Volume 109, Number 1/2
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Every landing comes as a relief, the platform trembling beneath my feet…. —Carrie Shipers Cover Caption: Selection from “Back somersault,” Eadweard Muybridge, 1881. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. |
Editors’ Page
In a sequence of nine still shots on our cover, a man launches himself backwards, makes an arc of his own body, turns 360 degrees in the air before landing and standing straight again. With Eadweard Muybridge’s invention of sequential photography in 1878, change became an element within the captured image: all at once, in two dimensions, a horse could trot, a couple waltz, a gymnast somersault through space.
Since its beginnings in 1889, Poet Lore has welcomed poetic sequences, verse narratives, and long dramatic forms—publishing entire plays in translation by Ibsen, Strindberg, “Tchekkof,” and other world writers when their names were still new to American readers. Section by section, scene by scene, such works take shape the way mosaic murals do, each discrete part necessary to a larger whole.
This year, as we celebrate Poet Lore’s 125th anniversary, we honor the tradition by presenting three remarkable and markedly different sequences: “Elegies for the Fallen” by Christopher Presfield, a decades-long odyssey through the American prison system; “Broken Open” by Martha Collins, a 31-day meditation on both global and intimate concerns; and “I Was at One Time Close to Home” by Sherod Santos, a nine-part observation of grief and reorientation.
Our issue begins with a portfolio of poems by U Tin Moe of Myanmar—featured with the conviction that poetry is a universal language and should be shared, however arduous the challenge of translation—and ends with an essay on Muriel Rukeyser, an interview with Chinese poet Xue Di, and engaging reviews of four new books of poetry.
Mindful of Poet Lore’s historic contributions and eager to sustain them, we’re proud to offer such diversity within a single issue—each poem and sequence, translation, essay, interview, and review part of a larger context that may suggest an image of our own changing times.
Maybe it’s the plight of every generation to find its own moment baffling, to struggle for purchase on events as they unfold. How do we navigate the motion of history? How do we land on our feet without stumbling? As U Tin Moe wrote on the last night of the last century: “tomorrow will become today / a tale of new visions /a story of all things….”
World Poets in Translation
U Tin Moe (Myanmar)
Introduction by Christopher Merrill
Strangers
Nocturne
Boat without a Destination
Chicken in a Coop
Years of Failure
28: I’ll sleep on the rock
29: In the shadow of a bamboo grove
41: Human look-alikes
44: Worshipping the Buddha on Christmas Eve
46: Unknown destination
51: The monsoon is here
52: The century bird
Dian Duchin
Reed Your Ghost
Christopher Presfield
Elegies for the Fallen
Sid Gold
Ten More
Dawn Diez Willis
Imagining History & Aliens
Meredith Kunsa
Grounding
Jason Tandon
The Actual World
Dorothy Brooks
Digging to China
John Bargowski
Queen for a Day
Janice Lynch Schuster
Axe Grinding
José Angel Araguz
Marked
Ginny Wiehardt
Demential Episode Featuring Birds
Catherine Freeling
The Kidney Class
Jason Schossler
Visit
Christopher Goodrich
On Death, with Mayzie, Age 4
Marc Hudson
My God Once Gazed at Me
Ann Lynn
Social Security
Ann Lynn
Graduation Day
Todd Davis
Poem Made of Sadness and Water
David Ebenbach
Monsters
Jay Griswold
Anecdotes of the Dogfish
Philip Fried
In Triplicate
John Bargowski
Living Together
Paula Finn
What Gives You Away as Rich in Mzuzu
Tom Chandler
Even Then
Indran Amirthanayagam
A Conversation from Everywhere
Greg McBride
Urgencies
Brad Johnson
Summer’s Thousand Appetites
Barbara Buckman Strasko
Trees Die Standing Up
Sudie Nostrand
[Those two men]
Sudie Nostrand
[That bird in the oak]
Mark Belair
The Garage
Dorian Kotsiopoulos
Unpacking
Paula C. Lowe
For James at Sally Loo’s
Colette Inez
Ken Dubin’s Field of All Possibility
Ken Dubin, The Field of All Possibility, 15” x 9.5” , acrylic, oil crayon, wax, on paper, mounted to canvas, 2004
Martha Collins
Broken Open
Elaine Fletcher Chapman
Traveling through Onley
Jeanne Wagner
Niagara River Honeymoon
Glenn Morazzini
Litany: Who
Chuck Tripi
Cold Stream Beer and Ice
Jia Oak Baker
Puppet Tragedy of the Gods, No. 46
Barbara Boches
Summer Job, Florida
Mary Anne Morefield
But Those Were Wood Ash
June Frankland Baker
During the Downpour, at the Pond
Sally Lipton Derringer
Buffalo
Lee Rossi
Clinkers
Sherod Santos
I Was at One Time Close to Home
Keith Dunlap
The Longest Day of the Year
Carrie Shipers
Self-Portrait as Aerialist
Patrick Ryan Frank
Stunt Man
Patrick Ryan Frank
Body Double
Essay
Dara Barnat
“Finding Muriel”
Interview
Alexandria Sheng Interviews Xue Di
Reviews
James Scruton “Whys Guy”
Child Made of Sand by Thomas Lux
Julie Swarstad Johnson “What Comes Back: Two First Books by Poet Lore Poets”
Salt Pier by Dore Kiesselbach
Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral by Laura Read
Bob Blair “What’s Hidden Would Like to Be Known”
The Most Natural Thing by David Keplinger