Poetry Daily

Afternoon in the House

Jane Kenyon

I turn on the radio. Wrong. Let's not have any noise in this room, except the sound of a voice reading a poem.

from the book The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon / Graywolf Press

Roundup: "While the pandemic might have stopped poets gathering physically, poetry itself is in good health. This year books of urgency and contemplation have jostled for attention, and striking new voices have emerged."
(The Guardian)
#pdnews
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/28/best-poetry-books-of-2020

Feature: "[G]ratitude persists. Last week, we asked poets laureate across the country why the people in their states would be thankful. They enthusiastically responded, some within minutes, many with poetry." (The New York Times)
#pdnews
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/us/thanksgiving-poetry-poet-laureates.html

Profile: "There is something so fantastically low overhead about poetry. It’s portable, impactful, and immediate, [Nye] says. 'Poetry always made me feel rich — I had words, I had a blank page, so I was rich.'" (Sight Lines)
#pdnews
https://sightlinesmag.org/naomi-shihab-nye-on-poetry-humanity-and-wifi

Review: "This collection...[Atwood's] first in over 10 years, is a reckoning with the past that comes from a place of wisdom and control. Now 81, she harnesses the experience of a lifetime to assume a wry distance from her subjects." (The Guardian)
#pdnews
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/23/dearly-by-margaret-atwood-review-the-experience-of-a-lifetime

Essay: "Today, as the Chinese state bans Uighur books and paves over Muslim graveyards, poetry remains a powerful form of persistence and resistance for the Uighur people." (The New York Times)
#pdnews
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/opinion/uighur-poetry-xinjiang-china.html

What Sparks Poetry

Translation

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

In our current series, What Translation Sparks, we’ve asked a group of poet-translators to share a seminal experience in translation. How does the work of translating poetry feel essential to the writing of one’s own poetry? Our contributors reflect on inspiring moments as intricate as a grammatical quirk and as wide-ranging the history or politics of another place.

This week's issue: Matvei Yankelevich on “Rug/Hydrangea”

Catch Up on Recent Poems

November 28, 2020

Self-Portrait in the New World Order

Reginald Shepherd

You’re walking down the street alone, absorbed in the anticipation of a lunchtime salad with that crusty olive bread you like so much, and suddenly you’re marching in formation in a crowd, it’s called a regiment. You seem to be a soldier this time, you learn to be at war.

November 27, 2020

Catullus 50

Gaius Valerius Catullus (translated from the Latin by A.J. Woodman)

I left there fired, Licinius, by so much of your charm and wit that in my wretched state no food agreed with me, no sleep at night would close my eyes, but, uncontrolled in frenzy, on my bed I tossed and turned, craving a sight of dawn to speak and be with you again.

November 26, 2020

Already I

Choi Seungja (translated from the Korean by Won-Chung Kim & Cathy Park Hong)

Nobody raised me. I was nothing from the beginning, sleeping in a rat’s hole, nibbling on the flea’s liver, dying absentmindedly, in any old place.

November 25, 2020

My Delinquency

Samuel Amadon

Having to be so without having to be so, I take my seat at the bar. It's my manner. I'm willful. Absent. Crisp. And cold. I know where to point my eyes when speaking, when listening, when the check arrives. I'm having lunch today because I'm pretty civilized.

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