[The pentatonic spring washes its winter clothes.]

Jay Wright
White is a difficult sound in the edowa above the tumult fastened to the soul of widows, magnitude that arms the darkest nebula. The rude dead awaken to another baptism.
from the book Postage Stamps / Flood Editions

What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature in which we invite poets to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems.

In our occasional series, Building Community, we spotlight connections between our work on the page and our work in the community. In each issue, we pair a poem from our featured poet with an interview that explores what poetry brings to our neighborhoods, cities, and the wider world — and what community makes possible for poetry itself.

Kerry Folan on What Keeps Us:</br> A Community Poetry Reading in Response to Violence
Photo: Kerry Folan
Kara van de Graaf
I dress in darkness, then stitch another woman to my body.
Lucille Clifton
a woman precedes me up the long rope, her dangling braids the color of rain. maybe i should have had braids. maybe i should have kept the body i started,
Maria Laina (translated from the Greek by Karen Van Dyck)
While whole phrases pass by and she accepts them and she constantly faces great danger still the body she remembered but there was something she had never seen.
Cynthia Dewi Oka
I wake up these days, a new mother again, watching, waiting, to understand what to offer, how to serve, by which I mean, organize my body around what cannot be spoken.
C.D. Wright
We love in silence We keep our poetry locked in a glass cabinet Some nights We stay up passing it back and forth between us drinking deep

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.