Poem of the Day: 1/28/13

Matthew Olzmann, whose first book Mezzanines arrives this April from Alice James Books, is a master of humor, surprise, and heart. I'll never forget seeing Matthew read, well, perform, that first time in Detroit, several years ago, how stunned I was hearing his poems unfold. His ability to alter the reader's perspective, to balance hilarity …

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Poem of the Day: 1/21/13: Poetry in the Glare

As I watched poet Richard Blanco step to the podium, taking his place in the national spotlight, it was hard not to wonder what my fellow Americans were thinking, particularly those many Americans for whom this might be their only exposure to poetry for a long time. Two stanzas in, I realized that I was …

Radio, Radio

Hi all, The public radio program "The Poet and the Poem" has launched for this year. A full schedule is below. If you'd like to listen, my interview will be broadcast on January 30. The shows are featured on Pacifica stations nationwide. Or just CLICK HERE! THE POET AND THE POEM, 2013 Program #1: Mississippi …

Poem of the Day: 1/15/13

A filmstrip. Its edges gnawed, frayed. The white static hiss in the frame. Image after image. When I read Laura Kasischke, I'm in a dark theater watching strips of film leap, sometimes associatively, from image to image, sensation to sensation. I fill in the gaps. Or don't. Her poetry finds that space between dream and …

Poem of the Day: 1/14/13

Born in and from the same cell, song lyrics and poems share many of the same elements, and there are still a handful of lyricists for whom a song's language is not mere afterthought, or something to tack onto a good melody, whose songs are driven as much by the urgency of an idea, of …

Poem of the Day: 1/9/13

Richard Blanco, chosen to deliver a poem for President Obama's second inaugural address, was, as his bio says: "....made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, and imported to the United States—meaning his mother, seven months pregnant, and the rest of the family arrived as exiles from Cuba to Madrid where he was born. Only forty-five days …

Poem of the Day: 1/8/13

You've been wondering: how do you get from a squirrel to an ex-husband? Well, here's your answer. Meg Kearney's work in her book Home by Now is driven by narrative and her fantastic ability to keep the reader guessing what's around the corner. I love that her poems begin here, go there, and end over …

Poem of the Day: 1/7/13

Here, on the brink of a new semester, standing on the shore with my students, pushing our poetry longboat out to sea. One set of oars for each of us, and me rowing with them in unison. I will remind my students that this is a craft, this art, that rides on the sea; it's …

Poem of the Day: 1/6/2013

David Blair, (who went by "Blair" most often, and onstage--and D. Blair in print) knew how to light up the stage and the page. Blair's death in 2011 ripped a hole in the heart of Detroit, and in so many different worlds. He crossed my mind today, as he often does. And so I picked …

Poem of the Day: 1/4/13

If we sift through last year's stuff, what do we learn? What would we burn? In "Burning the Old Year," Naomi Shihab Nye does just that. Watches it curl to flame. I wonder if each of these stanzas is like a little bonfire, with each line being of diminishing length. I love the line: "lists …

Poem of the Day: 1/3/13

We have a small landscape painting on our wall by our friend Lisa and I find it hard to walk past every time I see it. At first glance it is fairly unremarkable, a brushed dark forest of tall pines, a wild grey sky. But right at its core the grasses are touched with a …

Poem of the Day: 1/2/13

A letter to the snow is apropos. Here, from Sleeping Beauty to "Snow." As in Snow White. In "Dear Snow," a poem from her first collection, Enter Invisible (Sarabande, 2005), Catherine Wing, in alternately and brilliantly off-rhymed tercets whips us up in a fairy-tale squall. Since finding a poem online last week, I've bought both …

Poem of the Day: 12/31/12

What have you forgotten that you loved? What don't you know that you love? On this day of backwards and forwards, one eye cast toward the past, one toward the future, this day of remembrances and hopes, what is new? I once heard that the great Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, after being freed from several …

Poem of the Day: 12/28/12

Poet Vievee Francis's new book Horse in the Dark, her second collection, is brilliant, like its predecessor. It is a book that examines many landscapes: of her rural West Texas childhood, of race, of the American and the human condition. In "Gun of Wishes," Francis's anaphora plays with the word gun, the fact of gun, …

Poem of the Day: 12/27/12

If one ever needed confirmation that the poetry business is a parade of naked emperors, look no further than the fact that Bill Knott, one of the true emperors, if not the ONLY emperor, sits on a true throne barely recognized in his time. "Recognized" is a tricky term, of course. This poet is utterly …

Poem of the Day: 12/26/12

We don't write because of suffering but in spite of it. A poet who knows that as well as anyone is John Rybicki, today's poet, who rather than succumb or go numb, takes pain and bends it into beauty again and again. His most recent book "When All the World is Old" is a transformative …

Poem of the Day: 12/24/12

We look closely when we love, and when we love we look closely. So when we remember, we paint the picture bright and clear. I've long loved Toi Derricotte's eye for every small detail, especially in this poem. "Christmas Eve, My Mother Dressing," by Toi Derricotte. Read more by (and about) To Derricotte, here!

Poem of the Day: 12/23/12

Within us, every spring and winter. In us and through us: the stars, the dust, the blossoms. Every destructive wave. Every rebirth. All nature's forces that thrust and subdue are in our blood. Dylan Thomas's "The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" is one of his many masterpieces.  And here: A fair warning that many …

Poem of the Day: 12/22/12

Now leaning into the longer light, this poem feels ill-timed, but it is winter now. Catherine Wing, my favorite poet du jour, here delights in repetition of sound, gestures of rhyme (internal and end rhyme) that make her ordinary phrases feel incantatory. Common language here becoming prayer. And that is poetry. Read it aloud! Read: …

World Without End, Amen

THE PROPHET AT THE MATINEE In the final hour, just before the meteor shower to end all meteor showers—as the wannabe hero stands in his zippered flight jacket on the deck, pledging with his crew to accomplish the mission of saving Earth or at least America: cut to wide-angle shot of an intergalactic boulder bigger …