What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature in which we invite writers to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems and other writing. In Delineated: Prose Writers on Poetry, prominent writers of fiction and non-fiction reflect on how poetry illuminates their creative lives, whether as inspiration, a daily practice, or a thread of hope through difficult times.
Sad, agnostic soul, I go down to the river and swim beyond the fence-line, trespassing, water cold and sweet at the nape of my neck, every nerve alert, and I watch the martins' whiplash, loopback flight, their scourge of insect cumuli, that harried brittle meat. The sandy bank is riddled with their nests, each hole a snug of sun-warmed young, and the long ledge thrums with storeyed wings.
The martins weigh anchor across the sky as if they're trying to catch down heaven — and now it seems that heaven is upon us like some vast and open canvas, love flung down in the willows' shivering intervals, their bright and pliant stems falling like green rain; and I'm carried by the river, numb with cold, a compass to the currents, briefly healed.
"Nothing is ever nothing—description gives nothing shape. The seeing gains power, even as the one doing the seeing recedes. The bounty of what’s come before, the berries and their juices and the milkbottle the speaker uses to collect them, which brings to mind the body and domesticity, lifts at the end into the elemental, something seemingly less comforting but, to me, more so."
"Alexandra Huynh, an 18-year old poet from Sacramento, was named the new National Youth Poet Laureate on Thursday. The poetry of Huynh, a Mira Loma High School graduate and Sacramento native whose passions include youth empowerment, climate action and creative writing, was described by officials as 'a tool of self-reclamation and social justice for marginalized communities.'"
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.
