A Poetry Daily Prose Feature:
"Dickey said that he was, in Wordsworth's phrase, a poet of "the second birth," not one who, like Rimbaud or Dylan Thomas, had a natural instrument for poetry. The way a "made" poet such as Dickey catches up to a "born" poet is, "if at all, by years of the hardest kind of work, much luck, much self-doubt, many false starts, and the difficult and ultimately moral habit of trying each poem, each line, each word, against the shifting but finally constant standards of inner necessity." It could be said that Dickey brought a kind of athleticism to his work, with an athlete's dedication to a perfected performance that he recognized in the story of football player Jim Marshall: determination is more important than physical gifts. Dickey's preferred analogy for his process of composition was the mining of "low-grade ore." "I work like a gold-miner refining low-grade ore: a lot of muck and dirt with a very little gold in it. Backbreaking labor! Infinite! But when this kind of worker gets what he's after, he has the consolation of knowing that the substance he winds up with is as much real gold as it would be if he had just gone around picking up nuggets off the ground." Poets of the second birth often bloom late, and so it was with Dickey."—Ward Briggs, Introduction to The Complete Poems of James Dickey
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Seeking "a poetics of belief:"
Christian Wiman's My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer reviewed by Kathleen Norris. (The New York Times)
"A way of choosing well:"
Jeremy Butman on Matthew Dickman's Mayakovsky’s Revolver. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
"Learning to Love the Poems of Edward Thomas"
David Rivard introduces "There’s Nothing Like the Sun." (Slate)
"Answers on a Postcard: Departures, or Some Accidental British Debuts"
Lytton Smith on collections by Emily Berry, Heather Phillipson, Oliver Dixson, and Warsan Shire. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
Jump-start to a "lifetime:"
Leah Falk on Muriel Rukeyser's novel Savage Coast. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
TLS poem of the week:
Kate Miller
introduces Carol Rumens's "March, Happy Valley." (The Times Literary Supplement)
"The last of the Greeks"?
C.P. Cavafy: Complete Poems, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn, reviewed by Philip Hensher. (The Spectator)
American Life in Poetry:
Ted Kooser presents Laura Dimmit's "School photo, found after the Joplin tornado." (American Life in Poetry)
"What the Hell"
Joan Acocella on "Dante in translation and in Dan Brown’s new novel." (The New Yorker)
The Guardian poem of the week:
Carol Rumens introduces Robert Sidney's "Sonnet 30." (The Guardian)
"Portland School spirit, by way of Long Island"
David Biespiel continues his series on the "Portland School" of poetry with a look at Henry Hughes's work and his poem "Rock Wallabies." (The Oregonian)
"A sure but tentative faith:"
Christian Wiman's My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer reviewed by Gordon Houser. (The Wichita Eagle)
"Poetry don't pay the rent:"
Michael Robbins on reviewing. (Chicago Tribune)
"A work of haunting poetic craftsmanship:"
Ron Smith's Its Ghostly Workshop reviewed by Jeffrey Beck. (The Sport Literature Association)
• From Its Ghostly Workshop and the PD archive: Three Poems
Recently Arrived Titles
These just in... Highlighted titles may be purchased from Poetry Daily / Amazon.com. A complete
list of all books and journals recently received at Poetry Daily is also available.
- Belmont, Stephen Burt (Graywolf Press)
- September, Rachel Jamison Webster (TriQuarterly Books)
- Thresherphobe, Mark Halliday (University of Chicago Press)
- The Narrow Circle, Nathan Hoks (Penguin)
- The Big Smoke, Adrian Matejka (Penguin)
- The Late Parade, Adam Fitzgerald (Liveright)
- The Fabliaux, Nathaniel E. Dubin, tr. (Liveright)
- The Venice Suite: A Voyage Through Loss, Dermot Bolger (New Island)
- Brief Nudity, Larry O. Dean (Salmon Poetry)
- Moth; or how I came to be with you again, Thomas Heise (Sarabande Books)
- Shadows and Starlight, John Knoepfle (Indian Paintbrush Poets)
- The Awkward Poses of Others, Robert E. Wood (WordTech Editions)
- What Bends Us Blue, Tom Lombardo (WordTech Editions)
- Epiphanies, Kim Bridgford (David Robert Books)
- Spilled Milk, Grey Held (Word Press)
- Waiting for Grace & Other Poems, Christopher Locke (Turning Point)
- The Evolutionary Purpose of Heartbreak, Joanne Harris Allred (Turning Point)
- Love Reports to Spring Training, Linda Kittell (Turning Point)
- & it had rained, Veronica Patterson (CW Books)
- In the White Room, Elizabeth McLagan (CW Books)
- My Father Was a Poet, Lester Graves Lennon (CW Books)
- Barn Sour, Kathleen M. McCann (Cherry Grove Collections)
Past Features:
Original
articles, interviews, selections from special collections and journal issues, and more are available in the Archives.
