Poetry Daily

Course and Spiral

Paul Otremba

There is a song in the heart and it goes: umeboshi butter, umeboshi butter, umeboshi butter.

from the book Levee / Four Way Books

Column: Poem of the Week — "Marriage" by Alison Winch. (The Guardian)
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Profile: “'Art arose when our species began,' Olds says. 'If anything can help us, it might be the empathy and pleasure which empower art.' ...the stakes are clear: if we are on Earth, we ought to be singing." (Publishers Weekly)
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Guide: "Wordsworth’s poems evoke the beauty of readily recognisable locations. ‘Lines Left Upon a Seat in a Yew Tree,’ for instance...is set ‘near the Lake of Esthwaite,’ where ‘gloomy boughs had charms.’" (Spectator Life)
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Appreciation: "August marks the centenary of the poem that first bought Dorothy Parker to the attention of the reading public....The first of these 'hate songs' in Vanity Fair introduced her trademark cynicism and caustic wit." (JSTOR Daily)
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Review: "Seeking out the role that poetry might play in reimagining identity, heredity, and family, these works attempt to tell new stories of kinship, especially the relationships between mothers and their children." (LA Review of Books)
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What Sparks Poetry

Life in Public

What Sparks Poetry is a new, serialized feature in which we invite poets to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems. In the newest series, Life in Public, we ask our editors to examine how poetry speaks to different aspects of public experience.

This week's issue: Jennifer Atkinson on Addressing Everyone, One at a Time

Catch Up on Recent Poems

August 20, 2019

Ungodly

Adrianne Kalfopoulou

...the gods won’t save you, neither will you stop wishing it of them. After all, you are human and they are not.

August 19, 2019

For a Coming Extinction

W. S. Merwin

I write as though you could understand And I could say it One must always pretend something Among the dying

August 18, 2019

Can You Describe Your Years in Prison?

Aria Aber

I can now ask: would I have given up my mother for an alyssum instead of asylum? Or one glass of water that did not contain war?

August 17, 2019

“what we’re trying to destroy is a method too”

Steve Dickison

You come away with the sensation that the dream's encased in gelatin...

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