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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

Our prose series continues this week with "Unpeopled Edens,"by Rigoberto González, from The Poem's Country: Place & Poetic Practice, edited by Shara Lessley and Bruce Snider (Pleiades Press) :

"I subscribe to the notion that land carries memory, so people are never truly gone, not with so many prints and impressions left behind. Our actions, positive and negative, become absorbed by the land. This is how we simultaneously nurture and poison the ground beneath our feet."

Look for it here.

Enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller

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2. Sponsor Messages

Blank Verse Films
Subscribe to Blank Verse Films! Videos now playing:

- Dana Gioia: "The Stars Now Rearrange Themselves"
- Brendan Constantine: "The Opposites Game"

Much more coming soon at Blank Verse Films!

 John Yau Wins Jackson Poetry Prize
Poets & Writers congratulates John Yau, recipient of the 2018 Jackson Poetry Prize. In their citation, judges Laura Kasischke, Robin Coste Lewis, and Arthur Sze commend Yau’s ability to create unforgettable poems through his “dazzling imagination and singular command of language” and by “employing voices that reveal the multiple and shadowy selves inside the self.” 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. Follow on Instagram!

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

“Wonderful, surprising, often profound — made me daydream.” —XJ Kennedy

 15th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival
15th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival - Delray Beach, Florida, January 21-26, 2019. Focus on your work with 8 of America’s most celebrated poets: Ellen Bass, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Stuart Dischell, Aracelis Girmay, Campbell McGrath, Matthew Olzmann, Gregory Pardlo, Eleanor Wilner. Six days of workshops, readings, craft talks, manuscript conferences, panel discussion, social events and so much more. Special Guest, Sharon Olds, Poet At Large, Tyehimba Jess. Visit palmbeachpoetryfestival.org to apply online. Deadline: November 12, 2018.

 Vermont College of Fine Arts MFAs in Writing
Vermont College of Fine Arts offers a traditinal low-residency MFA in Writing program—now celebrating its 35th year—along with a residential MFA in Writing & Publishing program.

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• Donald Hall, 89 - an obituary for the former U.S. poet laureate. (Concord Monitor)
• Simon Callow reviews Stephen Greenblatt's Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics. (The New York Times)
• Stephen Greenblatt's Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics reviewed by Rhodri Lewis. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• Woody Haut reviews Robin Robertson's "The Long Take." (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• "Poetry in the age of Brexit" -"David Wheatley reflects on the lyricism of slurry." (The Irish Times)
• David McFadden, 77 - an obituary for the Canadian poet and travel writer. (The Globe and Mail)
• "The Stars Now Rearrange Themselves" - Blank Verse Films presents a reading by Dana Gioia. (Blank Verse Films)
• Rebecca Foust introduces "Epic," by Ange Mlinko. (Women's Voices for Change)
• And more....

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4. New Arrivals

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

• The Glamorganshire Bible, Lynne Viti (Finishing Line Press)
• Purgatorio: A New Verse Translation, Dante Alighieri, tr. W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)
• Beyond All Bearing, Susan Delaney Spear (Resource Publications)
• The Neighbor Out of Sound, Jake Marmer (Sheep Meadow Press)
• Wild Horses, Pam Baggett (Main Street Rag)

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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 - Jennifer Atkinson
Tuesday - Kristin Robertson
Wednesday - Kara van de Graaf
Thursday - Wyn Cooper
Friday - Fady Joudah
Saturday - Garrett Hongo
Sunday - Kazim Ali

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6. Featured Poets June 18, 2018 - June 24, 2018

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

Monday - A. E. Stallings
Tuesday - Ann Rae Jonas
Wednesday - Eric Gansworth
Thursday - Iain Haley Pollock
Friday - J. Allyn Rosser
Saturday - Jared Harél
Sunday - Sue D. Burton

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

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

William Wenthe, "Endings"
Kathryn Nuernberger, "The Real Thing"
Ben Lerner, "The Camperdown Elm"
Donika Kelly, "Gun Control"
Todd Boss, Two Poems
Debora Greger, "To a Redbud"
J. P. Grasser, "excavate"

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8. Poem From Last Year

Endings

The low waves of Kansas plains
roll to the border of the farmyard
where Dorothy stands. The land arrives
to meet her eyes: timothy and coneflower;
tender, edible young milkweed stalks
in the pasture; and further, the rolling furls
of the plow's wake. She raises a hand
to shade her eyes and gaze at a speck
bisecting the horizon. It looms to a man
walking the cartroad—but what is that
on his shoulder? Some sort of staff,
one end planed flat like a tassel of wheat.
Like some implement recalled from the barn
of her childhood, before the storm.
They meet. When she asks what it is, he twists
wrist muscles root-strong, plants it in the loam
as if he had a mind to set a beanpole,
or stake a scarecrow. An oar, he says,
eyeing the hanging bucket. Accepts
a dipper of groundwater,
gleaming and full from the well.

 

William Wenthe
Pleiades
Summer 2017

Copyright © 2017 by William Wenthe
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission