Waiting for the face my soul searches To relish the serene beauty, which Springs the life in me! Morning wakes me with golden hands The blue sea churns some tunes Cuckoos sing sweet melodies Makes me feel romantic and young! My… Read more »Finland in the Headlines [by David Lehman]
“What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success.” It doesn’t quite measure up to “Worthwhile Canadian Endeavor,” which won the award for dullest headline of the 1980s, but it is still a thing of beauty, and it reminds me of James Tate, pictured above, for a reason I will explain. In the age of advanced… Read more »‘Beautiful women like to look in the mirror…’ [by Mitch Sisskind]
Beautiful women like to look in the mirror For long periods of time sometimes hours So if you ever manage to land one of them Be ready to sit solitary at the television set All afternoon long and on into the night. Here’s another thing to know about them. They will try on every article… Read more »The Hole in My Life | Judge Santiago Burdon
There’s a hole in my life where all the happiness leaks out Doctors tried to fix it with medication Which produced poor results So I made a hole in my arm to replace what I had lost Used all of everything that I found Nothing could fill the void. Next ambition, compassion gratitude and pride… Read more »Close Up Magic | Judge Santiago Burdon
In stumbles morning it’s been out all night. The dawn with bloodshot skies. All the answers I had questions to. Lay crumpled up in a lie. I’ve been a ghost haunting my own home. Hostage with unpaid ransom demands. Love’s an illusion done with close up magic. Sleight of six fingered hands. She’s a pebble… Read more »You, who ask me for a prompt, please consider “Reclining Nude” by Isaac Israel (1865-1934)
Related Stories Darragh Park’s Cover for “Two Journals” by James Schuyler Go to Source Author: The Best American Poetry“Days of Winter” and “Limbo” [poems by Sean Singer from “Today in the Taxi”]
Days of Winter Today in the taxi I brought a Chinese couple, parents of a student at Columbia, from Amsterdam Avenue to JFK. The girl was crying, the mother was crying, etc. The parents sat in silence for most of the trip. They didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Chinese. I did offer them… Read more »With Dying Hands He Strokes the Threads | Chris G. Vaillancourt
His brown eyes open, absorbing every experience that has been his to know. A looking back, sorting mangled bolts of history. His story. His remembering. With dying hands he strokes the threads that have unraveled around him. He blinks, and he lets a single teardrop glisten on his lived in face. There are miracles and… Read more »Tethered Lightly | Quietude
Does anyone else feel like me? I don’t think things are quite right. The children I’ve raised and live with Seem like strangers after they’re gone a day. Would I even miss them? The house I sleep in every night The same walls for 12 years But I’m sure I could leave tomorrow And have… Read more »“The Value of Stones” [by Michael Quattrone]
The Value of Stones It’s never what they weigh; it’s not the depth of silence they have known; it’s not the round- or hardness of their edges, certain color or uncertain age that proffer worth. Metals, crystals, precious on their own, may dwell within the body of a rock, but never mind those false alarms… Read more »Nomads [poem by Charles Baudelaire tr. Sandra Simonds]
Portrait of a 23-year-old Baudelaire, painted in 1844 by Émile Deroy (1820–1846) Nomads A tribe of prophets moves through the mist carrying a bit of money and little kids on their backs, kids with enormous appetites. The men are barefoot, Felix, just like me and their weapons are long, just like mine. The mist pulls… Read more »Seeing | Lynn Long
I only need to see To look within the mirror… For truth is my reality A vision oh so clear Alas, the fog closes in And my world- becomes a blur Seeking- I am lost again… The way so unsure More at https://www.facebook.com/beneaththemoonlight/. The post Seeing | Lynn Long appeared first on Best Poetry. Go… Read more »Reflections of the Man | Kenneth Vincent Walker
I was afraid of my father, Though he never gave me Any reason to be afraid. I respected my father for the Many sacrifices that he made. I disobeyed my father and his Love for me never swayed. I buried my father who speaks To me from beyond the grave. I am my father in… Read more »Karaoke Singing Lady | Mary Bone
I am the karaoke singing lady, in the car, at the stop light and in the shower. I sing without a microphone howling at the moon, listening to my favorite tune. The post Karaoke Singing Lady | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineBangers’n’Mash with Gravitas
Ever since the little black n white TV setwas flickering in the corner of my carpeted playgroundand through all the people I have and haven’t metthings have been going round and round and round. Some people go on about what their life issome don’t go on about anything, some about what it could be,some actually… Read more »Stone Dead | Laljee Verma
Flying above the clouds Across the stretch of my country From where I was evicted, catapulted With the whirlwind of yesterday And nursed my roots afresh! I wondered and wished If my soul could rain down On the earth below, atom by atom Acquire a body as before And lie across, obliterating the border Even… Read more »Sherman Alexie: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
_____________________________ Gentrification Let us remember the wasps That hibernated in the walls Of the house next door. Its walls Bulged with twenty pounds of wasps And nest, twenty pounds of black Knots and buzzing fists. We slept Unaware that the wasps slept So… Read more »Emma Stone | Tandem
today’s the day I’m supposed to be working but I’m watching Netflix instead writing silly poems I wish could be read in a smoky sometimes sarcastic voice The post Emma Stone | Tandem appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineYour Eyes | Mónika Tóth
dedicated my nice friend Vasile your beautiful brown eyes shine every day like the sun a wonderful treasure The post Your Eyes | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineOn Gendered Language | by Achy Obejas
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationEnvelope in the Pigeonhole | Donal Mahoney
This evening when I return to the hotel I see in my pigeonhole Angela’s writing on a yellow envelope. What excuse will she have for not writing? Too busy, perhaps, stirring cauldrons of soup while the cats dash about licking her calves. Or don’t the cats know enough to lick at her calves? Would that… Read more »Trumpets | Nancy May
new day rain drops off old trumpets More at https://twitter.com/Haikuintraining. The post Trumpets | Nancy May appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineDonald Shambroom’s “Forsythia” at Mercury Gallery (Rockport)
Forsythia, oil on canvas, 42 x 46 in. Donald Shambroom is a visual artist and writer whose work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In 1973, after graduating from Yale University where he studied philosophy and painting, Shambroom moved… Read more »What Makes a Restaurant Great? [by Mitch Sisskind]
So many evenings in the early 80s I made my way along Bennett Avenue, past Yeshiva Samson Raphael Hirsch (familiarly known for some reason as “Breuer’s,” with D. Lehman a proud alum) to 181st Street and the Hilltop Restaurant, pictured above. I must digress for a moment. I once watched a television interview of former… Read more »I Like Your Eyes | Mónika Tóth
Dedicated to my best friend Vasile I like your eyes just like the morning sun wonderful and peaceful oh, those golden brown eyes so fine, so warm i like it The post I Like Your Eyes | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlinePanic Attack | Austin Davis
You would never really compare the rhythm of breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth to the waves on a beach dying and being born again unless you’ve felt your eyes drip out your ears as a few of your fears suck your veins dry, the hungry way lovers share a milkshake… Read more »Saturday Surprise [by David Lehman]
Here are five sentences that I didn’t write. I proffer them not only because of the formidable intellect behind them but also because of the insights into our culture and into human nature. Some, if we consider when they were written, are of prophetic power. To play, identify the author (and name the specific source… Read more »Shadow’s Realm | Leanna Sellers
I’ve a darkened past, I shan’t say aloud I have a fear at times, among the crowd I’ll not let the darkness overtake me Nor hiding in the shadows taunting thee Sacred is the time at hand Relinquishing all things planned Dreams forever, they’ll provide Now beyond the great divide I can surpass the things… Read more »Dressed as Dali | Robert League
It’s easy to tell from the mustache who he’s meant to be, not to mention the clocks around him, running sunny-side up. The post Dressed as Dali | Robert League appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online“I look like I paint. Who am I?”
Rhapsodic blues. . taciturn Cal Coolidge. . .”you lose” as the market reaches record highs, speculators buy on margin, Babe Ruth makes more money than the president, having had a better year, Lucky Lindy to Paris, Showboat on Broadway, Al Jolson on screen, Bernice bobs her hair and wears the diamond bigger than the Ritz,… Read more »Deception | JayM
To End The Day: What is joy Asked the bee, Anything that can enchant my soul The flower replied. The abandoned petal laughed Said, Brutus was his happiness He was Caesar. The post Deception | JayM appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineLingtwisticks (A Cryptic Triptych) | Jim Bellamy
We are gathered here together In this fair place Where the stars shine down on each of us And the moonlight beams for Eternity. On se trouve, chacun de nous, Dans cet endroit charmant ou la chaleur des e’toilles Touche tout-le-monde Et clair-de-lune brilles, infiniment. SO WE GET TOGETHER HANGIN-N-CHILLIN IN THIS WICKED SPACE- SKYDUST… Read more »“The Garden of Allah” [by Boris Dralyuk]
The Garden of Allah Hotel, playground of the movie stars during the 20s and 30s, will be torn down to make way for a new commercial and business center. … The hotel originally was the home of Alla Nazimova, late stage and screen star. —Los Angeles Mirror-News, 1959 And now I watch another era fade,… Read more »On “Joan Mitchell” [by Sharon Preiss]
Harbor December (1956) To the… Read more »After Burying a Wife | Donal Mahoney
Were she here with me now, by the waist I would raise her, a chalice of wonder. I’d bellow hosannas and whirl her around, tell her again that I love her, press my face moist in the pleats of her skirt, ask her to sprinkle phlox on the curls of our children if they are… Read more »If We Ever Break Up | Donal Mahoney
Thunder and lightning at first, as I understand it, and then the moon will split in half and disappear and the stars will go dark and the sun will come up and explode in the sky, another Hiroshima. Hurricanes and tornadoes will savage the land. Sickles and scythes will harvest the people, throw some in… Read more »Both Sides Are Equivalent | Proxy
You’ll hear all the talking heads Talk about how Both sides are equivalent Spreading the false idea That the policies each side promotes Are somehow the same When even the slightest examination Reveals that one side’s policies Destroy all that is good And the other’s try to Help others Fending off the opposition’s base instincts… Read more »Apartheid | Ojo Adewale Iyanda
Season happenings in an apartment There’s always different pavement Racism smell in their statement They got it wrong in every arrangement The whole situation worsened ’cause of mismanagement, Waiting for a product of poor engagement Will all end up in disengagement, Except we all carry the burden of management. Best legacy is torn apart Slain… Read more »Moments of Change | by Kim Moore
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationRemembering Tom Disch, February 2, 1940 – July 4, 2008 [by Dana Gioia]
Tom Disch, who died on this day in 2008, is pictured here with his terrific computer game “Amnesia,” a participatory novel in which the player awakes naked in a hotel room without any clues as to who he or she is. From the Wikipedia entry on Tom Disch: Newsweek (January 12, 1987). In an interview… Read more »As of Yet | Scott Thomas Outlar
People rage righteous and that’s cool, I guess I’ve done it a time or two myself People run their mouths a lot it would seem I’ve done that, too when I lost my head People do a lot of things… everything, really I guess I haven’t done it all yet The world keeps on spinning…… Read more »Music | Jenny Middleton
Slashed as paint ripping wild the canvasof its confines you woke the room,your music a stringed surge reverberatingthe grey.Around the round words your lips moveas delicate as geraniums drift,as electric panthers wagthe tangle of minted night.owning us more than angelsand the very lyric breathof each plucked, pink noteis a danced destiny. More at https://www.jmiddletonpoems.com/. The… Read more »Wendy Xu: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
______________________________________ I Must Change My Form It’s true, nothing is coming out like it used to anymore Usually I am rather neat and tidy in my work It is spring, that time of year when all rain is expired cherry blossoms,… Read more »Grounded | Brian Rihlmann
The wind picked up this afternoon, swirling from the south, and as I threw a bag of trash into the dumpster outside the office a tumbleweed came blowing by, twirling and bouncing through the parking lot, it took flight while its shadow remained on the ground, and I suddenly thought: maybe without our shadows tethering… Read more »Ashes and Dust | Allan Lake
I feel sorry for Sicilian man up on scaffold, cutting concrete without a mask. He breaks for a cigarette. I notice he’s wearing his mask as a necklace. The post Ashes and Dust | Allan Lake appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online“Male Stargazing” [by Jim Cummins]
Male Stargazing After the prostate is removed, The male gaze, straight from the savannah, Turns inward, toward the clinical. The perusal of breasts is no longer The perusal of breasts, but the aesthetics Of proportion: how the breasts Relate to the shoulders, the neck, the waist, The chest—the male gaze without desire Is curatorial at… Read more »“Missouree” or “Missourah” | Donal Mahoney
In some parts of Missouri some folks say “Missourah” instead of “Missouree.” When politicians mount the podium at a county fair to speak to straw-hat farmers they say Missourah with the oomph of a tuba but in St. Louis they say Missouree nicely so city folks won’t think they’re “hoosiers.” Some city folks call country… Read more »Yes | Gary Glauber
When I finished the large tome, I felt proud. I had toughed it out, and even though I felt I probably was only getting a small percentage of the author’s inside jokes and allusions, I still felt a sense of huge accomplishment. Sure there was the accompanying guide by the celebrated scholar who assured me… Read more »“Letters to Dead Editors” [by Tom Disch]
On July 1, 2008, at 11:16AM, Tom Disch revealed God’s “other” Big Idea of the day. he called it “Letters to Dead Editors.” Another were-there-but-world-enough theme anthology. It was to have been a whole collection by yours truly, and the first letter would have been sent to Mrs. Gaskell, who inmho should be included with… Read more »Splash, splash (by Mitch Sisskind)
When I told Joe about how Sam Giancana Punched Sammy Davis Jr. in the stomach At Frank Sinatra’s house Joe looked at me And said, “I am like a frog that’s been sitting “Quietly on a lily pad until splash, splash, “It jumps back into the water not because “It wants to but because it… Read more »Done | Heath Brougher
You can not hide and everyone knows. More at https://www.facebook.com/heath.brougher. The post Done | Heath Brougher appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineTowards the Evening | Dinka Bednjacic
Towards the evening even the wind winds down At the end of the Court mini pine forest ablaze- at sunset Sky master flaunts brilliant fusion of colours on open canvass Clouds paint heavenly scenes And if you close your eyes for a moment they vanish into- emptiness Towards the evening fragile twigs fall from trees-… Read more »I Am Me VII | Ajise Vincent
I am a sailor oaring through life’s odyssey. I paddle a meandrous destiny a tempest of despondency has been my confidant, wheedling my esteem to salivate for death. yet I am undeterred I may feel seasick, today, mourning flashbacks of drowned dreams but tomorrow I will drink pints of rum in remembrance at Manhattan —–… Read more »Risk: Editor’s Discussion, July 2022 | by Robert Eric Shoemaker
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationThe Beauty | Mónika Tóth
the beauty soon dawn will come love, look at me the beauty fills my heart The post The Beauty | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlinePoetry’s Intimacies | by Lucia LoTempio
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationThe New York School Diaspora (Part Thirty): Dean Young [by Angela Ball]
Chaos Magic for Beginners Don’t we all love when the announcer gets choked up? When the roller coaster gets stuck, that an octopus can eat one of its own hearts when stressed enough and aren’t we all? Don’t you like to know stuff? Sperm leaves the penis at 28mph, in many countries being bird-pooped-on is… Read more »Language of the Xylophone | Donal Mahoney
If a man lives with a woman long enough it doesn’t matter what she says. She can say anything and she may, barring chronic laryngitis. What matters is the xylophone she plays when she says it. Tones can range from dulcet to cacophonous depending on her goal. Tones can tell him if the sun shines… Read more »My Horrible Neighbor | Sarina Grant
My horrible neighbor Does everything in his power To make everyone’s Life miserable It’s like he wakes up every day With the sole intention of Doing something annoying It shows in his face There’s no joy there Just a sad broken person Being rude because He doesn’t know What else to do The post My… Read more »“Girl Reading a Letter” [by William Carpenter]
A thief drives to the museum in his black van. The night watchman says Sorry, closed, you have to come back tomorrow. The thief sticks the point of his knife in the guard’s ear. I haven’t got all evening, he says, I need some art. Art is for pleasure, the guard says, not possession, you… Read more »Emptiness | Ajise Vincent
I. How could you? who was suppose to forefend me during climes perilous, be the author of my woes How could you…? II. You, my father, stripped me bare and ravaged my glory with hell’s claw to satisfy your inane letch. Wicked? III. Wirra! Like a corpse baptized with swaying- dust, I am drowning in… Read more »Penny Pincher | Mary Bone
Sometimes the pennies that I pinch Seem to groan and moan. I guess I’m a tight old wench, I cry when the money is all gone. The post Penny Pincher | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineWhy People Go To College [by W. Kirschberg]
“If the universities demolish the humanities by undermining their relevance or their validity, the immediate effect is to promote ignorance and laziness among students; the long term effect is to put into question the very idea of the centrality of college, which people attend for many reasons (alcoholic, athletic, sexual, psychopharmacological, fraternal) but not to… Read more »Martha and Mel Wait for the Elevator | Donal Mahoney
I died from a rattlesnake bite and found myself in line with other zombies in front of a bank of elevators, the doors opening and closing as if by metronome. Every time a door opened a voice called the names of 12 zombies who boarded the elevator single file. As the doors closed, Led Zeppelin… Read more »Reading and Nothingness | by Jenna Peng
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationThomas Devaney: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
Thomas Devaney. Photo by Patrick Montero. _________________________________________________________________________ Oregon Ave You can’t find a place to smoke anymore Ro says, smoking and rifling through her handbag looking for a number. She sits in the backseat with Meg. They’re not singing. The ballgame’s… Read more »This Peculiar Strange World | Anupama Mishra
Oh, this weary world this suffering world, where I have lost all the joys of my life, I never asked for luxuries to come but never expected the tempest to come, Oh, this strange pessimistic world the sceptic people live here, only wishing to downscale their friends. Oh, this selfish world seemingly beautiful but not… Read more »Puff Up, Inflate | Donal Mahoney
One kind of pigeon, one kind of snake, as far as I know, puff up, inflate. There’s the bullfrog, of course, and peacocks have tails so I tell my wife what she already knows: Once I become whoever I am then will I love you. More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. The post Puff Up, Inflate | Donal… Read more »“Cats” [by James Cummins]
When Eliot wrote his thesis at Harvard, He said philosophers doing philosophy was “ridiculous”— That two thousand years of this insanity had gone on Because they tried to explain existence From the point-of-view of a platform outside it, Which didn’t, and couldn’t, exist. One has only One’s sightlines; and wherever you find yourself, You’re in… Read more »Ant and Clown (by Mitch Sisskind)
The Ant You could not call him the Ant to his faceAnd you would be dead if you made theMistake of calling him the Ant to his face.Or what if you called him the Ant except Not to his face, like you called him the AntTo somebody and he only heard about it? He wouldn’t… Read more »A Farewell Message | Tianyu
Always remind myself that I can’t fall in love with you. But I don’t know when. I’m already in love with you so. We are sure of each other. If one of you and I shed tears, That represents the reluctance between you and me too. People who don’t understand our feelings, They also thought… Read more »Beginning | Tianyu
Loneliness at midnight, Like a sharp blade. Scratched but no trace. Stop but no peace. It’s quietly approaching behind. Like putting fire in oil. If a meteor does not fall, Darkness will not draw. Always hovering in front and back of the intersection, It seems that everything is not far. But the result is faint…. Read more »Philip K. Dick [by Mitch Sisskind]
No telling what time it was As he woke in darkness with The sleeping cat’s warmth, A gift from God, on the back Of his neck and, weeping, He willed himself to perfect Stillness lest the cat leave. But wait. Here was a thought, Here was another possibility: He was dead and, willfulness… Read more »When a Debutante Marries a Troll | Donal Mahoney
The problem is, Priscilla grew up in a penthouse having parties while Biff came of age under a bridge fighting other trolls, he remembers. When Pris calls his office and says we’re having guests tonight the chasm in their marriage grows. The guests go home sauced and smiling but the chasm stays behind, snarling. Biff… Read more »Following | Sylvia Thompson
Stop. I’m not part of this. I’ll be leaving now. I don’t understand How none of you See what’s going on. A herd following Whoever they think They should be, Experts non experts. Stop, now. It doesn’t have to be this way There are so many Other beautiful Things to be done Instead of being… Read more »Clare College, Cambridge, and John Berryman
Twice a day I crossed you. . . Among the Columbia College graduates who attended Clare College were John Berryman (left), Norman Podhoretz, Morris Dickstein, and David Shapiro. Much of Berryman’s Love & Fame addresses his time at Columbia and Clare. The late Clive James tells some of the facts in this wrongheaded 1972 review…. Read more »Whispering | Veronica Alvarez
hushed tones, uncomfortable words shared in secret, I don’t want to hear about it any longer make it go away these unwelcome overtures bringing nothing but discomfort instead of joy, the hours pass by the whispering continues The post Whispering | Veronica Alvarez appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineMadman in Remission | Donal Mahoney
Does he remember? Jenny, how could he forget? Thirty years ago you roared into his office and raged about your cousin’s decision to marry him. He had never met you. Your cousin had told him you were in town and suggested he take you to lunch, show you Chicago. She didn’t know you were angry…. Read more »The Feather | Lynn Long
Once upon a cool spring breeze A feather flew with grace and ease Gliding along without care The feather sailed into warm summer air Over oceans and mountaintops The feather drifted without stop Autumn brought a gentle rain Amid melancholy winds of change With wistful hope of being found The lonely feather fell to the… Read more »Alain Robert | Manuelito Pio Roda
He can dance with the beats of his own heart. While climbing high up in the skyscraper. There lies his endless glory. Up there he dwells to conquer. More at https://allpoetry.com/poem/14550838-Alain-Robert-by-Raven1109. The post Alain Robert | Manuelito Pio Roda appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineFuture Perfect | by Noah Baldino
Go to Source Author: Poetry Foundation97 Reasons to Celebrate Stanley Moss on June 21
Because you stand still long enough to gather the finest moss. Because you stand. Because you roll. Because you rolled 197 topping all competitors at Neptune Lanes. Because you’re Stan the Man. Because we had lunch at Lupa on Thompson just off Houston. Because you know Irwin Shaw and forgot to tell him. Because you are a bronze satyr…. Read more »“The Judgment of Paris” [by Peter Paul Rubens]
Peter Paul Rubens’s Judgment of Paris hangs in 1) The Louvre in Paris 2) The National Gallery in London 3) Nuremburg 4) Le Bateau ivre The painting refers to 1) The origin of the Trojan War 2) A competition among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite 3) Hector’s brother 4) The golden apples of the sun, the silver apples… Read more »Power | JD DeHart
What will we agree on as the definition of power- the stamping boot, hooking claw, raw intensity of a shout Or simply existing in a tug of self, dining peacefully in a room full of venom. More at http://truthaboutsnails.blogspot.com/. The post Power | JD DeHart appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best… Read more »Stranger Comes to Town | Donal Mahoney
Beautiful fall day in a potter’s field outside a small town. A funeral is underway but that doesn’t stop the leaves russet and gold a few still green falling among the stones without a name. The minister reads a verse over the grave of a man found by deer hunters. No idea who he is… Read more »Carmen Giménez Smith: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
___________________________________________________ No Apology: A Poemifesto Isn’t there a line by Yusef Komunyakaa, “I apologize for the eyes in my head.” Maybe what I am trying to say is that I apologize for the sight in my eyes. Susan… Read more »Sonnet: Marriage (Inspired by Rossetti’s Painting of Jane Burden) | Jenny Middleton
It was like the sweep of land seen from ships Coursing the misted bay and calling through the night Like safety all at once spilling from our lips And carrying us ashore, beaten by light And salt bitten tides; the murmured orisons Of promises. Whispered and held in hand. Forbidding and tempting purple as damsons… Read more »First Date | Manuelito Pio Roda & Moira Lacambra
My heart was pounding when you said yes. Now here I am getting dressed to impress. This is it, the moment is ours. Let’s both mark these precious hours. I promise, I’ll do my best to make you smile. Knowing me is worth your while. I like you girl, you know I do. I hope… Read more »That Magic Call? (2022)
Jiust posted my 40th collection, All new poems and drawings. Up in menu. Happy 80th birthday to Paul Mc Cartney. John Lennon and Paul is why I started writing 40 years ago. Great inspiration! Was going to call this collection ‘The Upteenth Beatle’ cos there are so many of us inspired by their music. Go… Read more »Louis Sisskind, around 1958 (by Mitch Sisskind)
Are a few observations. Although he was right handed, he wore his watch on his right hand, which is slightly unusual. Also, he did not take his watch off when he went to bed at night. Although he was almost completely bald, he got a shave and some sort of scalp treatment every Friday at… Read more »Weekend in New York | Ivan Jenson
We know that the sorrows of this world are round as we circle mother’s earth like thoughts on a plane waiting to land in the rain in the night and then we arrive at our destination famished and holding our cell phones to our ears like everyone else expecting to see someone on the other… Read more »Somnambulist | JD DeHart
do not close your mind to the back row sitters. all of them need you. do not grow old behind your podium, spilling test after test. liven the curriculum, take a risk, and write a new lesson for them. write life for them on the board and show them the dance that goes with it…. Read more »No Wrong Time To Write Right [by Alan Ziegler]
John Milton felt that early in the morning was the friendliest time for the Muses. He would have a stock of verses ready to dictate by the time his amanuensis arrived, and if his amanuensis was late, Milton would complain that he “wanted to be milked.” Charles Darwin was… Read more »
The title sequence of “Ocean’s 11” (1960) by Saul Bass
The greatest title sequence by the master, Saul Bass. Related Stories “Noir City” on William Holden, “Noir’s Reluctant Hero” Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryDeath in the Sun | Jim Bellamy
ahh out of the death in the sun, when time was out of love and the cares of the countless soul lay riven in the seed of this zero earth, over this barbed law and the war that comes hereafter to dedication to the self and the salt moon in burning, man who is woman… Read more »The Ballad of Davy Jones | Jim Bellamy
standing in the fathomless ocean, trying to find the davy dark, u know the depths of the endless oceans were darker than the ark, and though the fish were singing, nobody came around to console the coastal choirboys, nor any muse was drowned. the diver said a sermon and the seamless waves sucked up, and… Read more »Does Anyone (Still) Care About F. R. Leavis? [by David Lehman]
Does Anyone (Still) Care About F. R. Leavis? [by David Lehman] I recently reread F. R. Leavis’s New Bearings in English Poetry (1932), one of the most influential books of literary criticism in the twentieth century. What impressed me on this reading — my first since my student days at Cambridge, where Leavis, though retired, was still… Read more »A Widow and Her Pekingese | Donal Mahoney
Summer evenings after the news at 6 p.m. the Widow Murphy comes out of her tiny bungalow and sits on her front porch swing with her ancient Pekingese yapping mournfully in her lap. She waves to certain people, just a few, while ignoring most although she knows every neighbor after her long reign on the… Read more »Bread | Nancy May
summer sunset leftovers for ducklings crumbs on the pond The post Bread | Nancy May appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineAlbert Einstein on Compound Interest — and Reality
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” Related Stories Oscar’s bon mots! (10 Favorites) Go to Source Author: The Best American Poetry“Noir City” on William Holden, “Noir’s Reluctant Hero”
NOIR CITY Magazine No. 34 Highlights in this issue include profiles of two actors – one classic, one contemporary: Stanley Baker/Loving a Thieving Boy by Ray Banks and J.T. Walsh/Solid Cold by Steve Kronenberg. And, for anyone who has followed the FNF’s interest in Argentine restorations, particularly The Beast Must Die (1952) and El vampiro negro (1953), Imogen Sara Smith’s in-depth… Read more »Small Steps | Lindsay Rappaport
Try, try, try. Work, work, work. Nothing happens. Treading water. Falling into a deep state Of depression. Nothing happens, Even less happens. Awake to the realization You are worth more. Small steps leading To wonderful things. The post Small Steps | Lindsay Rappaport appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe Shivering Hands and Shaky Voices | Anupama Mishra
The shivering hands and shaky voices are left alone, nowadays. The days are unpleasant, perilous and grave for the old. Having been deserted and left he is avoided like an abandoned house with its broken doors and sagging porch. Poor old, considered as an oxidised lock, is now felt unsafe, unsound, and fallible for the… Read more »Oscar’s bon mots! (10 Favorites)
–I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability. — When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. — A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently… Read more »Walking through the Ghats | Anupama Mishra
I was walking through the holy river Ganges the mesmerizing atmosphere and peace was tempting the flooded heart and empty mind, I sat on the broad stairs of the ghat Which was a little filthy but unlike a fake friend it made time for me to sooth the bruise and the pain of my ailing… Read more »Animal Kingdom | Stan Morrison
how do you pronounce the e in giraffe what exactly makes the hyenas laugh rabbits are silent, wiggling their nose sniffing for carrots or maybe a rose i’ve noticed cats just stick with meow wanting to say more, not knowing how elephants play trumpets, raccoons on bassoons they’re forming a band and will be ready… Read more »The Enemy (L’Ennemi) by Charles Baudelaire [trans. Sandra Simonds]
The Enemy My youth was so full of rage that only the most brilliant of suns could puncture it. Thunder and rain ravaged me until my garden filled with venom. But now my mind has come to the autumn of its ideas and one must rearrange this earth with a shovel and rake. Flowers are… Read more »After Listening to World News Tonight | Donal Mahoney
When the next emperor dies and arrives in Hades there will be great applause from the other emperors who arrived there before him. They will drop pitchforks, kneel in bonfire and bow to their newest colleague, the one for whom Satan now rises and offers his throne so the new man can reign in glory… Read more »Lemon Underwear | Donal Mahoney
(The New Morse Hotel Chicago, circa 1970) What if after Browne has gone one of us discovers who Browne was, leads the rally to his room before the maid has time to broom the webs, retrieve from underneath the bed the sweat-stiff socks, the lemon underwear? What if before he leaves Browne scrawls across the… Read more »Squib 479 [by Alan Ziegler]
For Roger Angell (1921-2022), Part Two. Part One In the subway heading to The New Yorker for an editing session with Roger Angell, I fantasize hovering near the receptionist’s desk as a line of supplicants with manila envelopes are each declined entry (“I just want to make sure he gets the references”). They watch their… Read more »Jerome Sala: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
___________________________________ A History of White People white people were paid well not to witness the fact that they were white you know the theory white isn’t a color but color’s unlimited absence white goes with anything that’s why it seemed fair that white people… Read more »Tragedy | Gemelene Magalona
I left for you, the hollow silhouette of a faithful shadow lurking in the wistful wilderness where echoes of despair wail in the crippling thickness of a drowning silence engulfed by yesterday’s haunting melodies I left for you, the plague of a lie draped with the dulcet tones from a vow-stricken promises of eternity’s black… Read more »Jeffrey Diga | Manuelito D. Pio Roda
Seasoned in all ways of deception, by cards, puppets, and psychic demonstrations. Holds the cup of good profits. Wears black leather of compliments. He is one of the crowned kings of modern day astonishment. More at https://allpoetry.com/Raven1109. The post Jeffrey Diga | Manuelito D. Pio Roda appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author:… Read more »“My Picture Left in Scotland” (by Ben Jonson) [commentary by David Lehman]
I now think Love is rather deaf than blind, For else it could not be That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me And cast my love behind. I’m sure my language to her was as sweet, And every close did meet In sentence of as subtle… Read more »At First Blush | Mary Bone
Flowers in a secret garden, at first blush-cheeks the color of a fine rosé wine. The post At First Blush | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineSinging to His Base | Stan Morrison
Palpebral fissures and hair types The words on t-shirts and caps Nowadays are dead giveaways Like body sales at the morgue Tatoo images and sunglasses Blue tooth plugs and gold jewelry Say no more, we’ve got your number Shorthand summaries never fail Amerika, Amerika God shed His Grace on Me! The post Singing to His… Read more »“The Trouble with David Lehman Is” [poem by Ken Lauter]
(ed note: Today is David Lehman’s birthday and this poem, which came in “over the transom,” seems just right! Thank you Ken Lauter. sdl) The Trouble with David Lehman Is that he’s like a huge hurricane spun up in the Atlantic Ocean of Erudition or he’s just a fucking non-stop reader who blows in on… Read more »Born on the Eleventh of June [by DL]
Our Birthday (June 11) Dear Beth, Leo, Allan, and Pauline, Lawanda, Sabrina, Deborah Joshua, Lise, and Christine, Born today, like us, were Jonson, Ben, and Googe, Barnabe, two men of poetic greatness; and how about some confetti for Vanzetti (of Sacco and Vanzetti) and Loeb (of Leopold and Loeb)? Ready or not, here comes coach… Read more »Letting Go | Manuelito D. Pio Roda
Fighting against the pain of lingering loss, while memories still burns bright. Reflecting beneath the longing nightfall. Dropping the old to pave the path for the new. Gazing at the beauty of a new future ahead as letting go of the past And the time when there was me and you. More at https://allpoetry.com/poem/14527008-Letting-Go-by-Raven1109. The… Read more »Reminiscent | Manuelito D. Pio Roda
The rain falls again. Forced to embrace the silence in this solitude. Where memories come into view. Twisted images of me and you. Like a nightmare that keeps eating away on my mind. The wind sounds like a unbridled symphony. Untamed at my consciousness. Slowly killing my spirit continuously. For I was cradled by your… Read more »The dash of Lord Byron in “Don Juan”
‘T is pity learnéd virgins ever wedWith persons of no sort of education,Or gentlemen, who, though well born and bred,Grow tired of scientific conversation:I don’t choose to say much upon this head,I’m a plain man, and in a single station,But — Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,Inform us truly, have they not hen-peck’d you all?… Read more »Gil Hodges in the Hall of Fame at last
The Dodger great managed the 1969 Mets to the World Champoionship. He would have been 98 on April 4. Great first-baseman, clutch hitter, drove in both runs when the Dodgers won the 7th game of ther 1955 World Series,beloved in Brooklyn. “Not getting booed at Ebbets Field was an amazing thing. Those fans knew their baseball, and… Read more »Separation Anxiety is Just Fear of the Future | Sabrina X.
She’s taking the first steps out from under the wingtips of her mother. Leaving. She’s shaking, stepping deliberately in every puddle she can find, her sneakers and bones soaking in the frost as it thaws. She’s sinking, wishing the blurred reflections of naive children’s dreams in the sky could be more than that. She only… Read more »Nominations Now Open for 2022 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism |
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationWater and bread, not wine and cake: choreographer Mylène Benoît speaks up for dance [by Tracy Danison]
WONDER by Mylène Benoît: “Body memory working on the body present”. Photo © Fabrice Poiteaux The portico on the Théâtre des Abbesses boasts a quote from Pina Bausch, a genius, sure, but also beloved of those who knew her: “Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost.” … Over her writing desk, where I often sit procrastinating, my… Read more »If Only We Knew | Sean Corvin
What would happen if only we knew To observe ourselves guessing What would we do How do you feel about not feeling what’s true In a world of uncertainty there’s nothing but you The doors of perception are closing on me There’s nothing else left here nothing to see But if I step through now… Read more »An Interview with Meg Pokrass and Jeff Friedman (by Nin Andrews)
Recently, I had the pleasure of reading a delightful collection of micro-fictions/prose poems: The House of Grand Prado by Meg Pokrass and Jeff Friedman. I have to confess that I was hesitant to open the book because I rarely enjoy reading collaborations. In my opinion they often read as inside jokes or private dialogs between… Read more »Unresolved Issues | Tamara Sommers
It’s almost like you have no idea What you did to me, how you Reduced me to tears and destroyed My being, stepped on my joy And turned it into refuse, Made me feel so small, All because you didn’t know how To get over all your garbage and Stop putting it on me, I… Read more »First Day on Parole | Donal Mahoney
Sometimes a person can go too far, Mickey said, two stools over downing another beer, his first day on parole. Someone like that cops can find dead, he said, after newspapers start littering the lawn. A bullet in the temple that no one hears because of a silencer, he pointed out, is sometimes the culprit…. Read more »Happy birthday, Dean Martin
Related Stories June is Bustin’ Out All Over Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryOn D-Day (Just In Case) [by General Dwight D. Eisenhower]
On June 6, 1944, nearly 3 million Allied troops readied themselves to cross the treacherous English channel in less than ideal weather. On this day, the first 160,000 of those troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. As they stormed the beaches, General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s words rang in their ears: “You are… Read more »These Hard Worked Hours | Jenny Middleton
Office windows; squares of unflinching yellow lit geometry. From the train I watch them slide their flickered familiarity to darkness and watch the dizzying feet of countless commuters dust the ruler line platform with the news-papered security of repeated journeys. and inside minds lurch to life with the jolt and halt of stations hoping for… Read more »The Emerald Isles of Summer | Mary Bone
The emerald isles of summer gleam through my eyes of green. There is so much beauty to behold, so many sights to be seen. The post The Emerald Isles of Summer | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineEmily Fragos: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
__________________________________________________________________________________________ The Sadness of Clothes When someone dies, the clothes are so sad. They have outlived their usefulness and cannot get warm and full. You talk to the clothes and explain that he is not coming back as when he showed up immaculately dressed in slacks and plaid jacket and had… Read more »Not Quite | G. S. Katz
That’s how it is these days It used to be the idealism of great sex Now it’s mind play and where it fits in the brain jar I was never easy to understand There are always things I want to say But if I go there, I’ll be asked to explain Defining it is like… Read more »Numb | JD DeHart
I do not have the words, though I have paid for them. I lined my walls with papers which say I should know what to say. Maybe the truth is so simple and elusive, I missed it on the way. Maybe it was on a waving, blaring, neon sign several miles back. But now I’m… Read more »To Burn or Not to Burn: The Heir’s Ultimate Dilemma
This profoundly unenviable dilemma has been faced by the friends and family of Franz Kafka, Philip Larkin, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and, perhaps apocryphally, Virgil. When an heir succumbs to the temptation to burn something—as Ted Hughes did with some of Sylvia Plath’s papers, on the not unreasonable grounds that there were things there he… Read more »Owning a Karelian Bear Dog [by Mitch Sisskind]
You’ve bought a Karelian Bear Dog, Now what? Does it have a name? Does it have a place to sleep? Food? Water? If you have a summer home Far from the city’s hurly-burly then I am quite sanguine about prospects For excursions thither but mind you There will be fleas! So do you still Want… Read more »
June is Bustin’ Out All Over
Richard Rodgers was Jerome Kern’s successor as the greatest melodist on the Broadway stage. From Carousel (1945), the month of June is saluted with this sweet song perfect for ensemble singing. Lyric by Oscar Hammerstein: “To ladies, the men are paying court.” “All the rams that chase the ewe sheep / Are determined there’ll be… Read more »Until | JD DeHart
Rain until the rain ends, sadness until the cluster leaves, mourning until a fresh feeling crops up. The better sometimes comes quicker, but the easier is a more appropriate way to put it. Those who love us leave there, a tattoo on the skin, which will never erase. Nor do we want that mark to… Read more »
“I have zest and appetite and I like food!” Mary Astor in “The Big Lie”
— sdl Related Stories June is Bustin’ Out All Over Go to Source Author: The Best American Poetry40 Years of illustrated poems 1982-2022
Here is a quick visual representation of my self-illustrated poetry collections since 1982. In the menu, there is ‘One poem from each collection 1982 onwards’ to see an example of what I was writing at the time. My 40th collection is in the making and will be posted soon! 1.-coversDownload 2.-coversDownload 3.-covers-and-indexDownload 4.-covers-and-indexDownload Go to… Read more »Gone?… | Jim Bellamy
Gone, like a song that lingers on, wrong, the way is endless song. i was lost inside the rain, i was lost before you came. gone, like a song that lingers on. strong was the place where we first met. wrong was the palace of our debt. strong was the place where death grew long…. Read more »Bun in the Oven | Kenneth Vincent Walker
I always feel an emptiness Without a bun in the oven, Without a poem in progress, Which is truly my salvation. For the low swooping raven Seeks to hinder my success. My poems are my children, And it’s in them that I rest. My life has just one purpose, To rise above the cauldron With… Read more »Why Ask Me to Topple All the Trees? | Marie MacSweeney
If it is an apple I can cut away the badness and eat the rest, or songs that I sing, I will not sing all but what the head tells and the heart believes or the moment decrees, or winter days I can face cold when it is cold I can handle, and indoors possess… Read more »Curare: Editor’s Discussion, June 2022 | by Robert Eric Shoemaker
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationSean Thomas Dougherty: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
Sean Thomas Dougherty, 2021. Photo by Melanie Rae ________________________________________________ Snowglobe It is late and I want to sleep but the two girls who work at the gas-station-convenience store next door have gotten out of… Read more »Mortimer’s Problem | Donal Mahoney
Forgiving someone has never been a problem for old Mortimer. Mort’s forgiven folks for years, some twice a day, so forgiveness is like breathing. It comes easily for him. His problem is forgetting what the forgiven party did. That’s impossible, Mort told his therapist. His father crossed him back in kindergarten and Mort forgave him… Read more »Sunkissed Beauty | Mary Bone
Sun kissed beauty, lying on the beach a conch shell to her ear, eating a juicy peach. The post Sunkissed Beauty | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineNot the Worst Audience | by Chaelee Dalton
Go to Source Author: Poetry Foundation
For Memorial Day: Charles Laughton reads Walt Whitman, with music by Bernard Herrmann
In 1944, composer Bernard Herrmann, known for his film scores, collaborated with the producer Norman Corwin on “Whitman,” a half-hour dramatic presentation invoking America’s iconic poet to rally the home front during World War II. It was heard by millions of listeners. It’s a classic exemplar of a forgotten creative genre: the radio drama. You… Read more »From “What Princeton Did to My Husband” [by Solveig Lucia Gold]
Solveig Lucia Gold, Joshua Katz’s wife, rises to the doleful occasion of the dismissal of Katz, the renowned professor of classics at Princeton. Princeton “has revoked my tenure and dismissed me,” Katz writes. “Whoever you are and whatever your beliefs, this should terrify you.” The headline of his op-ed in the WSJ (5/25/22): “Princeton Fed… Read more »Some Days | Hubun
There’s four walls and a ceiling A gaping hole in the ground Creeping to the far corner afraid to make a sound But soon my teeth start grinding as I welcome the pain It shoots through my body, paralyzing, crippling me It wipes my mind clean then screams into the silence The thoughts that butcher… Read more »She Loves | Adnan Shafi
She loves to kiss me Where a twosome grew hookup long as star-crossed lovers, And an azoic knot tenacious fands love spare She loves to hug me Where they lapidated MUJNU, obscured his memories, standing upright by savagely rousing people in some remote corners hackneyed She loves to talk to me Like the moon whispering… Read more »What I’m Supposed to Be | Jack Wolfe Frost
I try to remember who I used to be, Was I a dream, lost in reality, Imagination, stuck in totality? I need to get back to the place I once was, Before, before,- Before the rot took over, And dumped me here, Like a fish out of water, I flop around fruitlessly, Seeking for water… Read more »“Superbly Situated” [by Bob Hershon, May 28,1936 – March 20, 2021]
Superbly Situated you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to right from the beginning—a relationship based on good sense and thoughtfulness in little things i would like to be loved for such simple attainments as breathing regularly and not falling down too often or because my eyes are brown or my… Read more »Here’s to you, Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud died in 2021 at the age of 101. A new book presents the painter’s accomplishments. Wayne Thiebaud, Cold Case, 2010–13, Oil on canvas. The painting appears in Wayne Thiebaud: Updated Edition (Rizzoli Electa). Related Stories The Poetry Question [by Dave Morice] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryThe Poetry Question [by Dave Morice]
What is poetry? Here is a modern approach to answering that ancient question. The following list contains genuine quotes about “poetry,” “poet,” etc. by famous writers throughout the ages. However, those particular words have been replaced with “pornography,” “pornographer,” etc., in order to update the muse’s out-dated definitions, as you will see. If I read… Read more »Forgiveness | Pushmaotee Subrun
With forgiveness armed With selfless love brimming Be the peacemaker The post Forgiveness | Pushmaotee Subrun appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe Visitor | Jenny Middleton
I open my door and find you waiting Amongst autumn and falling, failing light Dressed in the thickness of a dun overcoat, The verdurous twine of ancient forests Un-scrolling as you speak. Your cracked lips shape islands and words isolate The truth of your visit and the sickness Of plastic churns grey in our ocean… Read more »West Covina or Rancho Cucamonga (by Mitch Sisskind)
Got a phone number where you talk To dead people of course they’re not Really dead it’s just some guy out in West Covina or Rancho Cucamonga But what the hell, right? What the hell! You call the number and you say which Dead person you want to talk to so I said Who’s… Read more »“Why ‘Nixonland’ Matters” [by Joe Lehman]
When I was twenty-five, backpacking through Australia, I carried with me my hardcover copy of Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. It absorbed me for all seven months of my journey. I took flight to the land of Oz in late October 2008. Nixonland hit the stores in May of that… Read more »Lost in Myself | Apeksh Mahakalkar
Let’s get into our own Forgetting all known, Think about what you are, For that you are not far, What is the motive, That remains unnotice, But I don’t need to care, It’s really going fair, I feel to leave everything, And think about something, That’s my thing, I would love such anything, It’s not… Read more »Waiting for Answers to Resumes Mailed Weeks Ago | Donal Mahoney
A phone call from anywhere would be nice, even a call from that clerk at Sears with an apology for charging that dryer to my last employer or even a call from the company I phoned for estimates on the fence we need to run to the alley, take two lefts, and dash back to… Read more »Angell of the Basepaths Fondly Remembered [by David Lehman]
From an encyclopedia article on Roger Angell: Newsweek article titled “Angell of the Base Paths,” David Lehman made note of what he called Angell’s “poetic resonance” and quoted Angell: “If I was influenced by anyone, I guess it was by my stepfather, E. B. White…. He suffered writing but made it look easy. >> What prompted the… Read more »A Friend’s Wedding | Rp Verlaine
The warmth, I welcome after winter’s chill captured in letters where large tears have dried. From one I thought for good, even for ill I’d marry come the shadows of July. Rare was her beauty, yet her greatest gift was her keen wit and a splendid style in her dress and dance, ‘twas almost as… Read more »The Starving Artist | Rp Verlaine
To new addictions it seems now I must add narcissism. Admiring work on a coffee house wall pencil portraits looking not like victims or… “I’m good and cheap” says the artist too thin but her smile is pretty when I say OK. Adding a few years she tells me she’s 22. I pose not at… Read more »A Poetics of Abandonment | by Hajar Hussaini
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationMatisse!
Related Stories Dante, Near and Far [by Robert P. Baird] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryWhen Sparrows Matter More | Donal Mahoney
Find the book and blow the dust off. It’s somewhere in the house. Every house used to have one if only to record births and deaths. Find the passage about the sparrows and you will see that you and I and every man are worth more than any sparrow yet you and I and every… Read more »When Sparrows Matter More | Donal Mahoney
Find the book and blow the dust off. It’s somewhere in the house. Every house used to have one if only to record births and deaths. Find the passage about the sparrows and you will see that you and I and every man are worth more than any sparrow yet you and I and every… Read more »Bones and Sheet | JD DeHart
She is bones stretched across a sheet of humanity. Jagged and arching, eyebrows that raise up and pierce the roof, elbows that stab with deliberate intent. Knees that dig into the earth and fingers that reach to bottom then keep going through. The post Bones and Sheet | JD DeHart appeared first on Best Poetry…. Read more »Squib 378 [by Alan Ziegler]
For Roger Angell (1921-2022) Long ago, on the off-chance I might run into the Devil at the Crossroads, Robert Johnson’s Crossroads Mine I prepared a modest… Read more »On Emily Dickinson’s “Error’s” | by Robert Eric Shoemaker
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationBelting It Out | Mary Bone
Belting it out from the byway. I was fresh from the highway. I was winding down from a great sound. Music was all around. I was so glad I came to town. The lady sings the blues. People were tapping suede shoes- to an incredible beat. The post Belting It Out | Mary Bone appeared… Read more »Self Love | Pushmaotee Subrun
Love yourself Love yourself deeply Give sincerely heart and soul The fruits will be sweet The post Self Love | Pushmaotee Subrun appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineIrresistible Resistance | by Noah Baldino
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationWe Will Not Go Gently | Tamsen Grace
Polite people do not become poets We, the unmannered offer no apologies, for blaspheming love in our soliloquies, scavengers of wisdom, measuring out the world with our metaphors, step by step with our words, we can wipe out dysfunction and create a new anthology death will come, someday, for all us poets and our words,… Read more »Three Fantasy Haiku | Denny E. Marshall
alternative world meet current secretary of state flower star drops rope ladder into wormhole lost climb out make wish, Genie said i said I wish you showed up twenty years sooner The post Three Fantasy Haiku | Denny E. Marshall appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineUniversity cancels SONNETS as “products of white Western culture”
Hello, sucker. Thought you were smart to memorize a Shakespeare sonnet? Think again! from the London Daily Mirror 15 May 2022 University of Salford cancels SONNETS from writing course because they are ‘products of white Western culture’ amid push to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ University of Salford chiefs sideline sonnets from their creative writing course Second-year… Read more »Keep Writing | Donetta Sifford
Keep writing. When morning carries songs of birds on sunshine, keep writing. As night wraps darkness around your tired body, keep writing. If you’ve bled on paper only to receive rejection, keep writing. Friends may politely scan over your words unsmiling, keep writing. Even if you write to clear your head, mindfulness, meditation, for your… Read more »Vintage Charms | Mary Bone
Vintage charms dangling from wrists. Mixing and matching- one of a kind with wrapped around layers. Worn with style. The post Vintage Charms | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlinePoet Spotlight: Kelly Weber [by Emma Bolden]
Kelly Weber’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Brevity, The Missouri Review, Tupelo Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. Her work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University, where she served as an intern with Colorado Review. She lives in Colorado with two rescue cats. More of her work can be… Read more »Big Tech [by Mitch Sisskind]
Internet In those days I was doing trade shows Mostly in Vegas, Dallas, or Phoenix And since it was before the internet I used to leave voice mail messages For my wife where I would call myself On The Road Mouse and if she… Read more »Promise | Mehreen Ahmed
I am the promise that cannot be broken. I am the love that cannot be severed. I am the dream that will not be realised. I am the desire that will burn forever. The post Promise | Mehreen Ahmed appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineOne of the Ha-Ha’s from Old Staball Hill | Donal Mahoney
(Ballyheigue County Kerry Ireland) That man over there with his head in the well, his thumbs in his ears and his arse in the air like a zeppelin at moor, if he can write poems the Ha-Ha’s will read, all of the Ha-Ha’s, no matter the breed, even the Ha-Ha’s from Old Staball Hill, if… Read more »Listening to “The Man from Laramie” [by Elizabeth Samet]
The first thing you have to know is that the opinions I express as a guest blogger on the Best American Poetry site are my own and do not reflect those of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense. The second thing you have to know is that I’ve… Read more »“Brilliant & bright”: A Conversation with Scholar-Practitioner Nick Courtright [by Kristina Marie Darling]
“It has been an honor and a privilege to join in this weeklong celebration of Tupelo Quarterly with The Best American Poetry. Today, I hope you will enjoy this feature of poetry and scholarship by TQ contributor Nick Courtright. As a editor that prides herself on a commitment to rigorous critical discourse and innovative writing, I’m thrilled to offer this conversation across the boundaries of genre and discipline.”–Kristina… Read more »Two Stairways | Bill Cushing
The first greets those who promenade through the foyer to a sunken living room; its steps—wide with carpeted tread—ease beneath gilded panels lined with portraits of staid patriarchs long dead. Bright red lips brush fair cheeks, besitos de cultura alta, as these elegant guests parade through the living room past a massive dining table and… Read more »Basil Seeds | Adnan Shafi
Basil seeds black in our kitchen, Their close aura is the aura of mellowing, And my mother, entering the room softly, Takes a seat at the table, takes up the task Of expunging the extra dust away, Even half ripened ones are sundered gingerly. She makes sure to prepare the seven glasses of water of… Read more »Marie-Thérèse Allier’s Ménagerie de Verre: forty years enabling dance otherwise [by Tracy Danison]
Raimund Hoghe’s creative search for “otherwise” is emblematic of Marie-Thérèse Allier’s contribution to the art of movement. Raimund Hoghe, “La Valse”. Photo © Rosa-Frank.com/ Courtesy Ménagerie de Verre La Ménagerie de Verre performance studio, Laboratoire de création contemporaine – in the 11th arrondissement, just off the avenue Parmentier, about mid-way between rue de la Roquette… Read more »O Flowers | Adnan Shafi
O lovely flowers! incessant redolence! with what colorful aroma and sweetness and light of eminence my brio loves scattering the seeds of prestige! All the hours of the day I spend in the garden of flowers, Consoling my all lethargy, Endowing me spirits of euphoria Oh, how it solaces and spirits my body! Hark! in… Read more »Museum | Linda Imbler
To the casual eye, a roomful of old, dusty objects, scrolls of great words containing broken promises, the hardest days of time captured, man’s progress built one culture at a time. And while the present stands full of promise and difficulty, the past did send forth wings of hope, some forgotten, some ignored. And it’s… Read more »My Mother | Joan McNerney
How she must have missed those green hills of Ireland. Walking along hard grey streets in Brooklyn. Remembering scent of grassy meadows hurrying along ten long blocks to climb the filthy subway. Her marriage failed, her health gone. Nobody seemed to care. Her smiling days were over. The unlucky are often alone. Missing those sweet… Read more »Poetry Foundation Spring 2022 Updates |
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationThe Pen, the Throat, the Ear: On Ghazals | by Sarah Ghazal Ali
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationPoet Spotlight: Jenny Grassl [by Kristina Marie Darling]
“It is an honor and privilege to celebrate Tupelo Quarterly with The Best American Poetry, and to highlight some of our extraordinary contributors. Please enjoy this feature on poet and visual artist Jenny Grassl, whose interdisciplinary practice reflects TQ’s commitment to bridging the gap between literature and the fine arts.”–Kristina Marie Darling, Editor-in-Chief, Tupelo Press… Read more »“Crimson is the Color of Shame”: a Poetry Challenge [by Clark Thomas]
Crimson is the Color of Shame — for David Lehman The demand on young Jews to be less visibly and confidently Jews is the price of social toleration which found its most recent iteration in the Harvard Crimson editorial endorsing the Philistines vs Samson, that is, the boycott movement against Israel which is a big… Read more »Poet Spotlight: Cynthia Dewi Oka [by Wendy Chen]
“It is an honor and privilege to celebrate Tupelo Quarterly at The Best American Poetry and spotlight some of our extraordinary contributors. Please enjoy this interview with Cynthia Dewi Oka, curated by TQ Managing Editor Wendy Chen”.–Kristina Marie Darling, Editor-in-Chief, Tupelo Press & Tupelo Quarterly Originally from Bali, Indonesia, Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Fire… Read more »Pastiche | JD DeHart
Here is your thumbtack, now hang up the details you wish others to see. Collect the images, faded photographs from what you remember. Beware that what you don’t remember may be even more telling. Close your eyes, begin the story, see how you now piece yourself together from leaves, swirl, detritus, fragments, images, and now… Read more »Concrete Gray | Denny E. Marshall
Monday at work I go to break Behind the building Away from everybody Smoking a cigarette Sitting on old railroad ties The ugly green building Is close enough I could throw rocks at it And never miss The concrete silo Stands silent gray The weekend snow All around me Feel I am in the Arctic… Read more »B-Side: Reflections on “The Other Side of Reading” (and Writing) | by Jenna Peng
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationA Conversation with Dante Di Stefano, Part 4 (by Nin Andrews and Amanda Rabaduex)
AR: How did you become a poet? What is your process? DD: First, of course, I was named after a poet. The Commedia played an important role in my family history. My great grandfather brought a copy of it with him when he came to America from Sicily. Poetry was a constant, if muted, presence… Read more »
Greg Masters: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
Greg Masters. Photo by Kate Previte ________________________________________ At 20 minutes, 37 seconds At 20 minutes, 37 seconds into track one of a box-set reissue of the Miles Davis Quintet recording “Freedom Jazz Dance,” a previously unissued rehearsal take,… Read more »New Days | Jenny Middleton
The days have become still, Intricate and tissue Wrapped, swaddled, laying Peacefully in my arms. I cradle each one. Each impenetrable, confusing Entity, and wonder if the shadows and remnants of before hide beneath. Sometimes I dare to loosen Their tightness, their neatness To check they are not bleating messages From un-severed umbilical telephone Like… Read more »The Birth of a Feathery Singer | Pijush Kanti Deb
The birth of a feathery singer bestows a burnt painter with a landscape comprising of two feathery opponents one is dead and found on a heap of garbage and other is born to ensnare the singers and poets. It exiles all the tamed pets smashing their old cages into dust- usable in the germination of… Read more »Sudeep Sen introduces Sarah Arvio, Rachel Eliza Griffiths,Vidyan Ravinthiran. . .
Related Stories For “Plume,” Another Feather in the Cap Go to Source Author: The Best American Poetry
“Mount Washington Kroger is Out of Bananas”
“Mount Washington Kroger is Out of Bananas” Yes, we have no bananas today, but Cheetos and nacho chips— seven different brands—and instant mashed potatoes complete with sodium acid pyrophosphate, and sodium bisulfite. We have gummi bears and red cinnamon candy hearts. Ranch dressing, a whole row of plastic-wrapped, sliced meat. Line up… Read more »Blackbirds | Donal Mahoney
A moment ago, in a flicker of pique, with a wave of the hand, I dispersed them. Glorious birds, now they are back, gold talons wrapped, roosting. Glorious birds, high on a wire, spearing the nits in their feathers. More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. The post Blackbirds | Donal Mahoney appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to… Read more »A Man in the Hills | Jim Bellamy
the man in the hills an atavisitic misterer stacked between lochs and laburnum’s whisper a chain-gang mourner to the entoscopic dead the man in the hills mason to the head shaping no store for the weeping women nor breaking no light for sidereal sun thamesward as mortar graveward underwater the man in the hills mason… Read more »The Fly in the Ointment (by Mitch Sisskind)
People think the Golden Calf looked Like a calf but that is very wrong. (Literal readings of the Bible are a sin.) It looked like whatever you wanted And it looked different to everyone And since you could change it just By thinking about… Read more »On No Tokens, with Hannah Beresford [by Lauren Hilger]
A Conversation with Poetry Co-Editor Hannah Beresford Lauren Hilger: What is your earliest memory of working with NT poems? Hannah Beresford: My first submission period with NT, I printed all of the submissions. It was so extra. T Kira literally said, “This is so extra.” What experience I had of an editorial nature… Read more »A Touch of Alzheimer’s | Donal Mahoney
Wherever I go, there I am but if I’m not there my wife is, her eyes smiling. It’s been that way for fifty years. Not much more to say except whenever I go some place and discover she’s not there, then I’m not there either even though neighbors tell her they saw me there so… Read more »Untitled | Adam Levon Brown
Constrain me with labels as you won’t begin the quest to understand who I am File me under the folder of things you think I am while ignoring what I say Sweep me under the rug of socialized groupings and forget about me Never try to understand the complexities of my very existence, for that… Read more »
Ils ont entendu le vent dans les arbres . . .
Thanks to Jim Cummins for sending this along. Believed to be the only time Johnny Carson sang in public: Thanks, Jim! — sdh Related Stories Memories of Richard Howard [by Jim Cummins] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryTransformer | Denny E. Marshall
The window twisted open In a spiral motion Stories on the street Drive by like speeding chapters A hammer can hit you When you take the time to see Happiness can take control so easy When your mind is unconcerned Still plugged in but not on Is anything really important Except the things you can’t… Read more »Light Effect | Denny E. Marshall
The sun erupted Light rose like erosion To wash away The night’s collection More at http://www.dennymarshall.com/. The post Light Effect | Denny E. Marshall appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineFor “Plume,” Another Feather in the Cap
The new issue of Plume is out. Edited by the admirably imaginative Danny Lawless, issue #129 (May 2022) contains work by D. Nurkse, Tomasz Różyck, Susan Aizenberg, Bill Stratton, Jeffrey Skinner, Cartol Muske-Dukes, Lauren Camp, and, well, why don’t I just copy the TOC below the picture? I recommend the section “Poets and Translators Speak,” in… Read more »On Games [by Lauren Hilger]
In writing poetry, I’ve found that occupying three different positions is important: cold editor, kind tutor, and just a writer. In looking at my poems as a cold editor, I’m impartial, ruthless, determined. Cold editor is necessary at the end but not before. That role can’t be assumed too soon. Before then, if I’m writing… Read more »Poems | Veva Rosamond
Poems 1. I sit alone in a room Wondering if it’s me or Whether there’s something more Going on. Is he thinking about me? Am I going crazy? Is my heart coming to conclusions premature? 2. I summon the courage To text him and tell him how I feel. It goes much better than expected,… Read more »Welcome Compassion | Pushmaotee Subrun
Farewell bitterness Adieu hate and vengeance Welcome compassion The post Welcome Compassion | Pushmaotee Subrun appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe Poetry Foundation Welcomes New Team Members in Several Areas |
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationThe Constant Dinosaur | Donal Mahoney
Some day soon Wall Street giants will walk on their hands never sit or sleep. They will eat with their feet as nostrils drip and neckties droop. With toilets extinct they will launch missiles that blot out the sun and moon while in the dark the constant dinosaur of greed will roam the avenue and… Read more »“B-Flat Elegy” [by Stanley Moss]
Stanley tells us he wrote this poem as an elegy for Richard Howard. “The poem is not a home run, it’s a bunt, and I’m running as fast as I can to first base.” B-Flat Elegy Three cheers and chairs for Richard who died, the cause was complications of dementia, Finders keepers, losers weepers, along… Read more »Haiku: For the Record | Jenny Middleton
Dreaming to be playedDigital vinyl music sleeps;All life clasped within. The post Haiku: For the Record | Jenny Middleton appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlinePretty Girl Now Passing | Donal Mahoney
Look so pretty you no sound floats out of my mouth as I sit silent now staring through you boring in wondering what it is that does this to me now and every time I see you still just out walking talking laughing with him More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. The post Pretty Girl Now Passing |… Read more »Five years on: On Reading with Jerome Sala and David Shapiro at the Zinc Bar Last evening [by David Lehman]
What a pleasure to read with Jerome Sala and my old Columbia and Clare colleges’ chum, David Shapiro, at the Zinc Bar last evening. Jerome read first. His corporate sonnets reflect years of labor that Marx would characterize as alienated in the tall tower of Time and Life on Sixth Avenue. There is beauty… Read more »On Memorization [by Lauren Hilger]
As I write to you, in the year 2022, we don’t have to memorize much: GPS leads the way, phone numbers are saved, and devices alert us of birthdays. Say what you will about attention spans, how we are faster and less focused than any other era in history, how we value what’s brief and… Read more »The Cro-Magnon Election Campaign | Neil Fulwood
Ug say cavemen need bigger clubs Clubs hit good Hit animal get food Hit plant get side salad Hit other caveman if not same Ug define not same As too weak to use club Ug define not same As too lazy to use club Ug define not same As prefer company of other caveman Ug… Read more »Sounds of the Highway | Mary Bone
Metal against metal Causing a terrible friction. People mashing down on the pedal. They don’t have any conviction. Wood and bricks and chiming bells- It’s not all music to my ears. Breakfast’ s cooking, wafting smells, Honks of horns, am I the only one who hears? I’ve tried to get some sleep, Only to toss… Read more »“Gift Means Poison in German” [by David Lehman]
And poisson means fish in French. Therefore, on my first trip to Paris, reading a menu I recalled my cousin, now a fashionable designer, then a survivor of Dachau, twelve years old, a week after arrival in New York City when Truman was President. I thought of what she must have thought when, for the first time,… Read more »That’s Life | Donal Mahoney
some of us have seconds, minutes hours, days weeks, months others years to figure out what the hell life’s about but so few do for heaven’s sake consider me how about you More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. The post That’s Life | Donal Mahoney appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineOde to Amanda | Denny E. Marshall
She emerged winged-foot from the sky Like an angel in Apollo’s shadow Fathers from the heavens fingers Announce with thunderbolts and lightning Messages drift above to form shapes In different layers of colored clouds Lands on a mountain cap with harp Notes cut like ribbons to reveal Distance between the long still islands In the… Read more »” Why I Wrote ‘Old Heart’ ” [by Peter Ferry]
From Nu?Detroit, this write-up of Peter Ferry’s novel Old Heart, which has been adapted for the theater and will premiere in Detroit next week. United States forces liberated the southern third of The Netherlands on September 17, 1944. On that date 47 years later, I wheeled my bike out of the driveway on my way… Read more »Tales of the Sixties: Homecoming [by Alan Ziegler]
At a dance during my senior year in high school, I hang around the ticket table, where a junior named Gabby is on duty in case there are late arrivals. I have seen her around school and been looking for a chance to approach her. On the table are loose rubber bands, and she offers… Read more »PW Reviews “On Becoming a Poet” (Marsh Hawk Press)
On Becoming a Poet: 25 Original Essays + Interviews Edited by Susan Terris. Marsh Hawk, $21.95 trade paper (168p) ISBN 978-1-73261-413-0 “While modern creative writing programs seek to develop the talents of maturing writers, essential information about the… craft can be discovered in the early memories of established writers,” posits Terris (Memos) in… Read more »Other Races Won | Christine Emmert
I failed to break the ribbon. Panting and falling into alien arms. What was won before suddenly lost. Fallen angels know the pain of earth when they tried to outrun the storms. The post Other Races Won | Christine Emmert appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineTime | JayM
Words of a moment, Of stories that last a fleeting thought. Youth a moment, Fleeting rain driven, By winds reminiscent, Shall last for ever. Words, a legacy, Faces, a faded memory, A moment’s tryst, A lifetime of memories… The post Time | JayM appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online“Queenscliff” by Cassie Lewis [Introduced by Thomas Moody]
Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, published by Melbourne University Press in 2020, gives long-overdue recognition to the breadth and quality of Australian prose poetry. Alongside recognized practitioners of the form such as Anna Couani, Jordie Albiston and Pam Brown, the anthology offers a comprehensive selection of Australian prose poems of the past fifty years from… Read more »Nine Odd Haiku | Denny E. Marshall
knew had chance name of new zine rejection don’t like things that spin removed from earth timber area internet usage triples it’s login season super computer lightning fast and powerful cape could be better train station nary locomotives on steel tracks never seem to move new pro football team doubt they go to super bowl… Read more »Time to Check the Labels on Our Shirts | Donal Mahoney
Bangladesh is a land of money for clothing firms that pay very low wages to workers in 400 garment factories near the capital of Dhaka. Consumers in Western nations benefit from low retail prices for items of clothing these low wages produce. Some Western consumers may remember that in 2013, 100,000 garment workers in Bangladesh… Read more »“Out of Thin AIr” [by Bruce Kawin]
Out of Thin AIr some people stand outside in the thin air to look for lines that make a grid, a net and finally reveal a system, where there was nothing but air look up and hope to find what’s real the way Moses had to and the other prophets the sky a drawing board… Read more »Here’s to Crime!
Night and the city. Dark alleys, rain-drenched streets, silhouettes at windows, blinking neon. Welcome to Saturday Night Noir, a one-way trip into the doom-laden heart of a new kind of American cinema featuring life-beaten men and dangerously seductive women, born of the expressionistic camera-work of German and Austrian emigres, and the pulp imaginations of the… Read more »Recipe for a DJ | Jim Bellamy
In-betweens To hear a dripping tap in a house that has no tap, in the dead of night to hear wombs bounce between thunder and tundra and to kill time forever: these are the flights That still the gaze of a murmur till dreaming slices bread from the mill and balances praise on a bed…. Read more »In My Head? | Jim Bellamy
And so the light falls Like a cracker cracked in half. Even Beneath the pen, the breathing hogs Each moon of madness made. I Have broken down the walls; acquiesced Into the lottery of shambled figures. Even I can’t taste the night. Leaves rustle in my head. Across my bed, nudity glitters. Upon my shoulder,… Read more »Some People [poem by Wislawa Szymborska]
Members of the Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s defense forces walk with civilians during U.N.-led evacuations from the sprawling Azovstal steel plant in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, after nearly two months of siege warfare on the city by Russia during its invasion, in a still image from handout video released May 1, 2022 by… Read more »Pains | Paula OZ
Faith, hopeless feeling, going through my mind Listen, pain… – Would you support the shoulder pads of frustration? and the two senses? Being ethereal or being ephemeral? The pain cries with the isolation. Silently, answer me the pain: – Your soul hurts; I am your reality. You are my conscience, we die too much. The… Read more »Peace in Denial | Pushmaotee Subrun
The blighted in gloom Clung hard to the shining torch Sought peace in denial The post Peace in Denial | Pushmaotee Subrun appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online“For the Archive!”: Editor’s Discussion, May 2022 | by Robert Eric Shoemaker
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationM’aidez. . .May Day. . .
Related Stories Is Mom Dead, too? [by Charles (Bud) Dillon] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetrySo Cringe | by Chaelee Dalton
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationCharles North: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
__________________________________________________ The Philosophy of New Jersey (for Jill) Actually the sky appears older than it is. It’s 63 or 64 at most, not 75. The part with the cliff face and the yellow crane could be in its early 30s. It wasn’t Wallace… Read more »Your Light | Lynn Long
You… Are a star shining bright I am earth, forever bound to gaze upon your light And I have seen your soul In all my dreams Pure as the snow on moonlit beams And I have loved you… All of time Knowing always, you were never mine… For I am the wind, the rain and… Read more »Stamps and Stars Forever: The Philatelic Art of Donald Evans (at Tibor de Nagy, until June 4, 2022)
Donald Evans Philatelic Counter April 30 to June 4, 2022 Opening Reception, Saturday, April 30, 3-6pm Donald Evans Domino. Dominos, 1975 Tibor de Nagy Gallery is pleased to present Donald Evans – Philatelic Counter, the fifth presentation of the artist’s work at the gallery and the first at the 11 Rivington… Read more »“Fireflies in Tights”: On Balanchine’s Agon [by Eden Elieff]
Ed note: This is part two of a series. Find part one here. sdl Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library. “Arthur Mitchell and Diana Adams in “Agon”” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1957. Agon. What the hell was that? The program revealed that agon is a Greek word, meaning contest…. Read more »Broke His Crown | Scott Thomas Outlar
Hey, Mister Mason what’s that you’re building? Do you think that it’s sturdy and not destined to fall? Finger to your lips shh, it’s a secret Once out in the open the truth will be revealed Black and white pieces hold your positions Checker the floorboard as we settle all scores Oaths that were taken… Read more »Language & Thought | JD DeHart
Dr. Samuel Johnson once said, Language is the dress of thought. I wonder what would happen if our innermost thoughts were to dress us, how many of us would be dressed in rabble, rags, and how many of us would be as fine-pressed as we would like to be. Would those who do not think… Read more »Ten Autobiographical Fragments [by Alan Ziegler]
One Plus One (1956): When one of the older kids in the neighborhood is told he “has no balls,” he replies, “I’ve got two of them, how many do you have?” This is a question I have never asked myself. That night, in the bath, I nervously count. One. Two. And no more…. Read more »My Broken Heart | Terri Emmet
my broken heart lays on the ground lonely without you not knowing what to do empty of hope- life- love everything worthwhile i look through pictures of when we were together all the good times all the love everything that was me and you that had any meaning i miss you i love you i… Read more »Affair | Nancy May
end of the affair old blossoms for sale More at https://twitter.com/Haikuintraining. The post Affair | Nancy May appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online“Night on the Town” [by Billy Collins]
Night on the Town There will never be another you, softly crooned the singing star, and there will never be another me, muttered the poet alone at the bar. Related Stories “Mad Men”: The 4:20 Express [by David Lehman] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryFrom “Just a Couple of Mugs” [by David Lehman]
From The Common, this section of “Just a Couple of Mugs,” a five-part prose poem from David Lehman’s new book The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir (Cornell University Press). Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell hate each other in a hotel room with sink in San Francisco. They have just… Read more »Midnight Tropics | Mary Bone
Poolside glamour glowing in the moonlight- A beachside breeze, on a tropical island. The post Midnight Tropics | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineTo Whom It May Concern | Arif Ahmad
I, me, my, mine is my predicament honest, stripped this is who I am I can’t help it I am such programmed thus disrespected, discounted bounced around used for granted I refuse to realize the advantage of many over a few ever a person never a nation then I complain The post To Whom It… Read more »An Féar Gorta [Terence Winch]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ An Féar Gorta If I ever go back home again, we will drive through the countryside just as it is getting dark. We will gather together in the town’s only hotel, eating, and telling jokes at each other’s expense. My heart beats steady there, my spirit alive to every gesture, every glance,… Read more »A People | Arif Ahmad
In celebration of our differences Craving for more respect, more relevance All before self Deep-rooted yet visible In him, her and all Knocking, piercing, screaming This urge, the roar, the calling A conviction to carve a Nation Our will is to become a People The post A People | Arif Ahmad appeared first on Best… Read more »Frog | Nancy May
autumn moon one ripple, one ripple frog jumps in The post Frog | Nancy May appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineContributors to the April “Exophony” Issue Share Favorite Poems | by Holly Amos
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationA Conversation with Dante Di Stefano, Part 1 [by Nin Andrews and Amanda Rabaduex]
NA: Your latest book, Lullaby with Incendiary Device, is part of a mini-anthology, featuring three books under one cover, called Generations, and published by Etruscan Press. I thought we should start with the title poem, which I love. DD: Thank you Nin and Amanda. I’m grateful to be able to have this conversation with you… Read more »A Note on Thomas Traherne [by David Lehman]
The blessed babe in a divine Eden is a Romantic trope, but it received a pure exposition long before the age of Blake and Wordsworth. A shoemaker’s son from Hereford, Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) captured the radical wonderment of childhood in his poems. Educated at Oxford (Brasenose College), he published next to nothing in his lifetime,… Read more »The Mother I’d Known | Shelly Blankman
There is nothing left now but bits and bones of the mother I’d known. Her hair once shiny and nicely styled, smelling lemony with each morning hug, now dirty, mousy gray, scraggly. Hanging down to her knees like an old curtain. It drapes one eye. She reminds me of Veronica Lake, I tell her. She… Read more »You | Mary Steffen
You S t a r t Over The post You | Mary Steffen appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineAbandonment | Rp Verlaine
Uneasy with the thought that you have left evidence of your return I am without no calls or message at all, except the echo silence makes with each new doubt. A prison I might call these empty rooms bereft of one who lived inside its doors and left me prisoner under a pale moon like… Read more »Reading Like a Guest | by Noah Baldino
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationTen Horror Haiku | Denny E. Marshall
fear engulfs as shown new home a pine box locked inside coffin escape only to find out in bigger casket new voice mail message “dead & unavailable “ since grim reaper call zombies get ahead pointed at forehead barrel just as terrifying as the tank attached spinning on a wheel near death realize knife thrower… Read more »Ten Horror Haiku | Denny E. Marshall
fear engulfs as shown new home a pine box locked inside coffin escape only to find out in bigger casket new voice mail message “dead & unavailable “ since grim reaper call zombies get ahead pointed at forehead barrel just as terrifying as the tank attached spinning on a wheel near death realize knife thrower… Read more »On Emigrating to Iceland after Iraq | Donal Mahoney
Consider first the Alabama heat, consider next the toad still as a turd on this rural bridge rupture slung across a stream where offal floats, where clumps are belching. Note the toad, the reeks that genie up beside it. Then remember Iceland and the freshets of its Spring. Iceland had no toads, no reeks to… Read more »“She couldn’t sleep for a week.” Celebrating the Fifty Year Anniversary of the New York City Ballet Stravinsky Festival [by Eden Elieff]
Ed note: This is part one of a two-part series. Watch this space for part two, which will post next week. sdl Lincoln Kirstein (left) and George Balanchine drink a toast to Igor Stravinsky on the closing night of the 1972 Stravinsky Festival. Balanchine ordered 40 crates of vodka to be distributed to the public… Read more »Wonder Lady | Ivan Jenson
Everybody seems so young ever since you became every age you ever were in my memory… aging sons and elderly mothers share coffee at Starbucks shooting the breeze killing time… I never knew what to say to you and I admit I grew tired of the fact that you were mostly made of long winded… Read more »“Mad Men”: The 4:20 Express [by David Lehman]
Think of tonight’s episode, the best of the 5th season so far, as the Four Twenty Edition of Mad Men with a bummed out Peggy playing hooky smoking a joint with some horny stranger in a dark movie theater watching “Born Free” (I think that’s what it was). . . Roger Sterling goes on an… Read more »Tell-All | Ivan Jenson
I confess that you once made everything old and beautiful in an incensed church or long nap on a rainy afternoon sort of way and the rusted brass rings of this world were no longer worth reaching for only the long stretching past held interest as you chained me to the pillars of your yesteryear… Read more »Mom Incorporated | Ivan Jenson
Let’s arrange just one more meeting of our hearts and our minds you choose the time and the place and I will promise to be there with one of those insufferably trendy gratitude lists some flowers for the dead and the blood red wine of Jesus for good measure… you will be Lady Lazarus and… Read more »What Would Kafka Do? [by Stacey Harwood]
On October 21, 1985, The New Yorker published this poem by Raymond Carver: Kafka’s Watch I have a job with a tiny salary of 80 crowns, and an infinite eight to nine hours of work. I devour the time outside of the office like a wild beast. Someday I hope to sit in a chair in… Read more »Yet the Debate Continues | NilavroNill Shoovro
It is dusk Not yet dark Like the north sky Stars are preparing For the evening conference She will walk along with her love At anytime for their rendezvous With a red rose in one hand The other hand will remain free Although the evening is special Also for the stars As they are gearing… Read more »Two-Bit | JD DeHart
Maybe all my words are two-bit. The truth is never complete. A poem is never finished. What if I stopped this one right now? Would that be okay? Experience is experience, wrapped in one word (prestidigitation), a phrase (well, God bless) or a whole year of being (which, of course, would be a long parenthetical)…. Read more »“That grand old Irish / Italian tradition” [by Moira Egan]
One of the great things about being an American poet who happens to live in Rome is the proximity to the American Academy in Rome. In recent years, things have become even better for us poetry-loving Romans, thanks to AAR trustee William B. Hart, who endowed an eponymous Residency for a senior poet to join… Read more »Three Poems by Carody Culver [Introduced by Thomas Moody]
Carody Culver is a Brisbane based writer, editor and poet whose recent chapbook The Morgue I Think the Deader it Gets (published online here at one of Australia’s best homes for poetry, Cordite Poetry Review) deserves your attention. Playful, ironic and genuinely funny, these poems are marked by a casual erudition and a humor that… Read more »A Poem for Your Self | Heath Brougher
Encourage yourself in ways no one else has ever thought of write secret hymns that you find by accident like poetic balloons filled with helium to raise you up like a rooster calling in the Day write catastrophes yet to happen and then stop them from occurring write the future you want for your Self… Read more »Ephemera | Heath Brougher
You stuck your hand out the window just as the storm was fading away saying you wanted to catch the last drop of rain. More at https://www.facebook.com/heath.brougher. The post Ephemera | Heath Brougher appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineContributors to the April “Exophony” Issue Share Poetry Stories | by Holly Amos
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationSweetness | Pushmaotee Subrun
The lush of sweetness From times past overcame me Spread a healing balm The post Sweetness | Pushmaotee Subrun appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineDeath-Dealers | Eliza Segiet
When time takes away the color from the green-leafed nature – it will return. When time touches the human so heavily – a memory will remain. But when the death-dealing people take the breath away, besides memories, remain questions, – Why? – What for? – In the name of what faith does a Human kill… Read more »My favorite intersection in Inwood [by DL]
with thanks to Joel Weiner & greetings to John Deming and Melinda WilsonIntersection of Seaman and Cumming, Inwood, NYC. Related Stories Happy birthday, Doris Day: Big Band Singer Par Excellence Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryRevel in the Rain | Joan Leotta
Spring storm Sky is heavy with gray clouds I can feel the wind pressing down On them to wring water from their grasp That same air fills my nose with pollen from the seemingly fresh breezes, then, perversely presses down my lungs to prevent my inhaling a full breath. My head begins to hurt. I… Read more »Cigars | JD DeHart
The whole house smells like a canopy of smoke. My body smells like smoke. Sometimes it feels like smoke, about to waft away. Often, I feel grounded, so focused on my fears and perceived inadequacies that it is hard to feel tethered. I like the word tethered and use it often in my work. This… Read more »Reading for Subjectivity | by Lucia LoTempio
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationElizabeth A.I. Powell on Rituals and Spells so Nothing Heinous Happens (by Nin Andrews)
It’s Easter Sunday, and I’m remembering how my father used to equate religion and superstition. He practiced both, just in case. He made me practice them, too, insisting that I go to church, understand the basic tenets of the faith, pray on my knees before bed, and also, that I never pass the salt shaker… Read more »Major Jackson: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
________________________________________________________________________ A Grandfather’s Lecture If punched, you punch twice as hard, and in the face, a wop right in the nose. Use the flat counter of your fist or the palm’s hard ridge. Lean into it but brace your stroke with your back leg… Read more »Spring Whites | Mary Bone
Spring whites hanging on the line. A breath of fresh air is coming our way. The post Spring Whites | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineCelebrate Mom | Mary Bone
Celebrate mom on her special day. Flowers and candy in the month of May. Everything special is coming her way! The post Celebrate Mom | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineHans Christian Andersen’s “Tin Soldier” as Adapted by Jon Voight [by Joe Lehman]
In the early summer of 1996, just before I turned thirteen and a few years before the Internet conquered the world, I used to frequent several independently-owned video rental stores. One evening I rented a recently released VHS film titled The Tin Soldier, the only film that Jon Voight has directed as well as held… Read more »One’s Poem | Steven Fortune
Intellectual asylum would appear to be the remedy for optimal loquacity miscarried When the appeal of one’s personality is measured by the dexterity of one’s decibels there ulcerates a retrograde aspiration to be a rock, to be an island fortified by the poetry of the ostracized Owners of the souls so branded by body language… Read more »Mixing It Up | Mary Bone
Watercolors met pastels what a wonderful blend. They have been mixing it up ever since. The post Mixing It Up | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online“The Laughing Heart” [by Charles Bukowski]
your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but… Read more »Tales of the Sixties: My Father Delivers [by Alan Ziegler]
In 1966, my father buys an Arnold bread route in Astoria. Technically, he is self-employed—he owns the truck and the territory, and he buys the bread from Arnold then resells it to the stores—which means he gets no benefits and has to maintain the truck himself. The truck doesn’t fit in the garage, so… Read more »My Sweet Reverie | Lynn Long
You… my sweet reverie were, but a fleeting dream in which to pass the time, to ease my sorrow to free my mind In the beginning, I imagined your face, your voice, your knowing touch Always, I smiled in the thoughts of you… Soon, my soul renewed in love, no longer wished upon the stars… Read more »A Simple Take on Humankind | Peace the Poet
Of humankind you find there are two species that you’ve got. The one who’d splat the spider flat, the other who would not. More at http://echoesbypeace.blogspot.co.uk/. The post A Simple Take on Humankind | Peace the Poet appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineCome unto Dance, worshippers of true Spring: June Events 2022 [by Tracy Danison]
Evening in the dance quarter at the Cartoucherie arts complex, Bois de Vincennes, Paris. Photo © Patrick Berger HERE’S ANOTHER THING for the Paris dance-performance experience bucket list. It’s true I wrote hopefully about Spring not long ago, in an essay about that wonderful flamenco dancer Paula Comitre. But in that essay I meant “Spring”… Read more »Rhyme’s Word Is Sirius | Jim Bellamy
rhyme’s word is sirius, dogtooth in a samba. rhyme fleeces its flesh and bone and spires in a pyramidic valley. rhyme rears, through hearse and arctic spume, the straining ebbs of the rainbow’s gyre, the cry of helm and envoi, sired and volleyed. rhyme’s lave is daughtered by a jordanous fire. the sermon in a… Read more »My Fault | Scarlett Cullen
i always wondered if it was my fault until i realized it wasn’t and moved forward celebrating how wonderful i really am The post My Fault | Scarlett Cullen appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineIs Eliot Trending? [by Walter Carey]
Jeremy Sigler, whose latest book of poems is Goodbye Letter (in which, according to the publisher, the poet “plays out an endgame of muses to deconstruct his poetry and his will to write – let alone speak – as he ruminates and articulates, verbally and graphically, the implied obsolescence of language itself, a deeply regressive… Read more »“Neti-Neti” [by Nina Kossman]
NETI NETI There once lived a woman who said only four syllables in her entire life, and those four syllables were “neti neti”. When she was a child, and her parents wanted to buy her toys, they asked her which toy she wanted – this one or that one, and all she said was her… Read more »Jimmy the Blind Man Says He’s in Love | Donal Mahoney
Remember, a blind man can see things a sighted man can’t. So I’ll tell you about her and then you can tell me whether I’m right. The first time a man meets her, his eyes flicker and dart. Desire, an appropriate reaction. The first time a woman meets her, her eyes pop out and coil… Read more »Ice Cream Honeymoon | Donal Mahoney
On a sunny day in Harvard Yard blonde from Norway weds son of chieftain from Rwanda after both receive degrees with high honors. They drive off in a silver Porsche touring America on their honeymoon until they’re stopped in a small town. A taillight’s out. The officer says “You’re the first salt and pepper I’ve… Read more »Contributors to the April “Exophony” Issue Share Some Language Stories | by Holly Amos
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationMountain Wellhead | Admiral Mahic
This is where God breathes! Here is the mountain wellhead that cannot believe our bodies are drenched in darkness. Drops of water burning bright like verses from holy books. Here my heart smiles at Goethe’s heart, like a sun at a sun when they meet in the precipices of the universe. I was born to… Read more »No rivalry here: Fabrice Ramalingom dances the heart of a guy [by Tracy Danison]
Hugues Rondepierre, 23, Jean Rochereau, 78. Test. Photo © Brice Pelleschi PUT ANY ONE OF FABRICE RAMALINGOM’S PIECES on your bucket list of to-see Paris dance-performances. You’re bound to experience something both absorbing and creatively finished. At the end of a performance of Une singulière histoire de la danse, Fabrice Ramalingom’s danced biography, I was… Read more »Zero Sum | G. S. Katz
We are a zero sum babe I don’t know if you cheated on me We were already cheating on someone else How does that cut Chop meat that’s how Lovers don’t eat rib eye steaks They drink and grunt and get their freak on You go home to Joe Maybe you’ll pass me in the… Read more »Silver Anniversary | Donal Mahoney
There beyond the shrub the sun medallions on the grass around a python and boar, the python winding. Through binoculars I see the python work so slow. The boar now knows what I learned long ago. To go this way takes years. More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. The post Silver Anniversary | Donal Mahoney appeared first on… Read more »The Other Side of Reading | by Jenna Peng
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationPart II: A Conversation with Poet and the Editor of Etruscan Press, Philip Brady [by Nin Andrews and Amanda Rabaduex]
NA: As an Etruscan poet, I have been asked many times: What are the markings of an Etruscan poet? Do you think I should submit to Etruscan? How should I answer? In other words, people want to know what Philip Brady looks for in a manuscript. I’m grateful for and humbled by the number and quality of the… Read more »Minnie Bruce Pratt: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
Minnie Bruce Pratt 2.20.12 photo by Leslie Feinberg ______________________________________________________ Getting Through the Night At twilight, in the fold of this day’s pall, you lift the bed covers up, and I climb in. The bed… Read more »Memories of Richard Howard [by Jim Cummins]
I had a funny “causerie” moment with Richard. Sheila Guckenberger brought her daughter, Kristin, to the event and then left her with me in the office; Kristin was six. That was okay until Kristin had to go to the bathroom. So she and I sneaked out the back door and she went to the bathroom…. Read more »Did You See Adam Lanza? | Donal Mahoney
You don’t know me but maybe we should meet. I’m your neighbor now, just moved in the big house down the street. Yesterday I waved twice. I guess you didn’t notice. Mother’s at the store but she’ll be back in half an hour. I know she’d like to meet you. Now as I said, you… Read more »Kaleidoscope and Harpsichord | Donal Mahoney
As I’ve told my wife too many times, the meaning of any poem hides in the marriage of cadence and sound. Vowels on a carousel, consonants on a calliope, whistles and bells, we need them all tickling our ears. Otherwise, the lines are gristle and fat, no meat. Is it any wonder, then, my wife… Read more »Gilbert and Ernest Discuss “Rhymes Rooms’ by Brad Leithauser
Gilbert: You poets are incorrigible optimists. Ernest: What makes you say so? Aren’t poets always complaining that no one reads their work? Gilbert: With some justice, too. Poetry is in a state of perennial deflation: unlimited supply, hardly any demand. Ernest: Brad Leithauser says as much in his book Rhyme’s Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry…. Read more »“Modern Love”: XVII [by George Meredith]
At dinner, she is hostess, I am host. Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps The Topic over intellectual deeps In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost. With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball: It is in truth a most contagious game: Hiding the Skeleton, shall be its name. Such play as this the devils… Read more »Silly Rabbit | Ivan Jenson
If you want to learn from my mistakes then I would warn you never to be in a rush because I have been a person in a hurry since I was a kid and still life keeps her mysteries hid and yet the carrots I have been chasing are always being eaten by a faster… Read more »My Immortal | Mehak Gupta Grover
The allure of my existence, the power of my nurturing, my happiness, my chirpiness, the reason of me- being me. The affinity of my mother, the propensity of my father, the wanton mischief of my siblings, the benevolence of My family. Then, one day I had to furlough for a new beginning. Bequeathing behind my… Read more »Tube Station (1932) [by Cyril E. Power]
Tube Station (1932) by Cyril E. Power (Metropolitan Museum, NYC) Related Stories “Parallel Bars” [by Geoffrey Young] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryThen and Now | Fotoula Reynolds
Over rooftops fly All of my yesterdays I watch them stretch Beyond the orange As they disappear Into my tomorrows Carrying traces of the Woman I used to be A swallow flew between Me and the sun and all Was large and calm in The safety of mother’s Garden-arms where Flowers replaced words And houses… Read more »Of Love and Other Demons! | Deepti Sharma
In the diagonal hour of the midnight that morphed into a tattoo on her back.. I saw a purple rainbow that faded as the dawn cracked. The winding trails that crawled to her.. immersed in the holy water. Either my resin hard dreams were to be baptised.. or the misty reality was to be slaughtered…. Read more »from Ten Questions for Dara Barrois / Dixon [formerly Dara Wier]
from Poets & Writers, 4.5.22 This week’s installment of Ten Questions features Dara Barrois/Dixon (formerly Dara Wier), whose poetry collection Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina is out today from Wave Books. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including In the Still of the Night (Wave Books, 2017), You Good Thing (Wave Books, 2013), and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2009). She lives and… Read more »The Respectable Burgher on “The Higher Criticism” [by Thomas Hardy]
The Respectable Burgher on “The Higher Criticism” by Thomas Hardy [pictured above] Since Reverend Doctors now declare That clerks and people must prepare To doubt if Adam ever were; To hold the flood a local scare; To argue, though the stolid stare, That everything had happened ere The prophets to its happening sware; That David… Read more »There’s Comfort in Old Tales and Old Ways | Gauri Dixit
There’s comfort In old tales And old ways Is that why you refuse to budge? Is that why you refuse to change? There’s comfort In old tales And old ways Is that why you keep me caged? I won’t fly my dear For I too find comfort in old ways I am caged Without a… Read more »I Am So Lucky | Mónika Tóth
In my darkest hour Your words touch my heart Your soul is lyrical line Glad to meet you I am so lucky I am so blessed The post I Am So Lucky | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineMan Up | Ivan Jenson
This sweeping weeping soggy saga of sadness which clouds this guy’s eyes while raining question marks from the skies is finally getting me where it hurts making me a toddler who is never allowed desserts and I will wail tonsils vibrating the sort of shriek that could ruin your week until somebody pinches my cheek… Read more »Woe Is Me | Ivan Jenson
Nobody can teach you how to be lonely because it is a self-taught ability and affinity to various levels of self-pity yet, certain kinds of music can enhance that solo ballet in the depth of the valley of your moonless mood and you should just admit it’s pleasurable to be miserable to stew and brood… Read more »Believe in Peace
After all the bombs have died outthere’s nothing like calm.No one’s died downand everyone’s come to harm. After everything’s called it a dayand the dawn’s gone to sleepmost of the most live the leastand fewer than the few believe in peace. Go to Source Author: aprettykettleofpoetryANONsense uniVERSE
Go to Source Author: aprettykettleofpoetry“A Booster, I Hope” [by Stanley Moss]
A Booster, I Hope There’s a teacher of poetry who teaches her own verse Snakes Breasts and Nothings to a class who must buy her book at full price if they want to learn from her how to make a poem. Who was the authority who gave her the authority to pull out students’… Read more »Cowlick Billy in the City | Donal Mahoney
Cowlick Billy always goes up the alley down the street sniffing things on hamster feet. No one knows why Billy goes up the alley down the street. Comments Billy I’m not silly things are sour things are sweet up the alley down the street. More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/. The post Cowlick Billy in the City |… Read more »Bullies and the Wimp | Donal Mahoney
They laugh at him because he’s weak by their standards but they don’t realize they’ve signed a contract with him, a lifetime guarantee for recompense. It will be fulfilled perhaps tomorrow or maybe on a wedding day or years from now at the funeral of a loved one when they’re as vulnerable as he appears… Read more »After Reading | by Chaelee Dalton
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationWater under the Bridge | Mary Bone
Water under the bridge, flooded my memory. My thoughts became history. If I could just let the water continue to flow, to get past my misery. The post Water under the Bridge | Mary Bone appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry Online
Happy birthday, Doris Day: Big Band Singer Par Excellence
On April 3, let’s celebrate Doris Day, a very great singer. 1 / 4/ 18 Dorisb4day is a great screen name because of Oscar Levant’s witticism (he knew Doris Day “before she was a virgin”) but mostly because of the voice of Doris at break of day or when driving on Rte 17 and listening… Read more »Harvard Prof Disses Great Books [by Walter Carey]
Last nght at the Wilson Trust Foundation, Professor Beryl Dunkelheit began their lecture on “Why We Read Great Books” with the a priori premise that we read them “to become a better person.” “But look at me, look at my colleagues. Are we better people? I think not.” QED. But hold on. Who says… Read more »Sidestepping Waves | Dah
Walking into the ocean, I am pure wind, not breath but wind, not lungs but light. I arrange shells like a jetty, and scrap the sky from the water until there is only the sea. Pulled by the current, my reflection is an otter whose feet never touch bottom. When I think of failure, I… Read more »Wake and Forget | Dah
What I love I forget to love and there is nothing half-hearted either way and there is something remarkable about this the manifestation the celebration the openness of leaving or returning that brings not only change to one’s self but to the lover who remains devoted with exuberance and restraint on certain days that seem… Read more »Richard Howard, 1929-2021 [by David Lehman]
John Hollander, Richard Howard, and David Lehman about to enter the Bowery Poetry Club for a reunion of the Columbia Review editors, 2005. (photo © Stacey Lehman) Richard Howard, distinguished poet, critic, teacher, guest editor of The Best American Poetry 1995, friend of five decades, died yesterday. All the many students, poets, readers guided by… Read more »Mister Mephistopheles’ Tea-Party | Jim Bellamy
at the end of a rainbow, where the starfish spree; where the mermen glide and the anemones weave- in the very middling centre of a cave at sea- mister mephistopheles sits down for tea. the table’s laid and the chairs set to, and the lamplight’s motion is lighting the blue, and from the middle of… Read more »Lament | Jenny Middleton
Paved, tarred streets smother us Dreaming.. stilled. Beneath, if you listen, Grass echoes its longing and ancient verges, glades and meadows sweet ache In our fox soul of red souls As we tread wearily, Ceaselessly towards a confinement of city. an astronaut I heard lamenting from the station cries knowing amid our gains loss lays… Read more »Happy National Poetry Month! Here’s Some (Free) POETRY & More! | by The Editors
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationBob Dylan to Host Reality TV: America’s Next Top Bard [by Stacey Harwood]
Fox network announced today that it will headline its lineup of fall programming with “America’s Next Top Bard.” In the pilot, contestants are asked to memorize and recite a soliloquy from Hamlet, to write a bad sonnet on a quotation to be disclosed from Susan Sontag’s literary essays, and to take part in the “Instant Haiku”… Read more »Performer Simon Tanguy does words well [by Tracy Danison]
Simon Tanguy performing “Inging”. Photo©Elian Bachini Although she disdained mostly everybody but her two sisters and her boon girlfriend Dottie, my mother was much involved in good works. Ma mastered the trick of feeding the hungry, comforting the sick and clothing the naked while quite literally holding her nose. Also, she had a natural talent… Read more »“Poem for Basho” [by Ed Ochester]
If I am timorous and hesitant to intrude on your privacy, forgive me, for though every poet in New York has written a poem to you it is different here where one farm does not wish to violate another farm’s solitude, but if after 300 years you were in this valley perhaps you would write… Read more »In the Wake of Technology | Donal Mahoney
Forty years ago, David Germaine had been an editor with a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in a large city. After that, he had worked at many smaller papers in smaller cities because if one wanted to work for a newspaper, one had to go where the work was. And David loved newspapers. As computers took over… Read more »#fakepost | Vagabonding Poet
Lies, like wives in their guise Stringing their husbands in a vice Like Mice, oh so nice That oh my, It shines in those lines Those fine lines between signs And its rhymes, it’s sublime And yes, that’s not mine He wines and dines the girl But that’s not fine Who is she, she’s not… Read more »“Imperial Adam” by A.D. Hope [Introduced by Thomas Moody]
When A.D. Hope published his first collection of poetry, The Wandering Islands, at the age of 48, he was already regarded as the leading Australian poet of his day. The book’s belated publication in 1955 was due in large part to Australia’s prudish censorship laws, and there was much in The Wandering Islands to rankle… Read more »Passing by Atimonan, Quezon | Karlo Sevilla
Beneath late afternoon lightly sunned, stretch of sea mirrors sky and runs alongside strip of settled sand. Through filmic gaps of sentinel trees, tremulous palm of sinewy blue offers my way home forwardly, resolutely. More at http://karlosevillaofquezoncity.blogspot.com/2016/10/s-list-of-published-poems-all-with-links.html. The post Passing by Atimonan, Quezon | Karlo Sevilla appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author:… Read more »Parade in the Company Cafeteria | Donal Mahoney
People right-handed carry their cups in the right hand while left-handed people carry their cups in the hand that befits left-handed people. Whichever the hand, all carry their cups elbows right-angled. Whichever the hand, people forget all cups are at sea, adrift on an ocean of saucers. More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com. The post Parade in the… Read more »“On Becoming a Poet”: featuring Denise Duhamel, Geoffrey O’Brien, Phillip Lopate. . .
New from Marsh Hawk Press: On Becoming a Poet: 25 Original Essays & Interviews Edited by Susan Terris Sandy McIntosh’s Chapter One Series presents 25 writers at their most candid and expansive about how they became who they are. The writers who talk about their education or self-education – in effect a Bildungsroman in miniature —… Read more »Headline of the Week: Oscar Wilde, Back in the News
Metro Edition Tuesday, March 29, 2022 OSCAR WILD What you didn’t see on TV after Awards’ slap snap Sources describe a backstage scene of chaos Sunday night after Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock, as everyone realized it wasn’t a joke. The Academy says it’s conducting a review and may punish Smith for his assault…. Read more »I Smile Happily | Mónika Tóth
The sky is black my heart is sick my soul is broken my life is torn if i think of you I smile happily The post I Smile Happily | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineI Borrow | Paul Brookes
distortions. I want to look like her or him, so I can be her or him. I buy their perfume, their makeup to look a million dollars. I want to be distorted into them. Only by doing this can I be true to myself, and who I am. Plastic surgery would make me feel better…. Read more »A Conversation with Australian Prose Poet, Cassandra Atherton (by Nin Andrews)
NA: Why prose poetry? CA: I love prose poetry’s compression and the allied sense of breathlessness it so often conveys. Where lineated poems tease the right margin, the prose poem embraces it. I also adore prose poetry’s celebration of the quotidian—those daily engagements at the heart of so much experience. It’s a form of… Read more »On the Radio | Roger Still
Standing was for the living room where the record player was and before that, an 8-track, then cassettes, voices confined to thin shiny brown tape, click, rewind, sing, click, rewind The post On the Radio | Roger Still appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineLife Is Personal | Lehr Niazi
The moments, those lost, lost forever, But in heart, we forget them never. Dare to face life, blood not be low, If the hurdles are more, better to be slow. Controversies of life, solve in time, Before they may become a crime. Never can catch again, the moment lost, We are slow but life is… Read more »On Grief: A Conversation with Sara Henning | by Corinne Segal
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationMaya C. Popa: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
_______________________________________________________ Is This Your Bag Please Would You Open It The moment you know they are about to find something pushing aside the mini marmalades withdrawing the curler with latex fingers folding a flap folding back another flap your… Read more »Ten Years from Now | Jim Bellamy
Cold, grey city with cold, grey faces, hands in pockets, eyes expressionless and pale. Queues of resigned people, standing years apart, each one thinking thoughts that the other can’t impart. Five foolish girls share a forbidden fag, glancing over their shoulders with stilettos in a bag. And in ten years time, when they have been… Read more »Best Poetry Onlines
Welcome to one of the best poetry websites to submit, read, and comment on contemporary poems by poets from all over the world. You’re cordially invited to browse this site and submit a poem for publication. Thanks for visiting. The post Best Poetry Onlines appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry… Read more »“Balance” [by Bruce Kawin]
we all have a center of gravity so where is our center of levity? Related Stories Denise Duhamel’s “Kinky” turns 25! [by Stacey Lehman] Go to Source Author: The Best American Poetry“Terminus” [by Nicholas Christopher]
Terminus Here is a piece of required reading at the end of our century the end of a millennium that began with the crusades The transcript of an interview between a Red Cross doctor and a Muslim girl in Bosnia twelve years old who described her rape by men calling themselves soldiers different men every… Read more »I Don’t Know | Tessa
I don’t know, where this will go I can’t see, how it’s going to be But I know, I’ve given you, me I don’t know, the length of my stay But I do know, I want it this way I can’t ask what I want from you, I just crave to get some of you… Read more »Window | JD DeHart
And when does the window close, And when does the soil we have come from spit us back out, And when does the glint in the eye become a dull focus When do we lose our names and hopes and settle for stained life, constantly opening and shutting doors, And is it fear that holds… Read more »Denise Duhamel’s “Kinky” turns 25! [by Stacey Lehman]
Barbie and Ken,1960 And Limp Wrist magazine is celebrating with a special two-part issue. I’m on board! I love Denise’s Barbie inspired book of poems and if you haven’t read it, you owe yourself that pleasure. For a taste, I give you these lines, from Sensational Barbie: When Barbie was under anesthesia, her… Read more »Update on Muhammad Hussein Yaqub: Terrorist or Traitor?
This is what the Egyptian cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaqub said in 2009 on an Egyptian television station: “If the Jews left Palestine to us, would we start loving them? Of course not. We will never love them. . . They are enemies not because they occupied Palestine. They would have been enemies even if they… Read more »Losing Farther, Losing Faster: Reading Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” While Trying to Save My Native Language [by Natalie Diaz]
At Fort Mojave, the reservation where I grew up and recently moved back to, I am not a poet—my work is in language revitalization. There are only three living Elder speakers of our Mojave language. My Elders and I work together—against history, against memory, and especially against silence—to document and record our language, to teach… Read more »Though There… | Indian
Though there exist humans, Humanity goes extinct. Though there beats a heart within every human , Love becomes a rare scene. Though there’s a book in everyone’s hand , True knowledge is yet to be gained. Though people thrives to be great , Irresponsibility is a deficiency disease. The post Though There… | Indian appeared… Read more »Polish | Edgar Law
She says you need a bit of polish which makes me think she wants to spread her ink on me rewrite me as someone new filling my old mind with erasures Recasting our worn-out romance. The post Polish | Edgar Law appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineThe New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Six): Chad Foret [by Angela Ball]
We May Never Get Back Here That soft yellow two-story place in the Spanish style was a movie house, remember? Marilyn who pitied horses danced the desert conscious while Clark watched. They don’t open doors in Niagara: too many bodies in the bell… Read more »People as ‘Time Ticking Bombs’ | Pushmaotee Subrun
People as ‘time ticking bombs’ Destroying the sanity of people Or even leading them earlier to their tombs, Making a mess of life, like a mass of rubble. Guarantee of love, Next to impossible. Live without love Not conceivable. Sail on high winds? Love has ups and downs, And, though blowing away the mind, Resort… Read more »Faultless Love | Daphedine
No word can utter the most descriptive and created love we share How can a man be so wise but yet foolish when it comes to the heart? For he never felt a love such as this A love that carves its perfect sculpture Surpasses all flaws and human understanding It blooms within all its… Read more »You Are My Insomnia | Mónika Tóth
Charming stars Friendly dark Beautiful half moon 3 :am I can’t sleep. Darling I miss you. Fear in my chest. Fear in my heart. Fear in my soul. I can’t sleep. You are my insomnia. The post You Are My Insomnia | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry… Read more »PG-13 | Tempest Brew
I remember the first time I was old enough to see PG-13 what a big deal and the first time my friend lied to me about sneaking into an R-rated movie the film was Showgirls and told me some lies about hiding under a trench coat and hat. The post PG-13 | Tempest Brew appeared… Read more »
Spring is Here [by Ella Fitzgerald and Rodgers & Hart]
Spring is here! Why doesn’t my heart go dancing? Spring is here! Why isn’t the waltz entrancing? No desire, no ambition leads me Maybe it’s because nobody needs me Spring is here! Why doesn’t the breeze delight me? Stars appear, why doesn’t the night invite me? Maybe it’s because nobody loves me Spring… Read more »Headlines | Stan Morrison
we want you to know that you can learn about anything that we want you to know that might does make right and the meek inherit nothing that facts are always fickle and litigation is lugubrious stiff upper lip is preposterous in the face of the disastrous the ballot box is not the answer windmill… Read more »Your Name | Mónika Tóth
dedicated my nice Roamanian friend Vasile your name A tiny tattoo On the sole of my feet How I adore you The post Your Name | Mónika Tóth appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineDean Young: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
______________________________________________________ Archaic Torso of Me Too There was the guy in the next room screaming he wanted some goddamn sugar. There was the lady who my first night conscious tried to get me to pray while a… Read more »Translation as Praxis | by Juana Adcock
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationBe That Woman | Lakmi
When your heart is broken Life an empty desert And all those who you love Leave you to pick up the pieces Girl take that fire Unbridled desire Take all that passion And ignite your ambition Know that you are In the centre of the universe And with your illumination Even God will be unsettled… Read more »Playful Love | Lakmi
My thoughts they wander Stroll, meander Toward the warmth of your kiss Like a playful toddler That will not behave It runs toward your bliss I want to be a bubbling river And flow into you The ocean calm and deep I want to be a flower And open up to you The sunlight kissing… Read more »On Nelson Riddle [by Terry Teachout, 1956-2022]
Two excerpts from “The Man Who (Re)made Sinatra: The Riddle of Nelson” by Terry Teachout (February 6, 1956 – January 13, 2022) in Commentary (July / August 2021) Nelson Riddle was, perhaps, the greatest of all the arrangers who worked on the Great American Songbook, primarily because of the work he did in the 1950s with… Read more »You Mean So Much to Me | Mónika Tóth
Dedicated my nice Romanian friend Vasile You are my inspiration,every day. You are the smile on my face. You are sparkle in my eyes. You are the only song I want to sing. You are my light in the darkness, My strength when I’m too weak, My voice when I speak. My smile, when I… Read more »Witnessing the Colour of Spring with Mark Hollis | Andy N
Broken in late evening sunshine at the edge of Spring there is a broken silence sat alone in a deserted platform counting the pauses in-between the endless chatter of swallows in search of an inheritance across the skies. Whether Westwood bound or looking inside out across a watershed there is a sullen beauty grief stricken… Read more »“Parallel Bars” [by Geoffrey Young]
PARALLEL BARS It gets bad and then it gets worse And then the bottom falls out But then it gets better, even great, you think You’re there, but then it goes sour, totally alone, hurting, But it comes back, new breath, friends again, It’s the best it’s been in months, Really clicking, it’s heaven, and… Read more »“The Kiss” [by Italo Svevo]
The first kiss, I gave you as coldly as I would have put my name to a contract; the second, I gave with enormous curiosity to analyze you and myself, but in fact, I didn’t analyze anything and understood nothing, as I was still feeling a kind of timidity that froze me; at the third… Read more »Telephone Call | Colleen Riehl
The cavernous echo of silence on the telephone exacerbated by every ticking moment. Rapid mental perusal.. erratic breathing as monumental decisions hastily.. to be made. The post Telephone Call | Colleen Riehl appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineSin Nombre | Stan Morrison
I matter as an absolute with no name or title I am tangible and visible connected by sense/feeling I am on life’s continuum a tactical thread in the fabric I am because I am because I need no explanation The post Sin Nombre | Stan Morrison appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author:… Read more »“I hear an army charging upon the land. .” [by James Joyce]
I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees: Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand, Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers. They cry unto the night their battle-name: I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter. They cleave the gloom… Read more »Gimme Gimme Gimme and the Me Toos | Mark Berriman
They will lift your shutters an inch at a time Our American dream They will shut the shutters on your yesterdays on your tomorrows If you’re born poor chances are (sing it) you’re going to remain poor Hereditary rule Sent by the hand of god to rule over us Bush Clinton Walton Koch The economy… Read more »Mother | Peytin Grider
She would give all of herself, every last scrap for me, which is something wild to think on She is simple, some would say, and they may make fun, she is rude at times, especially when provoked She is forgiveness and unforgiveness, and has lived a hard life, stuck somewhere when her own mother died… Read more »Thom Gunn Summarizes Henry James in 2 Lines
Jamesian Their relationship consistedIn discussing if it existed. — Thom Gunn (pictured) Poetry challenge: sum up a great author in eight words divided across two rhyming lines. Related Stories Ogden Nash’s Advice to Husbands Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryNow published: “NYC From the Inside” edited by George Wallace
NYC From the Inside: NYC Through the Eyes of The Poets Who Live Here, George Wallace’s new anthology, offers 179 poets from New York. From the press release: “Full of marquee names and up-and-comers, the anthology traces elements of New York City’s past, chronicles its present and predicts its future, staking its claim on the… Read more »Riddle | Tempest Brew
a name I don’t know a metaphor disguised like a Halloween costume truth wrapped in parable The post Riddle | Tempest Brew appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineRiddle | Tempest Brew
a name I don’t know a metaphor disguised like a Halloween costume truth wrapped in parable The post Riddle | Tempest Brew appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineSelf Possessed | Guna Moran
Joy flees at the first opportunity It does not give company always Like sorrow Sorrow is the true friend It is not ethereal like happiness Whose life partner is sorrow Sorrow is one’s happiness Happiness is dream Sorrow is reality Absurd dream is not my longing in reality So I do not say myself to… Read more »Self Possessed | Guna Moran
Joy flees at the first opportunity It does not give company always Like sorrow Sorrow is the true friend It is not ethereal like happiness Whose life partner is sorrow Sorrow is one’s happiness Happiness is dream Sorrow is reality Absurd dream is not my longing in reality So I do not say myself to… Read more »Everyone Is Equal in the Blues/Sic Transit Gloria Mundi | Andrew Darlington
to the two young lovers across the aisle from me midway mainline between Wakefield and Kings Cross, her head nuzzle-snuggling into the tats of his neck in a warm violet honey-tangle of solar wind-blown hair, his arm carelessly drapes her as he checks his online mail… and hey, it’s me, I’m the creepy old guy… Read more »Presence | Fotoula Reynolds
Laid aside like a dress upon a chair Dust rests for a hundred heart-years Blinded, she lost faces for ever But there is wisdom in women A kind and omnipotent force She is now seen in high places Her smile lives among the stars Astonishingly, green leaves are Found in the flowing of her dress… Read more »VS Announces New Cohosts: Ajanaé Dawkins & Brittany Rogers |
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationPoetry Foundation Launches Audience Perception Survey |
Go to Source Author: Poetry Foundation“Yellow Wild Flower” [by Laura Cronk]
Yellow Wild Flower I can eat as much as a big man. Wiry stems scarf up sunlight, roots muscle through dirt getting at water. If I could walk, I would run. Instead I shoot up starburst buds and pinwheels of thick yellow. Behind each bloom that’s going white at the edges, about to look nibbled… Read more »
The Ultimate Language Poem [in “The Shining” (1980)]
Wendy Torrence (Shelley Duval) discovers the “Language” poem that her husband Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson) has been struggling to complete. — sdh Related Stories Cornell UP Announces “The Mysterious Romance of Murder” Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryDiary as Form, or a Case for Hybrid Genres [by Megin Jimenez]
In one of her brilliant essays, poet and novelist Fanny Howe proposes the diary as the ultimate subversive genre: anarchic, directionless, unconcerned with narrative or context. (I believe it’s in the collection The Wedding Dress, I will insert the quote when I’m near the book.) Not every diarist is writing for a reader other than… Read more »1028 Peach Street | Matthew Borczon
In the neon hour before sunrise I am in a parking lot looking at a fence that was once my old apartment I spent almost ten years above a paint store across from the YMCA there were three roommates then two engagements that were doomed before they started not Romeo and Juliette doomed but more… Read more »Customary | Uiba Mangang
From a leaf to another leaf, Leap the frogs in their rush paces, In the molested water lake, That has been used to clean every five years Or, every season it need be coloured. When the frogs becomes the beggar in suits, He or she rates amount to be given! The frogs croak with its… Read more »Evie Shockley: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
______________________________________________________________________ quiet as it’s kept no one tells you about these boys : their quiet feminism grows like wildflowers : in their mothers’ gardens : you should take a field … Read more »Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Lynn Emanuel
Eavan Boland says that Lynn’s poems ‘have rare power: they connect to the world through estrangement.’ Yes, but that may sound forbidding. They’re also enormously playful and witty. She has an ‘Homage to Sharon Stone;’ she speaks in the voice of a depressed book; she even, as in the following excerpt, speaks from inside Gertrude… Read more »Spook in the Cellar | Colleen Riehl
An indubitable fact A voice in my head clearly said don’t enter the Cellar a spook awaits you Oh no! overwhelmed with trepidation dread soaked in perspiration I was home alone not for one week but two. Just me and the ghastly spook What was I to do! petrified.. couldn’t sleep I strategized.. Devised an… Read more »Shrinking to Fit | Patricia Walsh
Shrinking to fit, hiding in plain sight, small-town niceties recycled to a point, lower to a point, discarded as necessary lighting off pretence uploaded to a tee. A private table should deliver the goods, garbled writing with a pen remains the same, the infamy outside calls upon decorum forever welcome as long as you pay…. Read more »Cornell UP Announces “The Mysterious Romance of Murder”
Coming from Cornell University Press in May 2022: The Mysterious Romance of Murder, the poet and critic David Lehman explores a wide variety of outstanding books and movies—some famous (The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity), some known mainly to aficionados—with style, wit, and passion. Lehman revisits the smoke-filled jazz clubs from the classic noir films of the… Read more »Drink | Navaster Twistree
Time spent and money wasted On shallow friends and beer a tasted I can get home by any means But I’ll never get back my life and dreams The post Drink | Navaster Twistree appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineDementia | John Baverstock
Barbara visiting her husband, A trip she regularly makes, He is staying in a place of care, Whilst she has a well-earned break, Geoff her husband, Has had dementia, For nearly 10 years, Barbara loves him so much, So often leaves in tears, Is that our Margret, Or is it Jean, I have missed you,… Read more »Jack-a-Nory E.P.
Safe Hot-Water Bottles Everywhere Mum taught me something I’ll never forget:When you fill a hot-water bottle with boiling kettle-boiled H2O,hold the bottle over the sink in case it falls‘cos if u scald yourself you’ll know. To everyone in the world now,Peace and Love. Hope it’s so close to home, you’re care free enough to freely… Read more »Waiting for the Last Time | j.lewis
because the human body is not infinite nor is it immortal at least not yet the inevitable is only a question of timing perhaps it has already happened with no way to know it my father said goodbye and it was sure nice to see you wish you were closer hardly anyone comes to see… Read more »After All | Debra Sasak Ross
The sun within the clouds are calming, Unlike lightning in the sky which can be alarming. The waves in the ocean are consuming, While the stars in the sky remind me. I’m only human. After all. The post After All | Debra Sasak Ross appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry… Read more »“The Princess Borghese Breaks Up With Talma On Lake Bourget” [by George Green]
The Princess Borghese Breaks Up With Talma On Lake Bourget (Sept. 1813) She had arranged a boating expedition to the Abbey of Hautecombe with the sulking Talma (the great tragedian, her current bedmate) and Captain Duchand, an elegant hussar, who would, perhaps that very night, replace the forsaken thespian. Laure d’Brantes had come along. (To… Read more »“That Too” [by Lawrence Joseph]
“That Too” A long walk up West Street along the piers. The sky—right now the sun, the clouds, a few seconds of light yellow. The deepest being being a longing to satisfy the longing for a solitude of two. Gertrude Stein’s “Composition as Explanation,” that too. Surely the blacks and golds are the depth of… Read more »Homeless Soul | Guna Moran
It wants to run away Somehow I managed to hold back It had not been long since I turned homesick It had been only that day I left the Bedouin life leave Enjoying after suffering from hunger Home is the arch enemy of Bedouin (Translated by Bibekananda Choudhury) The post Homeless Soul | Guna Moran… Read more »Asylum | Sunita Singh
Let me seek asylum in the silence of my woods away from my city of blaring horns and confusion- plaguing slashing my birds Let me sit on the banks of my silent stream gazing at the fishes floating by listening to the music of my trees playing on the strings of my breeze Let me… Read more »The Haiku Masters of Japan drop in for a visit [by David Lehman]
Thanks to Bob Hass, I’m reading the haiku masters of Japan — Basho, Buson and Issa — in one essential book: The Essential Haiku, published by Ecco, with smart intro and useful notes by Mr. Hass. Examples follow. (Translators do not observe strict syllabic count). Here is Basho as rendered by B. Watson in fifteen syllables:… Read more »Vale Jordie Albiston [by Thomas Moody]
We were saddened to hear the news last weak of the death of Melbourne poet Jordie Albiston at the age of 60. One of Australia’s most highly regarded contemporary poets, she will perhaps best be remembered for 2003’s The Fall and its much anthologized title poem, an account of a woman falling from the Empire State Building… Read more »Main-à-Dieu | Steven Fortune
I. The Maritime epitome leaks sensational exchanges between moon magnets at play Telephones open your eyes Remember sweet nothings stumbling shy and evasive on shore and spraying its stones with cobalt kisses ‘ere tucking it in with the tides II. Without having consciously channeled the Scottish mind for gesticulations or affable sense of fashion the… Read more »Nature’s Music | Mary Bone
The north winds blow so strong, an eerie sound, making its own song. Birds sing in nearby trees, there’s a hint of spring and the buzzing of bees. The month of March brings nature’s bloom. During the summer the beauty will parch, But for now, the flowers smile, With no hint of impending doom. The… Read more »The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Five): Mary Ruefle [by Angela Ball]
Müller and Me Wilhelm Müller, 1794-1827 I am an ordinary fauna, one who can’t remember if a fife is a rifle or a flute. After all, there’s strife and fight in it, but on the other hand it’s a short sweet word that rhymes with life. The way the cemetery looks made of books and… Read more »The Hole in the Whole | Igor Goldkind
The measure of suffering is how distant you are from your own happiness. There is no distance farther than that. It’s a gap people carry around with them, sometimes oddly, with pride: ‘Look how long-suffering, look how hard working, Look how good doing I am.’ Small wonder we’re exhausted all of the time. Because there’s… Read more »Soul | Igor Goldkind
So who is this Soul that you sing of? This silent witness Who counts the leaves off of trees instead of gathering them? And raking them into a funerary pile, Into the giant hill that your better self will fall from, Or jump into. Up to your eyeballs, Up to your own private crown of… Read more »“Perky Cuties I Had a Crush On”: Movies and Beauty [by Mark Strand]
8 / 26 / 09 Dear David Pursuant to our conversation of the other night, the one in which we discussed what various movie stars meant to us, I have decided to write not simply one email to you, but several. When I was very young, say, around seven or eight, I went in for… Read more »Par Avion | Fotoula Reynolds
Upon the mantle A candle burns Prayers are heard Mourning visits Pressing a letter To her chest The look of grief Is not a role play Dripping tears fall Crumpled and wet The paper softens Ink running and Words disappearing But never forgotten Whimpering outward Releasing a rawness Sorrow stinging Primal fear erupts Two children… Read more »Secrets of the Heart | Lynn Long
Feelings of uncertainty trapped inside absurdity As leaden stones of gray Keep the hearts frailty at bay Hidden jewels- the souls fool… Treasures beyond endeavor Forever to remain Forbidden to impart Are the secrets of one’s heart… More at https://zolanymph1.blogspot.com/ The post Secrets of the Heart | Lynn Long appeared first on Best Poetry. Go… Read more »Of Stichography | by David Larsen
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationBrandon D. Johnson: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
_________________________________________________________________________ In Concert Earl grins and flicks ash from his shoulder. he scans the scene, ears tuned for sirens, says less gunpowder might blow just the door off next time. from our safe distance, we stare at the yacht’s cabin; it flips, hits… Read more »Sunshine Will Always Come | Antoine Kidd
There are times when it seems like the clouds will never go away. Times when It seems like the sun will never show its beautiful rays again. Those days the skies are grey, and the days are cold. The nights are quiet, terrifying and lonely. Those days when there isn’t a creature in sight. Everything… Read more »Truth — A Master Sculptor | Megha Sood
Truth, a convoluted river exists in the deepest of the ravine like the glistening ends of the skies it shines and glimmers in the darkness /a beacon of hope/ for the crestfallen souls when the darkness is sculpted in our benign existence screaming for hope a dream so divine. Truth, cuts like a double-edged sword… Read more »In Appreciation of William Matthews [by Peter Fortunato]
Bill Matthews was born on Armistice Day 1942 and died of a heart attack a day after his fifth-fiifth birthday on November 12, 1997. We asked the poet and artist Peter Fortunato to pick a poem by Bill and talk a little about it and him. Peter picked “What You Need,” from Bill’s first book,… Read more »toujours meilleur en francais
Related Stories Even Bad Books Have Their Charms [by David Lehman] Go to Source Author: The Best American PoetryMichael Jackson | Ciarán Parkes
In a dream Michael Jackson is playing a concert in the town I live in or a dream version of that town, beside a river that doesn’t quite exist. Earlier, a priest had preached a sermon, not quite condemning Jackson from the pulpit, but talking about him in such a way that no right thinking… Read more »Vintage Swing | Chloe Gilholy
Order champagne showers also known as liquid courage besides the typewriter with more rhythm than teenage tunes and Gameboy colours Dance under a red chair and twirling umbrellas chill in the bathtub put your cocktails down by the tiger’s hips. So put on your lampshades and your Minnie mouse tights Don’t blend in when you… Read more »Mary Jo Salter Presents “The Death of Argos,” a Sonnet Sequence by Nicholas Pierce (Day 10)
Mary Jo Salter (photo right) concludes two weeks of presenting “The Death of Argos” by Nicholas Pierce. What new thing can be done with old forms like the sonnet? One answer comes from a new poet. In Nicholas Pierce’s first book, In Transit, he invents an especially devilish rhyme scheme for an eleven-sonnet sequence, “The… Read more »Jubilation of Possibility | Gary Slater
Waking to a new day of promise I step out into a gleaming world Where I know I can succeed If only I apply myself and strive To be the best version of me possible Inner drive will sustain me I understand what to do One step in front of the other A little at… Read more »After | Ciarán Parkes
In the weeks after your death, your face, the sound of your voice disappeared from my memory, then came back, projected onto people in the street, turning up everywhere, as if you had swung into a darkness where not even thoughts could reach, and then echoed back, amplified. The dark side of the moon perhaps,… Read more »Mary Jo Salter presents the sonnet sequence “The Death of Argos” by Nicholas Pierce (Day 9)
We continue this week, Monday through Friday, reprinting the sonnet sequence “The Death of Argos” by Nicholas Pierce (Photo), presented below by Mary Jo Salter. Last week we published the first six sonnets. Today, March 3, is the late James Merrill’s biorthday, and we dedicate this post to him. — DL What new thing can… Read more »Best Place to Submit Poetry Online
If you’re looking for the best place to submit poetry online then you’re cordially invited to submit your original poems here at Best Poetry Online. Visit the Submit a Poem page to send me your work. I look forward to reading and publishing your poems on this site. The post Best Place to Submit Poetry… Read more »10/01/19 A Foggy Night | Stan Morrison
gazing at a featureless sky not a single point of light no clouds are bubbling by even a moon cannot be found I trust that the same universe abides indifferent to my view The post 10/01/19 A Foggy Night | Stan Morrison appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineEliot’s “Ass Wednesday” [by Mitch Sisskind]
As we move into Lent, Eliot’s “Ass-Wednesday” is a work to which we naturally return. Is it surprising to discover the poet’s inscription to Scott Fitzgerald “with the author’s homage”? At first thought the two writers hardly seem like a match — but there are actually several points of affinity. Both men were Midwesterners who… Read more »Mary Jo Salter presents the sonnet sequence “The Death of Argos” by Nicholas Pierce (Day 8)
We continue this week, Monday through Friday, reprinting the sonnet sequence “The Death of Argos” by Nicholas Pierce (Photo), presented below by Mary Jo Salter. Last week we published the first six sonnets. What new thing can be done with old forms like the sonnet? One answer comes from a new poet. In his first… Read more »International Fallout | Scott Thomas Outlar
Corporations granted personhood by a simple stroke of the pen by some fascist politicians now conspire with and work for international banking conglomerates, sucking the blood, soul, and wealth from their lofty perches from the real people whom the laws are supposed to represent, but obviously don’t. In a similar set of circumstances it once… Read more »War | Mantri Pragada Markandeyulu
War Scenario Clouds, Gun Fires Bombing, No Peace, Worried World, Helpless People Ceasefire, Maintain Peace and Harmony More at https://markumantri.wordpress.com/. The post War | Mantri Pragada Markandeyulu appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineOn Richard Wilbur’s Birthday: “Mind”
Mind Mind in its purest play is like some bat That beats about in caverns all alone, Contriving by a kind of senseless wit Not to conclude against a wall of stone. It has no need to falter or explore; Darkly it knows what obstacles are there, And so may weave and flitter, dip and… Read more »Free Download of the March 2022 Issue Celebrating the Work of Margaret Danner and More | by The Editors
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationMary Jo Salter Presents Nicholas Pierce’s 11-sonnet sequence, “The Death of Argos” (Day 6)
We continue this week, Monday through Friday, reprinting the sonnet sequence “The Death of Argos” by Nicholas Pierce (Photo), presented below by Mary Jo Salter. Last week we published the first six sonnets. What new thing can be done with old forms like the sonnet? One answer comes from a new poet. In his first… Read more »Her Life | Katherine Brent
And so it came to pass That she grew up and moved away No longer walked down Familiar lanes Charted her own course In a faraway place Leaving behind people Who would grow to resent her And cover for their absence of courage By saying it was her fault Huddled together wishing her ill Refusing… Read more »Disaster | Mantri Pragada Markandeyulu
Look at East suffer Tsunami North-West suffer worst incessant Earth Quakes West Infighting, South-West Bombarding More at https://markumantri.wordpress.com/. The post Disaster | Mantri Pragada Markandeyulu appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineAn Exercise in Autonomy: Hugo García Manríquez on Translation | by Whitney DeVos and Hugo García Manríquez
Go to Source Author: Poetry FoundationMyra Sklarew: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]
________________________________________ Birdland for Sterling Brown So I take my seven bucks to buy a railroad ticket. And with a little luck hitchhike to the station. The money comes from playing in a dance… Read more »March — View from My Window | Mary Parkes
Tall bare trees reach up so high. A thick black blanket hugs the sky. Will we have rain now or will that cloud scatter? From my warm viewpoint that is no matter! Now chattering sparrows arrive at the feeders, then Six sparkling starlings – very fast eaters! Two little blue tits cling to the suet… Read more »Affection | Mantri Pragada Markandeyulu
Kingdoms Gone, Rulers Gone Generations Rolled, People Changed Properties Lost, Living Styles Changed Old Culture Out, New Culture In More at https://markumantri.wordpress.com/. The post Affection | Mantri Pragada Markandeyulu appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author: Best Poetry OnlineFrank, Fred, and Elvis
ELVIS PRESLEY, FRANK SINATRA and FRED ASTAIRE at Nancy Sinatra’s opening night party, which was also celebrating the closing night for Elvis, at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, in 1969. Elvis’s bodyguard, Joe Esposito, is in the background. “Elvis was a prince,” says Mr. Abolafia. “He would give you the shirt off his… Read more »Green Skies at Dusk | LA Felleman
could we move somewhere, where homes sustain rooms, walls retain bricks, trees never twist, roofs rarely lift? is there some place left, where air does not hook, clouds seldom shred, soil remains grounded, as heat heightens wind? The post Green Skies at Dusk | LA Felleman appeared first on Best Poetry. Go to Source Author:… Read more »Someone I Don’t Know | Kaitlyn Park
who I am has changed into a me I no longer recognize too young, I don’t know the sound of my own heart beat, the ballerina dance of my own voice, I’m someone I don’t know anymore, the person I want to be so far buried beneath the rubble I am not sure I can… Read more »The Poet Who Never Was: Ern Malley [by David Lehman]
THE GREATEST literary hoax of the 20th century was concocted by a couple of Australian soldiers at their desks in the offices of the Victoria Barracks, land headquarters of the Australian army, on a quiet Saturday in October 1943. The uniformed noncombatants, Lt. James McAuley and Corp. Harold Stewart, were a pair of Sydney poets… Read more »