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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

You put us over the top! Thank you so much for all your support in getting us through our 2017 fundraising drive .Last week we reached our $60,000 goal, with an additional $2000 to give us a wonderful head start into 2018! Many, many thanks!

This week, in our prose series, we present an excerpt from the Prologue to The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra Pound, by Daniel Swift:

"By May of 1945, when the soldiers came for him with guns, Ezra Pound had been living in Italy for twenty years. His was a generation of American writers who went abroad, but his entanglement in Europe was a little more extreme. In January 1941—the year America entered the war—he began a series of radio broadcasts from Rome. He discussed monetary reform, his poetry and, most of all, the folly of this fight against the Axis powers; and he broadcast perhaps 200 times—rambling, passionate, in accents and impersonations—before 26 July 1943, when the US Department of Justice indicted him for treason. This charge carries the death penalty. Pound continued to broadcast. "

Look for it here...

Enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller

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2. Sponsor Messages

 Vermont College of Fine Arts MFAs in Writing
Vermont College of Fine Arts offers a traditinal low-residency MFA in Writing program—now celebrating its 35th year—along with a residential MFA in Writing & Publishing program.

 MFA in Poetry at Texas State University
The MFA in Poetry at Texas State University offers students the opportunity to work closely with distinguished faculty such as Naomi Shihab Nye, Cyrus Cassells, Cecily Parks, Kathleen Peirce, Roger Jones, and Steve Wilson. Students also learn from internationally known visiting poets, and develop their craft in a supportive and naturally beautiful setting, just 30 minutes from Austin. Assistantships and scholarships are available. The application deadline is January 15th. Please visit our website to learn more, or email us at mfinearts@txstate.edu with any questions.

 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
www.middlebury.edu/blwc/bltc.

 Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins
Write the next chapter of an epic.
Talented faculty. Visiting writers. Writer-in-Residence.
Graduate Assistantships, Teaching Fellowships,
Travel Funding, and Full Scholarships. 

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
More than fifty years of achievement in poetry,
Fiction, and nonfiction. 

Bachelor of Arts with concentration or Minor in creative writing
Where students mature into authors. 

Most of all, a vibrant, supportive community.
https://hollinsmfa.wordpress.com/first-child/

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• Jeevika Verma profiles Kaveh Akbar. (NPR)
• U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith embarks from New Mexico on a rural reading tour. (ABC News)
• Rebecca Foust presents Judith Ayn Bernhard's "Immigrants." (Women's Voices for Change)
• Caitríona O’Reilly reviews Bindweed, by Mark Roper, The Eyes of Isaac Newton, by Iggy McGovern and Live Streaming, by Conor O’Callaghan. (The Irish Times)
• Michael Juliani interviews David St. John. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• Christian Wiman on Richard Wilbur. (The New York Times)
• Terrance Hayes introduces a poem by Mark Irwin. (The New York Times)
• And more...

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4. New Arrivals

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

• Dirty Baby, Ed Ruscha, David Breskin, and Newls Cline (DelMonico Books•Prestel)
• If god were gentle, D. R. James (Dos Madres Press)
• Ruin Porn, Terry Wolverton (Finishing Line Press)
• Lincoln's Lover: Mary Lincoln in Poetry, Jason Emerson (The Kent State University 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 - Carmen Giménez Smith
Tuesday - T. R. Hummer
Wednesday - Craig Dobson
Thursday - Carl Dennis
Friday -Christine Gosnay
Saturday - Emily Fragos
Sunday - Moira Egan

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6. Featured Poets January 8, 2018 - January 14, 2018

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

Monday - Alice Lyons
Tuesday - Tracy K. Smith
Wednesday - Cate Lycurgus
Thursday - Rick Barot
Friday - Bruce Beasley
Saturday - Ailbhe Darcy
Sunday - Jeff Alessandrelli

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

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

Jen Levitt, "Driving Through Vermont at Dusk"
Frank Ormsby, "The Fisherman"
Alan Feldman, "Fiddler Crabs"
Ciaran Berry, "Extra Terrestrial"
Barbara Hamby, "Ode on Words for Water"
Elizabeth Arnold, "Calf"
Ron Smith, "St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, Petersburg"

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8. Poem From Last Year

St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, Petersburg

Oleg had white teeth, but Natalia’s were golden.
He taught “navigation” at the Frunze; she, physics 
at Public School 625. He said literature was “a drug,” 
and she came shouting, red-faced from the kitchen. 
Dima, twenty-two, drank vodka in the metro 
on the way to morning class. He mocked the KGB 
right there in the living room. I thought he would
cry when I gave him the carton of Marlboros.
Natalia began to look at me all the time, and Oleg 
looked at her looking at me. At the celebration 
of Women’s Day, their friends, whose daughter was 
still too alive to mention, looked away from Natalia 
when she looked at me. They insisted I sit in the 
cushioned chair. Had they visited the U.S.? The men 
looked embarrassed, they looked like boys 
when they said they had seen San Diego 
through a periscope.

                                    Jay and Laura Mumble had
brought their children and their Mississippi vowels 
to a place where the McDonald’s was full of Mafia. 
I never saw them again after the airport. I don’t 
remember ever smelling the sea. I was cold the whole 
time. There was a kind of patience in everybody’s 
unhappiness, in that transparent anxiety. I’ll bet 
they’re all still waiting for the great change, still 
glum and child-like, wrapped up against the cold, 
pantlegs tucked properly into their admirable boots. 
I had no head for its abstraction, the city’s design. 
Half the time I couldn’t see it at all. I couldn’t think. 
I was cold then colder. There wasn’t enough bourbon. 
Natalia insisted I squeeze ketchup on my noodles
with their hints of beef. One night she gave me 
a larger glass for the Stolichnaya, but she and Oleg
drank from the same footed thimble. In the morning, 
the mercury outside the kitchen window: minus 13 
in the pearly glow. The only picture I’m sure I saw
in the Winter Palace: Rembrandt: Abraham’s brutal hand 
on the boy’s face, the head back, the white neck  . . .

 

Ron Smith
Blackbird
Fall 2016

Copyright © 2016 by Ron Smith
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission