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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

This week, our prose series continues with ""Bent as I Was, Intently...," by Marianne Boruch, from the Fall issue of Field:

"Just to be clear: I straight out love Simic's poems; they turn and rewind, then: look!And how skewed but normal (really?) his stuff seems, fated and hopeless and ancient and new. Of course it's a spell, of sorts, and that's joy, his surprise, his grounded weirdness. I'm writing this off the top of my head which I fear opens not like a sturdy envelope but an old Pez dispenser, a sweet minor offering because it's late May, the northern hemisphere overwhelmed with the season's standard amazement: trees sudden into leaf, flowers knowing exactly what to do with blue and red and yellow. Yay you fiddlehead fern! Uncurl thyself to sky and rain."

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/

 Writing Program of Columbia University
At the Writing Program of Columbia University, individual achievement and a strong sense of community go hand in hand. Our poetry workshops encourage students to develop their own unique sensibilities and to help promote the progress of their peers, while our seminars offer rigorous study of poetic traditions and recent innovations alike, grounding our students’ practice in a shared engagement with the works of the past and present as they realize, together, poetry’s future.

 The University of Arkansas at Monticello’s Master of Fine Arts Graduate Program (No Res)
Our fully online MFA program offers students the opportunity to study poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction from highly accomplished faculty members.  Students can complete the  48 hour program at their own pace, as they may take as few as three hours a semester and up to twelve.  The mission of the program is to enhance students’ abilities to think and to communicate both creatively and critically.

 Cave Wall’s Open Reading Period and Back Issue Sale
Cave Wall is reading submissions Sept. 1- Oct. 31. We read blind so please remove your name and follow the guidelines on our website. We approach every submission with gratitude, hoping to be moved, and each gets the attention of the editor-in-chief. Also, please check out our back issue sale: buy 3, get 2 free or get the whole set for $40 (while supplies last). “Cave Wall reminds me of why I started writing poetry in the first place,” says Natasha Trethewey. Grab an issue to see what she means, and please give us the honor of reading your poems this fall. http://www.cavewallpress.com/news.html

 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.

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• Robert McCrum on "how Shakespeare's 'blood cult’ became Ted Hughes’s fatal obsession." (The Guardian)
• Jessica Foust introduces "All Hallows Eve, Edgewater Inn," by Catharine Clark-Sayles. (Women's Voices for Change)
• Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce, by Colm Tóibín, reviewed by Sean Hewitt. (The Irish Times)
• Gioia completes his two-year term finishing a statewide tour to all 58 counties across California. (California Arts Council)
• Hiroaki Sato on Yukio Mishima’s haiku. (Paris Review Daily)
• Andrew Motion reviews Philip Larkin: Letters Home, 1936–1977, edited by James Booth. (Spectator)
• Grace Cavalieri's monthly look at books of and about poetry. (Washington Independent Review of Books)
• And more...

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4. New Arrivals

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

• Swimming Chenango Lake, Charles Tomlinson, edited by David Morley (Carcanet Press)
• Liner Notes, Ciaran Berry (The Gallery Press)
• This One High Field, Michelle O'Sullivan (The Gallery Press)
• From There to Here: Selected Poems and Translations, Ciaran Carson (The Gallery Press)
• Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse, Valerie Nieman (Press 53)
• Stones Ripe for Sowing, Libby Bernardin (Press 53)
• Sky the Oar, Stacy R. Nigliazzo (Press 53)
• Googootz and Other Poems, Howard Faerstein (Press 53)
• The Strange Estate: New & Selected Poems 1986-2017, Adrian Rice (Press 53)
• The Raiment We Put On: New & Selected Poems 2006-2018, Kelly Cherry (Press 53)
• Stet, Dora Malech (Princeton University Press)
• You Can Not Shoot a Poem, Paula Closson Buck (LSU Press)
• The River in the Sky, Clive James (Liveright Publishing Corporation)
• Decals: Complete Early Poems, Oliverio Girondo / tr. Rachel Galvin (Open Letter)
• Heresway, Sam Truitt (MadHat Press)
• The Weather in Normal, Carrie Etter (Station Hill Press)
• A Sleepwalk on the Severn, Alice Oswald (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)
• Life Lines, Julia Carter Aldrich (Dos Madres Press)
• I Was the Girl With the Moon-Shaped Face, Heather Lang Cassera (Zeitgeist Press)

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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 - A. E. Stallings
Tuesday - Meena Alexander
Wednesday - Arleen Paré
Thursday - Carl Dennis
Friday - Brian Swann
Saturday - John Reibetanz
Sunday - Maya Catherine Popa

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6. Featured Poets October 22 - October 28, 2018

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

Monday - Pattie McCarthy
Tuesday - Richard Greenfield
Wednesday - Kate Rutter
Thursday - Ish Klein
Friday - Miriam Bird Greenberg
Saturday - Daniel Coudriet
Sunday - Ellen Boyette

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

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

Tony Towle, "Economics"
Hadara Bar-Nadav, "Spine"
W. S. Merwin, "The Wild Geese"
Jeffrey Skinner, "The Bookshelf of the God of Infinite Space"
Donika Kelly, "Brood"
Jared Harél, "Father of Daughters"
Katie Willingham, "Darwinist Logic on Unrequited Love"

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8. Poem From Last Year

The Wild Geese

It was always for the animals that I grieved most
for the animals I had seen and for those
I had only heard of or dreamed about
or seen in cages or lying beside the road
for those forgotten and those long remembered
for the lost ones that were never found again
among people there were words we all knew
even if we did not say them and although
they were always inadequate when we said them
they were there if we wanted them when the time came
with the animals always there was only
presence as long as it was present and then
only absence suddenly and no word for it
in all the great written wisdom of China
where are the animals when were they lost
where are the ancestors who knew the way
without them all the wise words are bits of sand
twitching on the dunes where the forests
once whispered in their echoing ancient tongue
and the animals knew their way among the trees
only in the old poems does their presence survive
the gibbons call from the mountain gorges
the old words all deepen the great absence
the vastness of all that has been lost
it is still there when the poet in exile
looks up long ago hearing the voices
of wild geese far above him flying home

W. S. Merwin
The Essential W. S. Merwin
Copper Canyon Press

Copyright © 2017 by W. S. Merwin
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission