Volume 109, Number 3/4
![]() |
I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And the river flows like a stream of glass; When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— I know what the caged bird feels! —Paul Laurence Dunbar Cover Caption: “Portrait of Paul Laurence Dunbar, ca. 1890–1900.” Courtesy of the Ohio History Connection. |
Editors’ Page
A formal portrait, like that of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar on our cover, is both fixed and open to interpretation. However still, it suggests the lively context of its making: not only the moment and setting but the circumstances, too. Why was the portrait taken and by whom? How did this American original see himself? How did he wish to be seen?
Capturing the essence of a face, a figure, is no easy task; but capturing the essence of a writer’s gifts is harder still. In 1897, when Dunbar was 25, Poet Lore reviewed his work with bold incisiveness, finding in him “the spirit of the present”—bohemian, democratic, cosmopolitan—while other critics riveted attention on his dialect poems. In this special issue, scholar Melissa Girard explores the journal’s progressive editorial culture (“Who’s for the Road?”), reminding us that the challenge even now is to offer a vivid, if inherently unstable, portrait of new writing: to read without distraction, ignoring the noise and fashions that surround us.
Helen Clarke and Charlotte Porter founded Poet Lore with the conviction that great literature can enlighten as well as enchant. Seeking the universal in the luminous particular, they introduced Americans to new writing from around the world. In a 1966 overview of the magazine’s beginnings, Melvin Bernstein described their inclusiveness: “Just as without argument [Poet Lore] published Russian literature in a decade of mounting Red fear, so in the same decade of anti-immigrant feeling, 100 per cent Americanism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Negroism, it published work on and by Yiddish writers, work on and by Negro writers.
Having edited this journal for a tenth of its long run, we recommit ourselves to their principles: openness, inclusiveness, depth, and authenticity. Believing poetry enacts what other texts can only describe, we’ll continue to read each week in search of language that isn’t merely “of” and “for” our moment but might outlast it. We’ll expand on Poet Lore’s historic interest in translation through our “World Poets in Translation” feature, extending its reach to Africa, the Far East, and beyond.
We can’t say what poetry provides—what meaning, what music—but we can show you. We open this issue with a chorus of poems on race (from harrowing reportage to meditations on labor, folklore, marriage), each voice, each “argument” distinct in tone and timbre. What drives the singing? Maybe it’s what Cornelius Eady calls, in a poem about another kind of song, “love’s unstoppable fuse.”
Poetry
Joseph Zaccardi
On the Outskirts
Henry J. Morro
Mississippi Summer, 1948
Joseph Ross
When Your Word is a Match
Joseph Ross
Eighteen Years
Lisa Hartz
Girl with a Bow
J.D. Ledbetter
red ribbons
John Drury
New Song of the South
Karl Carter
Life Line
Mya Green
Responsibility
Cornelius Eady
Otis Redding, being Pulled from Lake Monona
Terrance Hayes
How to Be Drawn to Trouble
Gary Fincke
Song and Dance
Carmen Germain
Coming Home, 1945
Daniel Donaghy
Puzzle
Matthew Wimberley
At Sundown, One Story Left Along the Haw River
Steven Winn
Fashion Statement
Gary Hanna
Slipping By
John Bargowski
My Mother’s Toothbrushes
Brandel France de Bravo
Tepoztlán, Mexico
Sue Ellen Thompson
Inheritance
Chana Bloch
In Extremis
Catherine Morocco
The Coffin
Emily Card
Saudade
Michael Goldman
The Cold
Glenn Pape
Teaching the Children to Be Lost
Jessica Shipley
The Plane
Jayne Benjulian
My Daughter When She Sleeps
Tim Mayo
The Trucker’s Tale
Martin Galvin
Fingering a Way to Count
C.C. Reid
Skyfishing
Chanel Brenner
Into the Schoolyard
David Bart
Dedication
Peter Leight
Castle
Peter Leight
The Gate of the World
Leslie Ullman
[from Ends-of-Day: a Crown of Meditations] -Time
Leslie Ullman
[from Ends-of-Day: a Crown of Meditations]—Wasted
Leslie Ullman
[from Ends-of-Day: a Crown of Meditations]—Keeping One Step Ahead
Chase Twichell
Radio Silence
Chase Twichell
Nan’s Stick
Jeremy Voigt
Then My Human Heart
Doug Ramspeck
Speaking in Tongues
Doug Ramspeck
Bodhi Tree
Susan Cohen
To My Breath
Susan Cohen
Magician
Randolph Pfaff
Contiguous
Suzanne Roszak
Origin Story
Cindy Veach
Pleasure Island
Fred Shaw
Impermanence
Fred Shaw
Scraping Away
Tresha Faye Haefner
We Drove Up to Malibu to Save Our Relationship
Alice Notley
The Nothing
Alice Notley
I’m Putting on My Battle Helmet
Missy-Marie Montgomery
The Bridges We Burn
Jeff Friedman
Hold Your Horses
Marge Piercy
The fifth storm
Dallas Crow
Portrait of My Friend Betty as a Deer Foraging in Her Own Back Yard
Melva Sue Priddy
Spring Equinox
Naomi Ayala
Here
Daniel Bourne
Rain, Then Sleep
Oliver Rice
Occurrences at Gallery Anton
Barbara Crooker
Espagnole: Harmonie en Bleu, 1923
Karen Hildebrand
Two Figures in a Landscape
David Salner
Stag at Sharkey’s
Jessica Jacobs
Early Abstraction
Linda Pastan
Repetitions
Linda Pastan
River Pig
Franke Varca
Inviting the Guest Inside
Franke Varca
Cutting Newspaper Obituaries, Finding the Balloon, Jupiter
Franke Varca
Armor and Fever
Linda McCarriston
OMG
Linda McCarriston
Together
Melissa Scholes Young
Love Motel
Dara Barnat
Clean Sheets
Nora Hutton Shepard
Changing the Dead Man’s Sheets
Rachel Heimowitz
Life Lessons
Frannie Lindsay
Proxy
Traci Brimhall
The Old Miracles Return on Victoria Cruziana
Traci Brimhall
The Fate of Maria José da Cruz’s Seven Faiths
Traci Brimhall
Belterra Exodus
Ellen Bass
Not Dead Yet
Essays
Introduction by Jean Nordhaus
Melissa Girard “‘Who’s for the Road?’: Poet Lore, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and the Open Road of 19th-Century American Poetry”
Joan Hua “Without Borders: Poet Lore’s Early Attention to World Literature in Translation”
Megan Foley “Lovers: A Tribute to Poet Lore’s Founders”
Bruce Weigl “Learning to Hear the Spirits Rumble: My Four Years with Poet Lore”
Rod Jellema “Finding the Undercurrent: Three Reflections on the Reading, Writing, and Teaching of Poetry”