Volume 107, Number 1/2
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Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. —Walt Whitman Cover Caption: A page from Walt Whitman’s notebook on perceptions. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. |
Editors’ Page
Walt Whitman’s notebook page floats on our cover, a raft of words on the subject of perception. His handwritten entry offers an image of invention—the act of composition as an interplay of bold moves and careful refinements. For Whitman, as for any serious writer, precision is as much a matter of discovery as it is a matter of style.
How many of us, today, barely recognize our own handwriting? Even the term “notebook” has a new meaning. In the digital age, the process of revision often goes undocumented—an invisible project in which new drafts replace old with the click of a mouse. Each time we make changes in a manuscript, we have to decide whether to “save” them.
From the stupefying flux of experience, a poet can save changes of a more profound kind. To paraphrase Whitman, the brain embraces “diverging and converging” sensations, thoughts, feelings—wondrous but baffling until we make something of them. Whitman suggests two possibilities: the brain can “either make much of the finest thread of silk or wind its fingers around the world.” This issue showcases work that does both. For example, three poems by Denise Duhamel revisit and transfigure scenes from domestic life, former U.S. Poet Laureate Maxine Kumin bears witness to the burial of a “contrary overloved game mare” in language that tenders a broader elegy, and David Ray confronts childhood trauma and recovery.
Also in these pages, we’re proud to introduce “World Poets in Translation,” celebrating the seriously playful work of Dan Turèll, whose poems have been translated from the Danish by Thomas E. Kennedy. Given Poet Lore’s ground-breaking contribution to translation early in its history, this feature is long overdue. And finally, among our “Essays & Reviews,” you’ll find a canny examination of “documentary poetry” along with three other engaging book reviews.
The cover of our Fall/Winter 2005 issue bears an iconic photo of Whitman—a Poet Lore reader himself (he purchased ads for Leaves of Grass in three issues)—but this notebook page presents a more intimate portrait. Here we see him at work, hand moving in fits and starts as he examines his experience and seeks to understand it. The image radiates conviction and expansiveness. Who can fail to recognize Whitman in that?
Poetry
Josh Rathkamp Read with Dick and Jane
Anya Silver Junior Assembly
Kurt Steinwand Erosion
James Scruton Bang Bang
Richard Robbins Vanishing Point
Denise Duhamel Chin Chin
Dara Barnat Practical Things
Richard Jones Broom
Tresha Faye Haefner Vermin
Denise Duhamel Kindness in Its Entirety
Evie Frankl From Her Lips to God’s Ears
Mary Kovaleski Byrnes First Communion
Bronwen Butter Newcott After the Ultrasound
Jeanne Emmons Feeding the Baby in the Cemetery
Sharyn Skeeter Lounge Lady with Red Lipstick
Sally Lipton Derringer Lessons
John Gery For Biljana, Who Says the Older She Grows, the Less She Knows
John Bargowski Strip Poker
Denise Duhamel Poker Hands
Sean M. Rumschik Vicissitudes of Red
Gary Fincke The Year One
Maria Terrone The Day After
Josh Rathkamp The Dark
Sharyn Skeeter Parable of the Eye Exam
Naomi Thiers Crowning Glory
Brad Johnson Elegy for Patriarchs
Mary-Sherman Willis Terminal
Maxine Kumin Indian Pipes
Peter Kline Elegy for Myself
Laura Madeline Wiseman Section Eight Housing: Teen Bedroom
Melissa Morphew Diane Arbus’s Ghost Tells It Straight
Afaa Michael Weaver Recognition
Robert Lunday Steampunk Poem
William Winston Visitations
Richard Robbins The Reading Light
Amorak Huey Robert Johnson Discovers the Blues Buried in a Cast-Iron Kettle in the Bayou
Jodie Hollander Metronomes
Vuong Quoc Vu The Great Wall
Jim Tilley Particle and Wave
Leslie Ullman And My Life Wandered On
Richard Jones The Dresser’s Mirror
James Scruton An Old Hotel Elevator in Rome
Steve Myers Sorrento: The Morning Masses
Amy Eisner Ventilation
Andrea O’Rourke An Old Photo of You Taken in a Gin Mill Outside Zagreb
Ken Poyner The Glorious Campaign
Lisa Hartz Hannover/Kandahar
Lisa Hartz Kertesz Convalesces at Esztergom, 1917
Anya Silver Doing Laundry in Budapest
Carrie Shipers Migration
Janice Lynch Schuster Setting Sail
Perie Longo The Familiar
Roger Desy Windbreaks
June Frankland Baker At Immediate Care
Carol Hamilton Train Ride From D.C. to Philly in March
Michelle Turner March Equinox
Mary-Sherman Willis The Square Nest
Colette Inez Quake Notes
Ace Boggess Flight of Fancy
Richard Pierce Ride the Galaxy Ferris
Lee Colin Thomas Going Somewhere
David Ray Overcoming Literary Despair
World Poets in in Translation
Dan Turèll (Denmark) Introduction by Thomas E. Kennedy
Total Euphoria
It Isn’t Easy
I Should Have Been a Taxi Driver
Today’s Sermon According to Disney
Charlie Parker on Isted Street
Amulet-for-the-Spirits-Around-the-Bend
Essay & Reviews
Mary-Sherman Willis reviews Nox by Anne Carson, That This by Susan Howe, and One with Others [a little book of her days] by C.D. Wright
Sunil Freeman reviews torch song tango choir by Julia Sophia Paegle, Flamenco Hips and Red Mud Feet by Dixie Salazar, and Human Nature by Gary Soto
Barbara Goldberg reviews Rookery by Traci Brimhall and Say So by Dora Malech
Robert Levine reviews Incarnality: The Collected Poems by Rod Jellema