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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

This week, our prose series continues with Gerard Smyth's "When All Our Gold Was Gorse," reviewing Pandemonium, by Thomas McCarthy, from Dublin Review of Books:

"His voice – with its idiosyncratic tone and verbal texture – registered firmly as one of the most distinctive and it is now one of the most authoritative among poets of his generation. The weight of that authority and his mastery of a personal tone are evident in this fine new collection. There is, too, a rare integrity that keeps a balance between the lived life and imagination. McCarthy, the poet and thinker, is a defender of the past against the more crass aspects of modernity."

Look for it here.

Enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller

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2. Sponsor Messages

Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest (no fee)
16th annual free contest sponsored by Winning Writers. $2,250 in cash prizes, including a top prize of $1,000. Submit one humor poem online by April 1. Your poem may have up to 250 lines. No fee to enter. Both published and unpublished work accepted. All entries that win cash prizes will be published on WinningWriters.com. Final judge: Jendi Reiter. Winning Writers is one of "101 Best Websites for Writers" (Writer's Digest). See guidelines, past winners, and enter online via Submittable at winningwriters.com/wergle

2017 UNT Rilke Prize
Wayne Miller's Post-, published by Milkweed Editions, has won the 2017 UNT Rilke Prize. The $10,000 prize recognizes a book written by a mid-career poet and published in the preceding year that demonstrates exceptional artistry and vision. 

The judges also selected three finalists for this year's Rilke Prize: Christopher Bakken's Eternity & Oranges (University of Pittsburgh Press), Ruth Ellen Kocher's Third Voice (Tupelo Press), and Dana Levin's Banana Palace (Copper Canyon Press).

Beloit Poetry Journal: First Annual Adrienne Rich Award
The Beloit Poetry Journal invites submissions for the first annual Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry to be judged by Carolyn Forché. A prize of $1,500 will be awarded for a single poem, which will appear in the journal. The editors will consider all entries for publication. Submissions open March 1 and close April 30. See www.bpj.org for more details.

Instant Messages
Instant Messages is a new kind of writing, a mash-up of straightforward and accessible poetry, koan-like brain teasers, the delicate observations of Haiku, surprise one-liners, daily mumbling, text-based art, and aphorisms of penetrating insight. All wrapped together in a common theme: things and experience are “messages,.” where meaning awaits.

" Bite-sized wisdom on an invisible stick"
—Billy Collins

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• Rebecca Foust introduces Devorah Major's "on issues of aliens, immigration and cosmology." (Women's Voices for Change)
• Michael Dirda reviews Kay Redfield Jamison's Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire. (The Washington Post)
• Unreconciled: Poems 1991 - 2013, by Michel Houellebecq, translated by Gavin Bowd, reviewed by Rob Doyle. (The Irish Times)
• Megan Marshall's Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast and Kay Redfield Jamison's Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire reviewed by Valerie Duff. (The Boston Globe)
• "Claudia Rankine on studying whiteness, and the age of protest." (Financial Times)
• "The Lost Poetry of the Angel Island Detention Center" (The New Yorker)
• Craig Santos Perez honored with Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship for Poetry. (NBC News)
• And more...

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4. Selected New Arrivals

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

• 99 Poems: New & Selected (new in paperback), Dana Gioia (Graywolf Press)
• After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems, Ama Ata Aidoo, ed. Helen Yitah (University of Nebraska Press)
• Beating the Graves, Tsitsi Ella Jaji (University of Nebraska Press)
• Village Prodigies, Rodney Jones (Mariner Books)
• Understanding Sharon Olds, Russell Brickey (University of South Carolina Press)
• Lighthouse for the Drowning, Jawdat Fakhreddine, tr. Huda Fakhreddine and Jayson Iwen (BOA Editions, Ltd.)
• When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, Chen Chen (BOA Editions, Ltd.)
• The Trembling Answers, Craig Morgan Teicher (BOA Editions, Ltd.)
• Bye-Bye Land, Christian Barter (BOA Editions, Ltd.)
• The Wilderness After Which, L. S. Klatt (Otis Books | Seismicity Editions)
• Searching for Sappho: The Lost Songs and World of the First Woman Poet (new in paperback), Philip Freeman (W. W. Norton & Company)
• Stray, Adam Houle (Lithic Press)
• The Apollonia Poems, Judith Vollmer (University of Wisconsin Press)
• Hijra, Hala Alyan (Southern Illinois University Press)
• A Monkey at the Window: Selected Poems (Bilingual Edition) , Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, tr. Sarah Maguire and Mark Ford (Bloodaxe Books)

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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 - Alicia Suskin Ostriker
Tuesday - Katy Didden
Wednesday - David Wojahn
Thursday - Kevin Craft
Friday - Niall Campbell
Saturday - Robert J. Levy
Sunday - George Bilgere

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6. Featured Poets February 20, 2017 - February 26, 2017

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

Monday - Lisa Russ Spaar
Tuesday - Mike White
Wednesday - Patricia Hooper
Thursday - Billy Collins
Friday - Kevin Craft
Saturday - Chard deNiord
Sunday - Stephen Dunn

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

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

Alison Prine, "Song on the Waterfront"
Patrick Ryan Frank, "Funny Old Man"
Martín Espada, "El Moriviví"
Dana Gioia, Three Poems
Gretchen Marquette, "Painted Turtle"
Jo McDougall, Two Poems
Jürgen Becker / tr. Okla Elliott, "Paris"
Todd Davis, "Canticle for Native Brook Trout"

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8. Poem From Last Year

Marriage of Many Years

Most of what happens happens beyond words.
The lexicon of lip and fingertip
defies translation into common speech.
I recognize the musk of your dark hair.
It always thrills me, though I can't describe it.
My finger on your thigh does not touch skin—
it touches your skin warming to my touch.
You are a language I have learned by heart.

This intimate patois will vanish with us,
its only native speakers. Does it matter?
Our tribal chants, our dances round the fire
performed the sorcery we most required.
They bound us in a spell time could not break.
Let the young vaunt their ecstasy. We keep
our tribe of two in sovereign secrecy.
What must be lost was never lost on us.

 

Dana Gioia
99 Poems: New & Selected
Graywolf Press

Copyright ©2016 by Dana Gioia
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission