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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

This week our prose series continues with "The Ekphrastic Moment," by Sharon Dolin, from the summer issue of The Hopkins Review:

"What does ekphrasis do for poets? All poets have their subject matter, and it will out, like the blood on Lady Macbeth's hands. Be it love, mortality, family trauma, social injustice, or spiritual doubt, a poet brings her concerns, her passions, her obsessions to her work. With ekphrasis, a poet has the opportunity to enrich her palette: to talk about what preoccupies her by deliberately displacing it onto something external."

Look for it here.

Enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller

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2. Sponsor Messages

 Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins
Write the next chapter of an epic.
Talented faculty. Visiting writers. Writer-in-Residence.
Graduate Assistantships, Teaching Fellowships,
Travel Funding, and Full Scholarships. 

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
More than fifty years of achievement in poetry,
Fiction, and nonfiction. 

Bachelor of Arts with concentration or Minor in creative writing
Where students mature into authors. 

Most of all, a vibrant, supportive community.
https://hollinsmfa.wordpress.com/first-child/

 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).

 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.

 Perugia Press Prize
A prize of $1000 and publication by Perugia Press is given annually for a first or second unpublished poetry collection by a woman. Submit manuscripts for the 2018 prize with a $27 entry fee between August 1 and November 15, 2017. Both online and paper submissions are accepted. Visit our website for complete guidelines.     
 
The 2017 winner, Starshine Road, by L. I. Henley, is now available from 
Perugia Press.
 
Perugia Press -  Publishing the Best New Women Poets since 1997
P.O. Box 60364
Florence, MA 01062

 Wake Forest University Press proudly announces our fall titles.
David Wheatley’s The President of Planet Earth brings an experimental sensibility to bear on questions of land and territory, channeling the messianic ambitions of modernism into rich and subversive comedy. Frank Ormsby, in The Darkness of Snow, covers vast territory in five parts, from meditations on art to insightful poems on life with disease. And in his eleventh collection, Angel Hill, Michael Longley explores familiar Irish landscapes as well as vignettes from the Western Scottish Highlands. http://wfupress.wfu.edu/

 SHENANDOAH Seeking New Editor
Shenandoah Editor and Visiting Assistant Professor of English

The Department of English at Washington and Lee University invites applications for a three-year position beginning Fall 2018, with a possibility of renewal.
Closes: Oct 11, 2017

http://shenandoahliterary.org/blog/2017/08/shenandoah-seeking-new-editor/

 ellipsis...literature and art
Accepting submissions until November 1. Honoraria and a prize judged by Srikanth Reddy. https://ellipsis.submittable.com/submit

 Palm Beach Poetry Festival
January 15-20, 2018, Delray Beach, Florida 
Deadline to apply for workshops: November 10
Workshops, readings, interview, gala and performance events with Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Chard deNiord, Beth Ann Fennelly, Ross Gay, Rodney Jones, Phillis Levin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Tim Seibles. Admission is by application. For more information, visit www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org or email [email protected]

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• Meg Haskell talks with Wesley McNair about his new collection, The Unfastening, and more. (Bangor Daily News)
• Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Essays and Poems, by Audre Lorde, reviewed by Jackie Kay. (New Statesman)
• Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense, by Jenny Uglow, reviewed by Eileen Battersby. (The Irish Times)
• Rebecca Foust introduces three poems by Shirley Geok-lin Lim. (Women's Voices for Change)
• Kate Shannon Jenkins in conversation with Tamim Al-Barghouti. (The New Yorker)
• And more...

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4. New Arrivals

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

• All We Saw, Anne Michaels (Alfred A. Knopf)
• blud, Rachel McKibbens (Copper Canyon Press)
• Maps, John Freeman (Copper Canyon Press)
• Scales, Melographed by César Vallejo, César Vallejo, ed. & tr. Joseph Mulligan (Wesleyan University Press)
• The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire, Aimé Césaire, tr. A. James Arnold & Clayton Eshleman (Wesleyan University Press)
• Ghostlight: New and Selected Poems, Mark Granier (Salmon Poetry / Dufour Editions)
• Santiago Sketches, David McLoghlin (Salmon Poetry / Dufour Editions)
• Bear, Chrissy Williams (Bloodaxe / Dufour Editions)
• A Bright Acoustic, Philip Gross (Bloodaxe Books / Dufour Editions)
• Walking Through Turquoise, Laurie MacFayden (Frontenac House Poetry)
• This Wound is a World, Billy-Ray Belcourt (Frontenac House Poetry)
• A Tincture of Sunlight, Vivian Hansen (Frontenac House Poetry)
• The Riparian, Lisa Pasold (Frontenac House Poetry)
• The Unstill Ones, Miller Oberman (Princeton University Press)
• Radioactive Starlings, Myronn Hardy (Princeton University Press)
• Blue Velvet, Alan Catlin (Slopstream Press)
• Full Moon at Sunset: Selected Poems, Patricia Pruitt (Talisman House)
• Last Night at the Wursthaus, Doug Holder (Gray Sparrow Press, Inc.)
• Thousands, Lightsey Darst (Coffee House Press)
• Decoherence, Nate Pritts (42 Miles Press)
• The Girls with Stone Faces, Arleen Paré (Brick Books)
• Cries from the Ark, Dan Macisaac (Brick 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 - Donna Stonecipher
Tuesday - Kaveh Akbar
Wednesday - Jeffrey Harrison
Thursday - Craig Santos Perez
Friday - Sarah Gridley
Saturday - Michael Bazzett
Sunday - Marcus Wicker

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6. Featured Poets September 25, 2017 - October 1, 2017

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

Monday - Cintia Santana
Tuesday - Benjamin S. Grossberg
Wednesday - Wesley McNair
Thursday - Michelle Brittan Rosado
Friday - Peter Cooley
Saturday - Alison Jarvis
Sunday - Ghassan Zaqtan / tr. Fady Joudah

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

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

Joshua Bennett, "The Sobbing School"
Marianne Boruch, "Little Handheld, Little Movie in a Phone"
Charles Simic, "History"
Stav Poleg, "Alpine"
Natalia Romero / tr. Seth Michelson, "Otter"
Ari Banias, "Grandchild"
Peter Gizzi, "Google Earth"

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8. Poem From Last Year

History

Our life stories are scary and droll,
Like masks children wear on Halloween
As they go from door to door
Holding the little ones by the hand
In some neighborhood long torn down,

Where people ate their dinners
In angry silence or quarreling loudly,
When there was a knock on the door,
A soft knock a shy boy makes
Dressed in a costume his mother made.

What's this you're wearing, kid?
And where did you get that mask?
That made everyone laugh here
While you stood staring at us,
As if you knew already we were history.

Charles Simic
The Paris Review
Fall 2016

Copyright © 2016 by Charles Simic
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission