Poetry Daily

Negative Compass

Bret Shepard

Direction is silence beyond the gated forest edging the field. We gate tonight. Then stop. Or silence the meadow. Then stop talking. Or unrest our legs and set ourselves a path along the creekbed. Then digest the matter of silence and the voles.

from the book Place Where Presence Was / Moon City Press

Report: "We want to bring the same thoughtfulness of design that’s found in the poetry room’s architecture — an architecture intended for listening — into the digital space."
(The Harvard Gazette)
#pdnews

Where sights and sounds of modern poetry are — Harvard Gazette

Woodberry Poetry Room embarks on online preservation project

news.harvard.edu

Report: "Half a century after his death, 70 previously unpublished poems are to be made available in ... The Collected Poems of JRR Tolkien ... published by HarperCollins next month, featuring more than 195 of his poems."
(Guardian)
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Beyond Bilbo: JRR Tolkien’s long-lost poetry to be published

Long-lost verse from the Lord of the Rings author will reach bookshops 50 years after his death

www.theguardian.com

Report: "It's about hearing people and hearing sounds around you while you are listening to words."
(WGRZ)
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'Poetry is alive' | The first poetry periscope in North America makes stop in Buffalo

A new public art installation at the Nichols School allows people to listen to poetry and music outdoors and for free.

www.wgrz.com

Conversation: "The linear narrative doesn’t apply to my life, and it took me a while to accept that. Relapse occupies this special place in the book."
(Rumpus)
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Narco-poetics and the Voice of Recovery: A Conversation with Azad Ashim Sharma - The Rumpus

Hope stems in the imagination, in our capacity to re-imagine how life on this finite planet could coexist with n...

therumpus.net

Obituary: "Her default setting was joy... she was the patron saint of lost children of all persuasions. Our favorite nickname for her was 'Mother of the Masses.'"
(NYT)
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Hettie Jones, Poet and Author Who Nurtured the Beats, Dies at 90

She and her husband, LeRoi Jones, published works by their literary friends. After he left her and became Amiri Baraka, she found her own voice.

www.nytimes.com

Interview: "So I looked at what was the negative force in the poems and leaned into that negativity so I could clock it, control it, play with it, balance it out, and not submit to it all the same."
(Electric Lit)
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Danez Smith Sculpts Pessimism Into Hope - Electric Literature

Through imaginative, daring poetic form, "Bluff" envisions a brighter future, embracing the personal but centering the communal

electricliterature.com

Essay: "And yet, in a separate letter to Sue, Dickinson claimed to be imagining a future well beyond their earthly years."
(The New Yorker)
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When Emily Dickinson Mailed It In

The supposed recluse constantly sent letters to friends, family, and lovers. What do they show us?

www.newyorker.com

Conversation: "Poetry is written in whatever circumstances you find yourself in, and when today’s poet is faced with the same circumstances, a new poem will be written that is wholly different from the poems written before."
(Asymptote)
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Having Become the Sky’s Tongue: Leeladhar Jagoori on Nature Poetry in Hindi Literature - Asymptote...

I consider a poet’s job to consist of three things: writing about the society, the time, and the country.

www.asymptotejournal.com

Interview: "The pandemic, and writing this during the pandemic, was a perfect illustration of how the quantification of grief was something that we were always coming into contact with."
(Triquarterly)
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Interview With Daniel Borzutzky — TriQuarterly

“Drawing is something new to me. A couple years ago I was obsessively drawing, perhaps as a way of not writing."

www.triquarterly.org

Conversation: "When thinking of Syria or Russia, my life in those countries came back to me through scratched knees and pickled vegetables—little fragments of time and space."
(Asymptote Journal)
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Scratched knees, pickled vegetables, and (un)belonging: A Conversation with Elina Katrin - Asympt...

The most honest way translation has shaped my work as a poet is through incompleteness.

www.asymptotejournal.com

What Sparks Poetry

Language as Form

In our series Language as Form, we’ve invited poets to write about poetic language as patterned language—how words as sound, voice, sentence, and song become elements of form.

This week's issue: Ian U Lockaby on Edward Salem’s “Fullness”

Catch Up on Recent Poems

September 7, 2024

the pollen touches the stigma

Cecilia Vicuña (translated from the Spanish by Daniel Borzutzky)

Down with dresses! up with plants! Pollinated plants!

September 6, 2024

Songbirds, Midwinter

Bill King

I live dead center in the Tygart River Valley, which is expanding, now, with light.

September 5, 2024

Planetary Death Is a Hopeless Drug Addict

Azad Ashim Sharma

I'm sick of fighting currents, toxic with our need of currency and our hope for revolution.

September 4, 2024

Myth

Joseph J. Capista

Off with your finger she says to no one, then lops off a tip, pinches its skin, and extracts with her teeth the olive pit, which she spits into another bowl. Three bowls, in all: one for what is hard, one for what is soft, one for what remains untouched.

September 3, 2024

Noise

Charlie Peck

It's the logic of applause and food fights. I can't think about the bubonic plague without getting anxious.

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

Phillip B. Williams