Featured Poetry
Poetry: How to Take Time by Daniel Lassell
We love the mouthfeel of Daniel Lassell’s “How to Take Time,” the patience for the right word in its right place—and the courage it performs in reaching for deep wisdom off the back of a red headed woodpecker. Lassell is…
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Get to Know the National Book Award Nominees
Ten beautiful collections here demand your looking—the longlist of the National Book Awards is out and the nominees represent emerging and established poets from all across America. For your poetheart’s perusal, we’ve gathered together some useful info on each of…
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Poetry: A Sunday Afternoon On the Island of La Grande Jatte in the City of Columbus by Patricia Miranda
We love the pace that Patricia Miranda builds in “A Sunday Afternoon”—she packs the single stanza with delicate humor and a theatrical rush. Too easily we see the speaker as ourselves, clumsily reversing through a day of mishandled opportunity and…
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Poetry: Written on this Land by Emily Strauss
With subtle luxury of sound, Emily Strauss writes of the desert, the West. Couplets hide the harmony crafted line by line until that final hard rhyme, shining like a jewel. Strauss understates her language as “dry and austere,” “barren”—but the…
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Labor Day Poetry
Work is the American right of passage, and is as apt a poetic subject as love, death, or nature. Work affects all other subjects in our lives. Historically, it’s been difficult to find poetry about work, but these lives are…
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Poetry: These Are the Witness Marks by Moira J.
Moira J. has written a visceral love poem with “THESE ARE THE WITNESS MARKS”—full of bodytalk and imagery that burrows under your skin, makes your back itch. Notice the goosebumps, the old salt, the zodiac mouth, but also the lover…
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Poetry: the road to old fort by P.J. Williams (Part 3)
This long poem, by P.J. Williams, drives. A beautifully paced meditation on place and family and memory, filled with blues and grays and burnished dawns—”the road to old fort” invites the reader in on a trip enjoyably unexpected. With Williams’s permission,…
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Poetry: the road to old fort by P.J. Williams (Part 2)
This long poem, by P.J. Williams, drives. A beautifully paced meditation on place and family and memory, filled with blues and grays and burnished dawns—”the road to old fort” invites the reader in on a trip enjoyably unexpected. With Williams’s permission,…
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Poetry: the road to old fort by P.J. Williams (Part 1)
This long poem, by P.J. Williams, drives. A beautifully paced meditation on place and family and memory, filled with blues and grays and burnished dawns—”the road to old fort” invites the reader in on a trip enjoyably unexpected. With Williams’s permission,…
Read More
Poetry: Flamingo by Cheryl Pearson
Beauty by ambush may best describe Cheryl Pearson’s “Flamingo”. The poem meditates on its namesake with wit and wisdom and a freshness of imagery that calls out for publication. The yolk and wine and flaming knots and throats—Pearson has managed…
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