Each Wednesday, Editor's Choice brings you a poem from a new book selected as a must-read. Our feature editor this week is Ilya Kaminsky.
Major Jackson
When all that cautions the eyes toward the imminent
slide of autumn to arctic winds, the canopy of English elm
and sycamore leaves like colored coins fall and widen
a hole letting more light spill in, heaven’s alms
to earth whose ashen gray and white will soon be all the rage,
our guilty secret is the baby grand playing Glass’s Orphée
Suite for Piano. Nearby Butoh dancers writhe & almost upstage
with white-painted faces of horror (portraits of Nagasaki?),
and past the fountain’s water plumes, a drug-riddled couple
shares the smoldering remains of an American Spirit,
their grizzled dog roped to a shopping cart and frayed duffel
bag, this city’s updated version of American Gothic.
Our reddish-haired pianist lets the melancholic notes
float to high-rises on Fifth above its triumphal arch,
like a film in reverse where the golden foliage is read by a poet
as autumn’s light pours in. “Don’t Get Around Much
Anymore,” The Ink Spots’ Decca cover spins on a phonograph,
an era spiraling soft then held by his gentle pen.
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
Poetry Daily logo
Poetry Daily Depends on You

We make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
Black-and-white photograph of Kamau Brathwaite reading in an armchair
"The Voice of the Caribbean"

Gabrielle Bellot explores the enduring influence of Kamau Brathwaite on Caribbean writing and writers. "For Brathwaite, it was impossible to understand contemporary Caribbean—and, for that matter, African-American—culture without examining these African traditions, which had been transmitted across the Atlantic and transformed during the bloody centuries of the European slave trade."

viaNYR DAILY
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
What Sparks Poetry:
Martha Rhodes on Theodore Roethke's "The Geranium"

"I really heard him. He was talking to me. He was sitting on my bed, drunk and slurring as he said it and he was saying (confessing) 'And that was scary' to himself, but also—I repeat—to me. I was stunned. I thought, 'He can do that? He can do that?'"
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. 
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2020 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency