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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We'll keep you posted on key features and news as they appear on PD...
"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)
TLS poem of the week:
Andrew McCulloch introduces Roy Campbell's "First Glimpse of African Shores." (The Times Literary Supplement)
“How do you go about finding the heart?”
Aracelis Girmay talks with Elizabeth Acevedo about poetry, discovery, and grief. (Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress)
"I'm prepared to do battle:"
A chat with Charles Henry Rowell, founder of Callaloo magazine and editor of Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. (Art Beat)
Wales Book of the Year Award:
The 2013 shortlist. (BBC News)
"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
American Life in Poetry:
Ted Kooser presents Wendell Berry's "The Vacation." (American Life in Poetry)
"Antidotes to the underrepresentation of minority poets"
Rigoberto González on prize-winning debut collections by Laurie Ann Guerrero, Matthew Olzmann, and L. Lamar Wilson. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• From L. Lamar Wilson's Sacrilegion: "Times Like These: Marianna, Florida"
A collection full ghosts:
Matthew Francis's Muscovy reviewed by Aingeal Clare. (The Guardian)
"How that poetic wallpaper gets hung:"
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics: Fourth Edition reviewed by Nicholas Lezard. (The Guardian)
The Guardian poem of the week:
Carol Rumens introduces the ballad "The Unquiet Grave." (The Guardian)
"Hurt Into Poetry: On Poetry and Greece"
"Nobody but the poets can articulate... this love-hate, madness of being Greek," says Stephanos Papadopoulos. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
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.
