Elegies, the poet Dan Bellm argues, are poetry’s first reason. We are proud to publish Chaun Ballard’s powerful “Unfinished Sonnet.” It does all the right things a sonnet should do. The poem packs the mouth with sounds, darkly enjoyed—it gives…
Immediately, Van Prooyen gets inside the reader’s mouth. From there, she works outward, shaking the limbs and the feet and the hands, convincing the reader’s body to get in the car and go along for the ride. What a ride…
This series of poems by Reuben Canning Finkel is transportive; with these three moments of a child’s life, we’re given a deep and intimate picture of family, of community, of childhood. Finkel builds scenes that are easy to recognize and…
Translated from the Uyghur by Joshua Freeman, this poem speaks of God as the best poetry will—where no lecture is being made, or point argued, or overly sentimental gushing, but simply it lays bare a human heart in the context…
These two poems brim with a voice of grandfatherly confidence. There’s humor, there’s wisdom, there’s humility. Wade C. Bentley, an emerging poet later in his life, reminds us that poetry is more than trauma or broken hearts or heroic deeds—poetry…
With this poem, LaGrone gives us a special gift: a reminder of the beauty of language found at work. “Air Rathchet & Forklift” twists and squeals and cuts the tongue on sounds we tend to forget the magic of—what else…
Breathless and rolling, “Although You Felt So Close, (Within Splashes)” presses with momentum at every line. The poem lands at a breakneck intimacy that’s surprising and comfortable, and Adrian Cepeda carries his reader with fluid motion, puts their feet on…
The poetic gestures of “Burning Haibun” are simple, genuine, and surprising. As soon as we read the prose-poem section, we knew this was going to be accepted—but then, as we read the erasure, we got so excited to share it that…
Mai Der Vang stands out as a poet of stunning & lurid language. These two new poems exemplify the work displayed in her debut collection, Afterland (Graywolf Press 2017)—the geographies of grief & the bare evidence of spiritual truth. Vang, with linguistic dexterity,…
Lance Larsen’s Sad Jar of Atoms rolls in the ear like the voice of a friend. The lines pile and caress each other, holding onto intimacy even as we’re stretched from domestic quibbles to ancient history. Exploring the overlapping associations…
