Volume 111, Number 1/2
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listen to me as one listens to the rain, wet asphalt is shining, steam rises and walks away, night unfolds and looks at me —Octavio Paz Cover Caption: “City of Rain” © Roj Whitelock (Web site: rojwhitelock.co.uk) |
Editors’ Page
In our cover photo, someone’s walking toward a bus stop—umbrella raised against the rain—or so it seems. Turn the image upside down, and a ground shift occurs: suddenly we see we’ve been looking at wet pavement, the reflection of a person, not a person at all. Is the scene less real for that, or did embracing an illusion offer a perspective we’d otherwise have missed?
This issue’s opening poem, “We Are a System of Ghosts” by Lindsay Tigue, meditates on mysteries of city life, of figures and places that are familiar and vanishing. Poems of displacement follow, rendering emblematic moments of confusion and connection. Immigrants (village to city, continent to continent) struggle with new customs, new languages, new weather—and strangers find themselves drawn close by chance. In Jason Tandon’s “Kindness,” for example, bystanders sing to a gravely injured boy as they wait for the ambulance. Like the poem itself, the song reflects what may be inaccessible in any other form.
Poetry may draw us in with novelty, but it carries us through shifts in thought and feeling by making them our own. Two essays in this issue consider ways it happens: Leslie Ullman explores how speculative gestures (questioning, openness) include readers in a poem’s act of dis-covery, while Gerry LaFemina argues that readers invest in imaginative assertions as they unfold. In other prose offerings, Tony Hoagland bears witness to the deep humanity of Alicia Ostriker’s voice; Sandra Gilbert and Sunil Freeman place new books by long-established poets in literary context; and Debra Wierenga reviews three debut collections.
In keeping with Poet Lore’s historical commitment to world poetry, we’re proud to feature work by Uruguay’s Idea Vilariño (1920-2009), introduced and translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval. The subject, here, is troubled and troubling love, love that doesn’t last. “I erase you,” she writes—a devastating claim—as her lover reappears on every page.
Poetry
Lindsay Tigue
We Are A System of Ghosts
Dallas Crow
Bus Stop, Lagos
Moira Linehan
It Will Never Get Any Better
Jason Tandon
Kindness
Guy Thorvaldsen
Departures
Lorrie Goldensohn
Native Speech
Homage to William Blake
Little Fish
Jennifer Stewart Miller
Silversides
Stephen Massimilla
Lost Spring
Vandana Khanna
Dharma
Susannah Lawrence
Careful What You Wish For
Helle Annette Slutz
Lagoon, Point Reyes
Regina Marie
On Mooring
V.C. McCabe
No Trespassing
Linda Aldrich
Buried Deep
Nothing Else
Gary Fincke
Lie Still
Leslie Ullman
[from Oblique Strategies]
“Abandon normal instruments”
“Accept advice”
“Accretion”
“Allow an easement (…the abandonment of a stricture)”
Mike White
After the Silent Era
Marge Piercy
Leftovers
Tom Donlon
Junk Drawers
June Frankland Baker
Hawk in November
Jack Ridl
There Is a Cardinal in the Tree
Joanne Rocky Delaplaine
The Local World
Leona Sevick
Meet the Faces
Hayes Davis
Black Boy, Independent School
Holly Karapetkova
Southern Gothic
White Power
Kevin Stein
The Tragedies
Artress Bethany White
Playing with Guns
Carrie Shipers
Self-Portrait as Exiled Despot
Paul Martin
The Cry
Rob Jacques
Washing My Enemy’s Feet
Todd Davis
Lost Country of Light
Barbara Crooker
Garden of the Painter at Saint Clair, 1908
Patricia Hooper
Three Weeks of Peonies
Jeffrey Bean
TheVoyeur Sees Her Leave in the Evening
TheVoyeur Looks at The Milkmaid, JanVermeer
Cassie Pruyn
Androgny
Jay Leeming
Hooked Fish
Tim Mayo
The Only Picture
Geer Austin
Club Tie
Michael Mark
Playing with the House’s Money
Jeneva Stone
After Life
Metronome
Patricia Fargnoli
Winter Day in New York City, 1973
Ceridwen Hall
Commute
Leah Souffrant
Not to walk
Rose Strode
The Art of Sharing an Umbrella
Frannie Lindsay
In Memory of an Evening Walk in August
Doug Ramspeck
Migrations
Jaydn DeWald
Evening Sketch:After Jack Gilbert
Adam Houle
Night Studies: Laudo, Laudare, Laudavi, Laudatu
Lee Rossi
Naked
Kumquat
World Poets in Translation
Idea Vilariño (Uruguay)
Introduction by Jesse Lee Kercheval
Un huésped – A guest
Entre – Between
Ya no – Not Now
Allá – There
O fueron nueve – Or were there nine
Adiós I – Goodbye I
No hay nadie – There is nobody
El amor – Love
Adiós II – Goodbye II
Essays
Tony Hoagland
“‘I Would Like to Repent But I Cannot’:The Poems of Alicia Ostriker”
Leslie Ullman
“‘All the Softness Truth Requires’: Speculation as Invitation and Persuasion”
Gerry LaFemina
“Some Notes on Poetry as a Way of Thinking”
Reviews
Sandra M. Gilbert “How to Write.What to Say”
Insomnia by Linda Pastan
For Dear Life by Ronald Wallace
The Luba Poems by Colette Inez
Day Unto Day by Martha Collins
Debra Wierenga “Quick Takes:Three First Books”
The Tulip-Flame by Chloe Honum
Deviants by Peter Kline
What You Know in Your Hands by Elizabeth Poliner
Sunil Freeman “Vibrant New Work from Three Seasoned Poets”
Tiger Heron by Robin Becker
City of Eternal Spring by Afaa Michael Weaver
sugar run road by Ed Ochester