Poetry Daily

Housework

Derek Chung (translated from the Chinese by May Huang)

Was that love? From the depths of the nest I took an egg Still warm. Turning around, I saw you stick your head out from the firewood, Ah ah-ing, like you wanted to tell me something you could never explain

from the book A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist / Zephyr Press

Essay: "Something about the way I had been taught or had come to think about metaphor... was causing this sense of not being at home in metaphor or in the world."
(TYR)
#pdnews
https://yalereview.org/article/jennifer-grotz-metaphor

Report: "Right now, the future is extremely uncertain for SPD’s former small presses—but they’re adapting as quickly as they can."
(LitHub)
#pdnews
https://lithub.com/the-small-press-world-is-about-to-fall-apart-on-the-collapse-of-small-press-distribution/

Announcement: "Poet-critic Hanif Abdurraqib... [is] among this year's recipients of Windham-Campbell Prizes, for which winners each receive $175,000 cash awards."
(SF Chronicle)
#pdnews
https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/poet-critic-hanif-abdurraqib-among-8-winners-of-19381764.php

Interview: "When I first started writing poems, I thought I was supposed to sound like everyone else."
(P&W)
#pdnews
https://www.pw.org/content/wanderer_wonderer_a_qa_with_victoria_chang

Report: "The Nuyorican Poets Cafe... has launched a $24 million, city-funded renovation that organizers hope will ensure the cafe's future for decades to come."
(Gothamist)
#pdnews
https://gothamist.com/news/nuyorican-poets-cafe-an-east-village-icon-begins-a-24m-makeover

Retrospective: "Roughly 20 minutes before our presentations were set to begin, however, we received a text from her husband Larry Ochs that Lyn had died that morning. Stunned by the news, we had no thought but to continue."
(LARB)
#pdnews
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/allegorical-moments-lyn-hejinians-life-in-writing/

Obituary: "Marjorie Perloff... one of the world’s leading scholars of contemporary poetry, died on Sunday at her home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 92."
(NYT)
#pdnews
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/books/marjorie-perloff-dead.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Report: "Small Press Distribution, one of the last remaining independent book distributors in the United States, has closed."
(PW)
#pdnews
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/94690-small-press-distribution-shuts-down.html

Essay: "Even for small magazines like us, there’s always going to be some degree of tension between radical poetic content and the realities of publishing."
(P&W)
#pdnews
https://www.pw.org/agents_editors_recommend/dominick_knowles_of_protean

Essay: "I wrote myself back to writing, I wrote myself through each day. I wrote myself, however ambivalently, back to life."
(LitHub)
#pdnews
https://lithub.com/style-as-survival-on-writing-after-death/

What Sparks Poetry

Ecopoetry Now

What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems.

In Ecopoetry Now, invited poets engage in an ecopoetic conversation across borders. In poems and poetics statements, their work describes important local differences, including bioregion and language, as well as a shared concern for the Earth. We hope to highlight poetry’s integral role in creating and sustaining a broadly ecological imagination that is most alive when biologically, culturally, and linguistically diverse.

This week's issue: Jody Gladding on [she is one who looks]

Catch Up on Recent Poems

April 19, 2024

It’s Easy to Lose Faith

Miron Białoszewski (translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh & Michał Rusinek)

The horse and cart went past. But the horse had a horse. The cart had a cart.

April 18, 2024

Poem In Which I Am Too Political To Read At Your School

Ashley M. Jones

A rose, single, silent, and soft, opens— red petals tender, innocent, fragrant. What beauty! How holy! Peace, unbroken in the rose's solid stem.

April 17, 2024

All the Day Long

Timothy Michalik

Walking home I thought about saying "when a person dies..." but somebody already did. Just a few days ago. Personally it's more interesting to live.

April 16, 2024

Adult Acne

Noah Arhm Choi

The only time my grandmother touched my mother was praying over her womb, saying boy boy boy when really she meant history history history. The only time she brought her food was the red ginseng, the bitter melon as if a full mouth always gives you what you want. Everytime my mother tells my birth story it changes.

April 15, 2024

[she is one who looks]

Jody Gladding

A poem playing with open space and multiple readings.

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B&W Photo of Dana Levin by B.A. Van Sise — Dana Levin

Phillip B. Williams