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Li-Young Lee
Because my father walked the earth with a grave,
determined rhythm, my shoulders ached
from his gaze. Because my father's shoulders
ached from the pulling of oars, my life now moves
with a powerful back-and-forth rhythm . . .
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- October 25, 2021
Because as a dancer I’d devoted myself to linearity—the ballets I grew up on were mostly narrative, and even the semi-abstract pieces I performed had clear emotional arcs (beginnings, middles, ends)—one of poetry’s first appeals was its ability to refute temporal order.
Result Type
- What Sparks Poetry
Feature Date
- October 25, 2021
Ahlam Bsharat (translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah)
We had a cow, Obeidah the cow.
She had big wide eyes
but the whole herd had big wide eyes.
She was dappled
but the rest of them were dappled.
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- October 24, 2021
Melissa Broder
The sky told me nothing about myself
The stars told me nothing about myself
Jupiter gave me zero
Except that I am dust
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- October 23, 2021
Tishani Doshi
The stormtroopers of my country love
their wives but are okay to burn
what needs to be burned for the good
of the republic often doing so in brown
pleated shorts and cute black hats with sticks
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- October 22, 2021
Giovanni Pascoli (translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock)
Three grapes, Giacinto, grow upon these vines:
The first is pleasure, and is clear as air;
the next is sweet amnesia. Drink their wines,
yes—but stop there . . .
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- October 21, 2021
Nava EtShalom
I woke up from marrying my father;
the window let in a little streeplamp shine.
None of us knew what time it was.
The streetlamp thought three. The boy
thought morning, and started to wake.
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- October 20, 2021
Marjorie Welish
Itself
Sedentary in another language is language as such
Whether or not we can read it, sought
Because home. . .
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- October 19, 2021
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Strange about the kills we get without intending them.
Because we are pointed in the direction of something.
Because we are distracted at just the right moment, or the wrong.
Result Type
- Poem
Feature Date
- October 18, 2021
And so it was there, in my bakery, in one corner of which I had a horrid shaggy green armchair I’d scavenged, that I first chanced upon Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “All Wild Animals Were Once Called Deer” (BAP 1995). What, exactly, was it doing? How did it mean?
All I knew, as I stood in my bakery that night, and the nights that followed, reading and rereading Kelly’s poem, was that I wanted that. In my life. Right now. It was worth changing my life for. That. That was the what that I wanted.
All I knew, as I stood in my bakery that night, and the nights that followed, reading and rereading Kelly’s poem, was that I wanted that. In my life. Right now. It was worth changing my life for. That. That was the what that I wanted.
Result Type
- What Sparks Poetry
Feature Date
- October 18, 2021
