I wrote "Reception" at a wedding reception for a friend after most of the guests had left. It was a beautiful summer evening in southern Vermont. The sun was setting. A single engine plane was flying over a distant ridge. I started writing on a napkin with my back to the last few guests finishing their drinks on the terrace behind me. The newly wedded couple stood beneath a large white trellis. The trellis turned into a "high dark beam" in my poem and the guests an "endless line" passing beneath it. The "pull" of spectacular clouds and a small plane turned my poem away from what started out as an Epithalamion but turned insistently into an elegy.
Chard deNiord on "Reception" |
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Philip Levine: Poet of the Working-Class
"Levine lamented that poetry had become 'unpeopled,' and he sought out to correct its course by populating his poems with a tapestry of characters drawn from everyday life. These characters were often, though not always, of working-class background and disposition. Levine gave them a voice."
via JACOBIN |
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| | Poetry Daily stands with the Black community.
We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality.
We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world.
Black Lives Matter. |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Tracy K. Smith on "Black Hair"
"Working on the poem, I saw clearly how the recurring image of black hair signifies within the specific context of Asian femininity, and yet in my hands—in my mouth—the phrase 'black hair' began to make space for a second set of values and vulnerabilities as informed by my racially specific experience." |
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