Invocation
Han VanderHart
I do not know whether it is morning        or mourning,
the name of the doves calling       in the hems of day
sometimes, I do not know       the spelling of a single word
or why the couple gesture in their car       making a left turn
tonight the clouds settle on the mountains:       pale pink
and then mist, and then       no mountain
almost every day I say to someone:       "it is not important"
but the wing of it       the beak       the onyx eye
is that I do not know this       either
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I grew up in a kataphatic theological tradition—one that affirms what god is, how knowable god is—rather than an apophatic tradition—one that acknowledges what god is not, or the unknowability of god. So part of my healing from certainty involved invoking a particular muse for "Larks"—the muse of negative theology, of not-knowing, of unconscious depths; the mountain hidden by the pink clouds and the mist.

Han VanderHart on "Invocation"
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For National Poetry Month this year, Poetry Daily decided to turn the spotlight on readers of poetry: who we know are especially important, who, through the power of their attention, collaborate in the making of a poem’s meaning and worth.  Which poem, we asked all of you—in our current archive of more than two thousand poems featured on the site since it moved to George Mason University in 2018—made you think, surprised you, moved you, or changed your world just a little? 
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Karisma Price
"New Orleans Poet Honored with an Award for Emerging Writers from the Whiting Foundation"

"New Orleans poet and professor Karisma Price, author of the 2023 collection of verse, I'm Always so Serious, has earned a prestigious Whiting Award. The Whiting Award for Poetry is one of 10 annual literary awards granted by the foundation, which also honor fiction, nonfiction and drama. Among previous winners in the awards' 40-year history are Colson Whitehead, Ocean Vuong, Alice McDermott and Jia Tolentino."

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