Violets in the Fall

Maurice Manning
And she hasn't told me yet about the voice inside her head. For the moment that voice is learning how to listen to its own mysterious silence.
from the book Snakedoctor / Copper Canyon Press

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.

Matthew Tuckner on Timothy Donnelly's "This Is the Assemblage"
Photo: Matthew Tuckner
Reginald Shepherd
We are capable of making lies sound true, but we can also tell the truth. You wander like a blind cat through your night, first idea of sky which weather only contradicts.
Jeannine Hall Gailey
After all, angels have no investment in the living, in the dirty nature of breeding and birth, in our grubby hands clutching at the soil from beginning to end, as if to stay a little longer.
Quan Barry
of the Sine-Saloum delta, I lean east, and the four of us lean east. Then someone leans west, and whether we want to or not we all lean west toward the setting sun.
Stefanie Kirby
I woke up afraid I'd bled through the skin of my body. The furniture wept at the sight of all that blood.
Timothy Donnelly
Times like these we are immortal together. Say the word        and you’re our conqueror.

Poetry Daily Depends on You

With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.

Each member of our diverse board selects poems for our daily poem feature and works with us to identify new outstanding, interesting publications for our thousands of daily readers.