Volume 110, Number 1/2
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She lets fall everything she owned, Parents and brothers, orchards and fields, The sound of her river, the roads, The story of her home, her own face And her name, and the games of her childhood —Gabriela Mistral Cover Caption: “Girl in Window, Cuba” © Gigi Ebert Photography |
Editors’ Page
A window opens onto a view, however broad or intimate. Though we can only guess at what the young girl on our cover sees—street market, garden plot, train yard, setting sun—we can be sure that her window frames the scene, offering both a limit and a vantage point. In a long poetic sequence on the view from his studio, Wendell Berry wrote, “A window / opens, like a word, / upon the wordless…,” a strange and compelling claim. Could perspective itself be a form of understanding? How does it shape what we see and what we say?
In the pages that follow, 57 poets train their attention on territories as diverse as nightmare (Pablo Medina’s “The River Saint”), appetite (Sandra M. Gilbert’s “Annibale Carracci’s Bean Eater”), disorientation (Carolyn Supinka’s “The Way Back”), identity (Colleen J. McElroy’s “Did I Know You Back Then?”), erotic risk (Matt Terhune’s “We Grew Up”), and mortality (Arthur Sze’s “Adamant”). There are literal windows here as well: Gretchen Primack’s “West windows (Cellblock E)” and “East windows (Cellblock F)” imagine the world beyond prison walls, and Mark Belair’s headlong narrative, “collecting,” gazes into a farmhouse at a long-married couple’s unforgettable domestic dance.
Also in this issue, we’re proud to present two culturally significant portfolios. The ten poems in “PINTURA : PALABRA, a project in ekphrasis”—guest-edited by Francisco Aragón of Letras Latinas—are as varied in tone and style as the paintings, photos, prints, and other art works in their sightlines. And our annual “World Poets in Translation” feature showcases the bold, incantatory poetry of Iranian writer and peace activist Rira Abbasi, introduced and rendered into English by Maryam Ala Amjadi.
Among our prose offerings, you’ll find Lesley Wheeler’s whip-smart essay on speculative poetry, “Verse and the Multiverse,” and engaging reviews of 11 recent books—from fine first collections to volumes of “new and selected poems” by two modern masters.A poem, like a window, opens onto a view—riverbank, city square, war zone, farm field—or instead looks within or looks to art to find its world. But whatever it frames, however wide or circumscribed the scene, it opens out for us every time we read.
Poetry
Pablo Medina
The Island in the Blinding Light
Pablo Medina
The River Saint
José Angel Araguz
The Fable of the Brothers Revisited
Nico Amador
Eating Watermelon with Pablo Neruda in Constitution Square
Susan Landgraf
Homecoming
Kathy Engel
Return
Andrew Grace
The Animals That Live in Said Gun’s Insulation
Stephanie Lenox
On Mythology
Chris Haven
Terrible Emmanuel and the Nameless
D.M. Aderibigbe
City Boy
Sandra M. Gilbert
Annibale Carracci’s Bean Eater
Sandra M. Gilbert
In Faith Ringgold’s Dinner Quilt
Jayne Benjulian
Biology
Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Hourglass
Hailey Leithauser
Moley’s Chair
Wesley Rothman
Portrait of Subwoofer as Holiest Holy
Doug Ramspeck
Religious Music
Jason Gebhardt
Breakers
Jennie Malboeuf
The Country
Mike White
House after a Tornado
Gretchen Primack
West windows (Cellblock E)
Gretchen Primack
East windows (Cellblock F)
Carolyn Supinka
The Way Back
Carolyn Supinka
Vernacular Home
Carolyn Supinka
Stare Hypothetical
Lee Rossi
The Other
Rebecca Macijeski
The Planets
Maria Terrone
The Classification Unit
Colleen J. McElroy
Did I Know You Back Then?
Colleen J. McElroy
Missouri Blues
Jim Daniels
Brushing Teeth with My Sister after the Wake
Jack Ridl
Within What You Endure
Heddy Reid
It
Melanie Reitzel
On July 25, 1966
David Danoff
Fantasy
Susan Boehm
In the Night
Patricia Gray
Bait
Kelly Cherry
An Eagle
Michael Brokos
The Leash
Noah Davis
Mending
Janice Lynch Schuster
What Love Was Like
Terence Winch
Lockdown
Terence Winch
The Chateau Thierry
Emily Mohn-Slate
To the Question, “What Happened?”
Lisa C. Krueger
Breathing Room
Andrew Payton
On the Court
Elizabeth Rees
Fishwife’s Rue
Rachel Morgan
Promise V. Compromise
Matt Terhune
Groom
Matt Terhune
We Grew Up
Sally Ashton
“you know there was never a name for that color”
Sally Ashton
In Ithaca
Sally Ashton
I think of Eugene
Mark Belair
Collecting
Tom Wayman
Convoy
Arthur Sze
Adamant
A Portfolio from Letras Latinas (PINTURA : PALABRA)
Introduction by Francisco Aragón
Elizabeth Acevedo
Salt
Yvette Neisser Moreno
Portrait with Leaves
John Chávez
At Daylight: Oak w/ Half-Dead Forest
Emma Trelles
from Decoy Gang War Victim
Carmen Calatayud
Gaslight Hair
Carlos Parada Ayala
Night Magic in Seven Fragments
Dan Vera
Constellation by María Magdalena Campos-Pons
Maritza Rivera
La Playa Negra (Tar Beach I)
Samuel Miranda
This Ain’t Mambo
Juan J. Morales
Passport
World Poets in Translation
Rira Abbasi (Iran) Introduction by Maryam Ala Amjadi
Repetitive Sunset
Lost in Wheat
Tehran V
Empty from the Beauty Salon–Tehran
I, The Reproduction
Valentine/The White Sheep
The Democracy of Sparrows
Essay
Lesley Wheeler “Verse and the Multiverse”
Reviews
Sandra M. Gilbert “Mirrors of Mortality”
Swimming in the Rain by Chana Bloch
A Stranger’s Mirror: New and Selected Poems by Marilyn Hacker
Mary-Sherman Willis “The First Time is the Charm”
Only Blue Bodies by Rosalynde Vas Dias
Hemming the Water by Yona Harvey
Bridge by Robert Thomas
Roxanne Halpine Ward “Spinning Peril into Joy”
Axis Mundi by Karen Holmberg
Amy Tercek “A Celebration of Storytelling: Five New Collections by Poet Lore Authors”
Landscape with Plywood Silhouettes by Kerrin McCadden
The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards by Rachel Mennies
Ghost Gear by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum
The Happiness Theory by Brad Johnson
Have at You Now! by John Gery