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Dear Readers,
In our prose series this week, we present "Letter from New Zealand," by Stephen Burt, from the May-June issue of PN Review:
"To live in Christchurch at the end of 2016 is to encounter, daily and seemingly everywhere, construction: cranes, scaffolds, burly workers in lemon-fluorescent vests, bright orange cones, PVC pipes jutting up from the ground, all of it part of the ongoing, city-wide multi-year recovery after the earthquakes of 2010-11. The fences and pits are a great inconvenience, a melancholy sight for those who grew up in what was (I'm told) the most sedate and stable of NZ cities. For me, on the other hand, the construction is mostly inspiration: I see a city that's putting itself back together, a nation that has recognised (and chosen to pay for) a shared public good, while my own home country, the United States, is tearing itself apart."
Look for it here...
Enjoy this week's poems!
Warmest regards,
Don Selby & Diane Boller
2. Sponsor Messages
The MacGuffin is on the hunt for a poem to win our 22nd National Poet Hunt Contest!
One first place winner will get $500 and publication in the Fall 2017 issue. This year, we’ve brought in Naomi Shihab Nye to act as guest judge. Please submit no more than 3 poems, an index card with your name, poem titles, and contact info, and a $15 check/cash entry fee (make checks payable to Schoolcraft College). For full info, check the Contest Rules page at www.schoolcraft.edu/macguffin/
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
Sixteen Rivers Press
Sixteen Rivers Press, a Northern California poetry collective, announces the publication of their 2017 books: Body, in Good Light by Erin Rodoni and This Sweet Haphazard by Gillian Wegener. Ilya Kaminsky writes that Rodoni’s book “journeys out into the world, but also inward—into the mysteries of private life” and calls it “a marvelous debut,” while Jane Mead tells us that Wegener “sees the beauty and melancholy all around her” and refers to her collection as “a beautiful book of powerful poems.” Sixteen Rivers Press is now celebrating its eighteenth year of publishing fine poetry.
3. Poetry News Links
News and reviews from around the web, updated daily: Rebecca Foust presents "End of the Line," by Kate Peper. (Women's Voices for Change) David Roderick introduces Jacques Rancourt's "The Same Word." (San Francisco Chronicle) Poet Micah David-Cole Fletcher survived a stabbing attack in Portland, after approaching a man accosting two women. (The Oregonian) Alex Dueben talks to Hmong-American poet Mai der Vang. (The Brooklyn Rail) Val Burns on poetry as solace. (The Sunday Herald) Denis Johnson, 67 (The Guardian) And more...4. Selected New Arrivals
These and other new arrivals are available for purchase via Poetry Daily/Amazon.com.
Little Kisses, Lloyd Schwartz (The University of Chicago Press) Swimming Through Fire, Seth Michelson (Press 53) Lion Brothers, Leona Sevick (Press 53) Becoming the Blue Heron, Terri Kirby Erickson (Press 53) In a Homeland Not Far, Yahya Frederickson (Press 53) What the Dust Doesn't Know, Richard Schiffman (Salmon Poetry) The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery's Early Life, Karin Roffman (Farrar, Staus and Giroux) Marianne Moore: New Collected Poems, Heather Cass White, ed. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)5. This Week’s Featured Poets
The work of the following poets will appear as Today's Poem on the days indicated:
Monday - Dan Gerber
Tuesday - Christina Pugh
Wednesday - Gregor Addison
Thursday - Thomas Reiter
Friday - Matt Mauch
Saturday - Shen Haobo / tr. Liang Yujing
Sunday - Ella Frears
6. Featured Poets May 22, 2017 - May 28, 2017
These and other past featured poets may be found in our archive:
Monday - Michael Chitwood
Tuesday - Randall Mann
Wednesday - Alicia Ostriker
Thursday - Kathleen Winter
Friday - Jose A. Alcantara
Saturday - Eléna Rivera
Sunday - Bruce Beasley
7. Last Year’s Featured Poets
These poems will be retired from our archive during the coming week.
Steven Heighton, "A Cosmos"
Brock Jones, "Memorial from a Park Bench"
Maureen N. McLane, Two Poems
Brenda Shaughnessy, "Wound"
Patrick Rosal, "At the Tribunals"
Andrea Cohen, "Happiness"
francine j. harris, "what you trapped in a bruise, you left"
8. Poem From Last Year
Wound
As if to wooÂ
not to wow.
I didn't dazzle like I expectedÂ
to. My body,
interracial & grumous,Â
either overly looked at
or totally overlooked.Â
My whole body isn't anything,
just a collection. What isÂ
truly midmost me
is injury, an old one,Â
decrepit unreal thread opening
new self-holes, new tearsÂ
pronounced like air
not fear. The tear knitsÂ
back together,
stitches melt to keepÂ
the wound soft, keep
a space which fills and fillsÂ
but never fills.
Disappointment's all rightÂ
& emptiness
can pulse weird useful energy.Â
But I'm most afraid
of panicked mind alone,Â
silent, in the end.
When fear becomesÂ
an ability to split myself off
and my body is just anotherÂ
kind of sourdough
hardening in the windowÂ
of the failing bakery.
Not even children stopÂ
to look. They don't
want anything anymore,Â
hungry or not.
They too have had enoughÂ
of taking to fear
what gives of itselfÂ
without and to no end.
Brenda Shaughnessy
So Much Synth
Copper Canyon Press
Copyright ©2016 by Brenda Shaughnessy
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
Copyright © 2017. All rights reserved.
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