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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

Our prose series continues this week with "Cloud Shapes and Oak Trees," by Robert Cording, from the winter issue of Image:

"I often ask my students to write a statement of what they believe and what they would like their writing to accomplish. In that spirit, here’s my own little credo. I believe words evoke and depend on a reality apart from the acts of verbal reference, although poetry and, to my mind, theology are as Wallace Stevens said, 'a revelation in words by means of words.' I write, first and foremost, to honor the mystery of creation''

Look for it here...

Enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller

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2. Sponsor Messages

 Instant Messages
Instant Messages is a new kind of writing, a mash-up of straightforward and accessible poetry, koan-like brain teasers, the delicate observations of Haiku, surprise one-liners, daily mumbling, text-based art, and aphorisms of penetrating insight. All wrapped together in a common theme: things and experience are “messages,” where meaning awaits. Follow on Instagram!

“Bite-sized wisdom on an invisible stick” —Billy Collins

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 Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference
Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference, June 1-7, 2018—Specializing in the literary translation of poetry and prose. Award-winning translators Kazim Ali, Susan Bernofsky, Mónica de la Torre, Bill Johnston, and Sora Kim-Russellwill offer introductory and advanced workshops along with an inspiring schedule of readings and lectures all in the heart of Vermont’s Green Mountains. See application details at
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 Vermont College of Fine Arts MFAs in Writing
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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• Gerald Dawe on editing The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets. (The Irish Times)
• Rebecca Foust introduces "On the Way to Grandma’s Funeral" and "Flagging: What the Confederate Flag Means to Me," by Glenis Redmond. (Women's Voices for Change)
• Sidelines: Selected Prose 1962-2015, by Michael Longley, reviewed by Denis Donoghue. (The Irish Times)
• "Love Poems for the Border Patrol" - "My nostalgia was simply the clear bottle in which I stored my explosive rage," says Amitava Kumar. (The New Yorker)
• Terrance Hayes introduces a poem by Erika L. Sánchez. (The New York Times Magazine)
• Lauren Kane interviews Nicole Sealey. (Paris Review Daily)
• And more...

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4. New Arrivals

These new arrivals are available for purchase via Poetry Daily/Amazon.com.

• Bird Odyssey, Barbara Hamby (University of Pittsburgh Press)
• The Black Bear Inside Me, Robin Becker (University of Pittsburgh Press)
• Soft Volcano, Libby Burton (Saturnalia Books)
• Mars Poetica, Wyn Cooper (White Pine Press)
• Interrogation Room, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs (White Pine Press)
• Rain in Our Door: Duets with Robert Johnson, Diann Blakely (White Pine Press)
• Day Unto Day, Martha Collins (Milkweed Editions)
• Night Unto Night, Martha Collins (Milkweed Editions)
• Fludde, Peter Mishler (Sarabande Books)
• The Gospel according to Wild Indigo, Cyrus Cassells (Southern Illinois University Press)
• Appalachians Run Amok, Adrian Blevins (Two Sylvias Press)
• Let’s Not Live on Earth, Sarah Blake (Wesleyan University Press)
• Extra Hidden Life, among the Days, Brenda Hillman (Wesleyan University Press)
• Inquisition, Kazim Ali (Wesleyan University Press)
• semiautomatic, Evie Shockley (Wesleyan University Press)
• Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance, Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions)
• The Poem's Country: Place & Poetic Practice, Shara Lessley and Bruce Snider, ed.s (Pleiades Press)
• Like a B Movie, Jennifer Lagier (FutureCycle Press)
• Xanthippe and Her Friends, Beate Sigriddaughter (FutureCycle Press)
• Stray, Bernard Farai Matambo (University of Nebraska Press)
• Lake Michigan, Daniel Borzutzky (University of Pittsburgh Press)
• The Dean of Discipline, Michael Waters (University of Pittsburgh Press)

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5. This Week’s Featured Poets

The work of the following poets will appear as Today's Poem on the days indicated:

Monday - Gemma Gorga / tr. Sharon Dolin
Tuesday -Tara Bergin
Wednesday - Charles Rafferty
Thursday - Carolyne Wright
Friday - Dara Wier
Saturday - Robert Stewart
Sunday - Stephen Kampa

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6. Featured Poets February 19, 2018 - February 25, 2018

These and other past featured poets may be found in our archive:

Monday - Owen McLeod
Tuesday - Carol Quinn
Wednesday - J. Allyn Rosser
Thursday - Tom French
Friday - Anna Jackson
Saturday - Hillary Gravendyk
Sunday - Jonathan Johnson

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

These poems will be retired from our archive during the coming week.

Stephen Dunn, "The Problem"
Alicia Suskin Ostriker, "Waiting for the Light"
Katy Didden, "Unless To Spy My Shadow in the Sun"
David Wojahn, "Extinction Event: A Cache of Photos of the Last Ivory-Billed Woodpecker"
Kevin Craft, "Lignum Vitae"
Niall Campbell, "Thinning Apples at Ludag"
Robert J. Levy, "Garlic"

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8. Poem From Last Year

Unless To Spy My Shadow in the Sun

    after watching an all-male production of Richard III

Pretend you’re Anne.
Pretend you are a man
who plays an Anne
who spits into the face
of Gloucester.
Can a man expand
what we know of Anne?
Take our standards—
failing the ideal, he
makes it more unreal
that Anne believes
a wasting grief has made her
beautiful.  Yet see how
he-as-she demands
our sympathy, proving
man understands
Anne’s suffering.
It’s hard to tell what to pity—
did Anne fall for
the love-struck man
that Richard played,
the version of herself
he said he saw,
or just for Richard?
And if we’re willing to believe
when a man plays a man
playing a man in love
with a man-as-Anne,
aren’t we, in some sense,
already Anne?
Doomed like she was
to love the damned
because we believe
in the man inside
the man, and that inside
every man’s an Anne.

 

Katy Didden
The Sewanee Review
Winter 2017