Each Wednesday, Editor's Choice brings you a poem from a new book selected as a must-read. Our feature editor this week is Eric Pankey.
Gemma Gorga
Translated from the Catalan by Sharon Dolin

They weighed the body a few minutes before death. They weighed the same body a few minutes after death. They used simple arithmetic—subtraction—to determine the weight of the soul. I ponder it now, while holding this new book in my hands, the words still slick like the feathers of a newly hatched bird. I wonder if, once read, it too will weigh less. Like a body when it loses its soul.
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
Poetry Daily Logo
Happy New Year from Poetry Daily

Many thanks indeed to all our readers, whose passion for poetry inspires us, and to all our generous donors, without whose support we could not continue. We look forward to sharing the very best contemporary poetry with you in 2020. 
 
Stylized image of a pen to illustrated the line, ‘A signature hangs, unwritten, below the last / line on the page.’ from Marilyn Hacker's poem, "Ghazal: Myself"
Carol Rumens on Marilyn Hacker's "Ghazal: Myself"

"As a whole, the poem seems energised by the quarrel between individualistic and communal drives. It’s the artist’s quarrel and the lovers’ quarrel: human societies depend on some kind of resolution of the dilemma to work at all. The relentlessly chiming refrain of 'myself' through the poem sustains the sense of enchantment and entrapment."

viaTHE GUARDIAN
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
Cover of Stanley Plumly's collection, Against Sunset
What Sparks Poetry:
Shara Lessley on Stanley Plumly's "Dutch Elm"

"As a poet, Plumly might be described as an elegist deeply attuned to the natural world. Formally varied, his work is both tender and apprehensive. Often drawing on memory, it attends to matters of isolation, strange beauty, resilience, and loss. 'Dutch Elm,' the opening poem in Plumly’s 2017 collection, Against Sunset, operates very much within this mode. It is in many ways a procession of grief, a sonnet haunted by longing."
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