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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

This week, we continue our prose series with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's "The Return," reviewing Harry Clifton's Portobello Sonnets, from Dublin Review of Books:

"Harry Clifton has been for decades a poet who uses a wide angle lens. Responding partly it seems to a generational impulse (to differentiate himself from older poets identified, incestuously twinned even, with their Irish origins), he has been pushed or drawn to see the Irish scene from a distance ... But he did return after living on various continents, more immediately after ten years in Paris, to take up a perch near his boyhood home, in an agreeably shifty quarter of Dublin."

Look for it here.

Enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller

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2. Sponsor Messages

 Patricia Spears Jones Wins Jackson Poetry Prize
Poets & Writers congratulates Patricia Spears Jones on winning the eleventh annual Jackson Poetry Prize. In their citation, judges Henri Cole, Kwame Dawes, and Mary Szybist describe her poems as "made of fever, bones, and breath." Spears Jones, the judges say, "has steadily and quietly enriched the American poetic tradition with sophisticated and moving poems. More of us should know who she is, and even more should read her." The Jackson Prize, which carries a $60,000 award, was established in 2006 with a gift from the Liana Foundation to honor an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recognition. Learn more at pw.org

 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

"wonderful, surprising, often profound - made me daydream.” —XJ Kennedy

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• Cynthia Haven interviews Maria Stepanova. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• Rebecca Foust introduces Ethna McKiernan's "Nothing Gold." (Women's Voices for Change)
• Michael Longley's Angel Hill reviewed by Fran Brearton. (The Guardian)
• John Montague's Second Childhood reviewed by Bernard O'Donoghue. (The Irish Times)
• Alice O'Keeffe talks with Hollie McNish. (The Guardian)
• Michael Hofmann reviews Goethe: Life as a Work of Art by Rüdiger Safranski, translated by David Dollenmayer. (The New York Times)
• A. E. Stallings reviews Border: A journey to the edge of Europe, poet-novelist Kapka Kassabova's account of his travels through Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. (The Times Literary Supplement)
• And more...

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4. Selected New Arrivals

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

• Square Inch Hours, Sherod Santos (W. W. Norton & Company)
• I Offer This Container: New and Selected Poems, Jeffrey Skinner (Salmon Poetry)
• The Fawn Abyss, Adam Tavel (Salmon Poetry)
• Asbestos Brocade, A. E. Stringer (Salmon Poetry)
• And There is Many a Good Thing, Jon Tribble (Salmon Poetry)
• Lament of the Antichrist in a Secular World and Other Poems, Cara Chamberlain (Salmon Poetry)

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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 - Julie Roorda
Tuesday - Arthur Sze
Wednesday - Alice Friman
Thursday - Candice Reffe
Friday - John Stupp
Saturday - Jill McDonough
Sunday - William Wenthe

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6. Featured Poets June 12, 2017 - June 18, 2017

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

Monday - Karen Skolfield
Tuesday - Pattiann Rogers
Wednesday - Molly Bendall
Thursday - Martha Silano
Friday - Randall Horton
Saturday - Jennifer Habel
Sunday - Atsuro Riley

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

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

Wayne Miller, "Marriage"
Hamutal Bar-Yosef / tr. Marcia Falk, "It's Not Worth It"
Gary Margolis, "A Kennedy in Each of Us"
Dave Lucas, "Students Sketching after Caravaggio"
Michael Spence, "Undertow"
David Kirby, "Ode to Disappointment"
Peter Makuck, "Yellow Chair in the Dunes"

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8. Poem From Last Year

It's Not Worth It

It's not worth it to me to ask
whether you love me,
whether you're happy,
whether this arrangement works for you.

But look how much trouble I go to
immersing myself in answers to questions
that haven't even occurred to you.
And may never occur to you.

Hamutal Bar-Yosef
translated from the Hebrew by Marcia Falk
The Hopkins Review
Spring 2016

Copyright ©2017 by Marcia Falk
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission