As an elegy, “Those First Days” asks us, with good humor and friendly temper, to reflect on loss, on being trapped in tragedy’s den while beauty softly pours itself over the earth outside. Fay Dillof is mesmerizing here: gentle and…
Kaja Lucas captures an essential modern and American element in “by you, I see only blue light”—the feed, the incessant reference to what has faded and what demands to stay alive. Almost a sonnet, almost an ode, almost, finally, morning.…
With “Weak Ode to Saffron,” Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad sets out to contain the luminous ingredient in language, in line breaks, in a New York Kitchen. But the saffron is too much, invites too much to be contained: love, Iran, the gnarled…
Lindsay Adkins’ series of poems meditates on the famous character of Jewish literature from a new point of view—revealing, in its turnings and its own unique violences, a brickwork story of a daughter’s redemptive eager. “Fathers are made in the…
Steven Duong’s poetry ripens with bodies, the struggle of skin—and he uses them as locus centers from which he can reach out to disparate realms of the universe and time to make new things of the old: ancient Rome and…
All of Cass Garison’s submission to our 2019 Antioch-Frontier Fellowship blew us away—but this poem in particular stood out with its vivid and meaningful violence, its compact and dynamic lines, its emotional adventurousness. As the winner, Cass will be leaving…
A delicate sonnet cycle, Sophie Klahr’s “PASS WITH CARE” trembles lightly as an inviting hand, stuck out the rolled down window of her car. Here is a road trip so softly lonely that you can’t help but want to hop…
Beyond an excellent title—who is Maddie? where is home?—Michael Hurley’s “Dead Maddie” crunches in the readers mouth: image and sound wonderfully in tune with themes of fragility and loss. Dear Maddie Spring has been cold but with newness +++++on the…
Kimberly Ann Southwick’s “The Heart of the Matter” performs the life of spring with such delicate aural precision—to read the poem is to feel yourself ringing a slim plate of porcelain against the table, listening to the cracks patiently spread,…
We adore this new poem by Taylor D’Amico—how it flirts with the sonnet form, how it maneuvers so gently between the delicate subjects. “Cradle and All” announces an arrival for D’Amico: a poet here to stay. Cradle and All I…
