Featured Poetry
Industry Prize, 1st Place Winner: After April Rain by Elizabeth Oxley
We’re all very excited to share with you the winners of the 2019 Frontier Industry Prize, selected by Jeff Shotts, Sarah Gambito, and Kwame Dawes. Today, we’re honored to share the winning poem: “After April Rain” by Elizabeth Oxley—a solid,…
Poetry: City on the Hudson by Lee Jenkins
“The evening’s firmly knitted into place,” Lee Jenkins says, and so is his music, so are the quiet voices and the quiet world that envelops them. “City on the Hudson” is a hand holder, a friend’s diary, a gentle and…
Industry Prize, 2nd Place Winner: Inheritance by Ae Hee Lee
We’re all very excited to share with you the winners of the 2019 Frontier Industry Prize, selected by Jeff Shotts, Sarah Gambito, and Kwame Dawes. Today, we have “Inheritance” by Ae Hee Lee— a moving exploration of heritage, of lands,…
Poetry: Dream Bird by Erin Williamson
Erin Williamson’s “Dream Bird” is an exceptional display by a new poet: a fantasy of warriors and feathers, of getting lost in a landscape’s leering masculinity. “This is just a dream,” the speaker says. “So real. So real.” Dream…
Industry Prize, 3rd Place Winner: Twelve by Olatunde Osinaike
We’re all very excited to share with you the winners of the 2019 Frontier Industry Prize, selected by Jeff Shotts, Sarah Gambito, and Kwame Dawes. Today, we have “Twelve” by Olatunde Osinaike—a lovely poem of sorrow and blades and learning…
Poetry: The Seven: An Occurrences Thereof by Marsha Larsen
“Beauty is life’s only holiness / And the widow sits calmly / Satisfied”—and we knew we were publishing this beautiful, moving poem from the talented Marsha Larsen. Sink in, enjoy. The Seven: And Occurrences Thereof – for Felice 1.…
Poetry: Here by Mónica Gomery
Mónica Gomery’s “Here” feels as if it must be a prose poem—the rolling sentences and stacked syntax reveal the enormity of what can’t be said, the enormity of trying to say what can’t be said. Touch the flowers at the memorial, instead.…
Poetry: The Ballerina by Marisa Webster
“The Ballerina,” by Marisa Webster, holds together with the glue of its own unmistakeable question: when does a ballerina stop being a ballerina? i.e. When does an identity become a story and no longer a lived reality? Through prosaic syntax…
Poetry: The Fact of Things by Ja’net Danielo
The musicality of “The Fact of Things” surprises—it’s skinny shape and journalistic voice bely a deep song about the fraught beauty of the world around us. Ja’net Danielo’s words firmly hold our gaze, right at the facts, at the bus…
Poetry: Hypostasis by Triin Paja
“Hypostasis” soaks in mist, in daughters missing, in the mute colors of a dark and eager earth—in a few stanzas, Triin Paja peers into death and finds a violin. Listen to it sing: Hypostasis Have you thanked God for…
