Joyce Mansour was ferocious. Her poems seek to devour—reader, speaker, anything in their path. She often writes of her endless desire and in translating her I have come to expect her tremendous appetite. This poem begins with typical imagery—"The huge gladiolus / Roaring on its spurs"—but ends in a more vulnerable place. I love how this work both satisfies and upends what we come to expect of her poems, just as she always does.
C. Francis Fisher on "Bronze Like Nightfall" |
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Carry Poetry Daily
To celebrate National Poetry Month, and 25+ years of Poetry Daily, we are launching our official merchandise store with two inaugural items: an evergreen Poetry Daily logo tote, featuring a line from Diane Seuss' poem, "Romantic Poet," and a companion black tote, featuring a specially commissioned illustration. |
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"A Literary Homeland: An Interview with Philip Metres"
"The qașīdah begins with human longing, moves into the trouble of the world, and concludes with some kind of homecoming. It’s a movement that feels like the origin of half the world’s stories, and I found myself drawn by its structure. My book is also in conversation with Khaled Mattawa’s underappreciated masterpiece Fugitive Atlas (2020), which is full of qașīdahs."
via COMMONWEAL MAGAZINE |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Jared Stanley on "So Tough"
"When the forests (it’s more precise to call them plantations) burn now, it’s a massive conflagration. We downwinders are trapped under a persistent, poisonous haze that sticks around for sometimes six weeks. Under the smoke, it’s hard to breathe, and one feels trapped—by the material, particulate fact of the smoke, yes, but also by an atmosphere of dense thoughtlessness, a failed image of the world that the smoke has come to represent." |
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