Each Wednesday, Editor's Choice brings you a poem from a new book selected as a must-read. Our feature editor this week is Jennifer Atkinson.
Linda Bierds
I paint flowers decorated with caterpillars . . . .
I want to inquire into everything that exists and
find out how it began.

Maria Sibylla Merian

From basil, the scorpion.

Athanasius Kircher

From pine-tree resin, amber.
            From fury, hail.
From acacia's sap, the bond.
            From raindrops, frogs.
From clay, yellow ocher.
            From dust, fleas.
From the beetle, carmine.
            From mud, the beetle.
From the murex snail, violet.
            From sea-foam, the anchovy.
From the lamb, parchment.
            From the bull, the bee.
What?
            From the mouth of a slaughtered bull,
            cloaked in thyme and serpyllum,
            the bee.
From the sable, the brush tip.
From books, the moth.
From the eagle, swan, crow, lark,
the diminishing quills.
            From fire, red snow, and the west wind,
            the worm.
From the worm, the silk moth.
From vapor, the silk moth.
What? From the spun cocoon, the silk moth.
            Yes. From steam and bluster,
            the silk moth.
From the silk moth's mouth,
the potentate's cloak.
            From the potentate's horse,
            the hornet.
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Informal color photpgraph of Douglas Crase and John Ashbery, 1975
"Whispering in a Lover’s Ear"

"The poet and critic Douglas Crase published his first book of poems, The Revisionist, in 1981, to rapturous reviews....For various reasons, The Revisionist has stood as Crase’s sole book of poems for nearly forty years, and has long been out-of-print.  Fortunately, it has just been reissued in a new edition by Nightboat Books."

viaLOCUS SOLUS
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Cover of Mary Ruefle's book, The Most of It
What Sparks Poetry:
Arda Collins on Mary Ruefle's "The Bench"

"[T]he argument about the bench, like many arguments, is about truth. The participants both believe their bench is the true bench. Despite the argument’s low stakes, it describes the larger philosophical positions of the speaker and the husband. The speaker describes her bench in terms of the eternal; the husband’s bench is mortal." 
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