☀ Today's Poem: "Pleasure" Rick Barot

Today's Headline: "Short Conversations with Poets: Carol Moldaw"

January 16, 2025 Pleasure Rick Barot You are told to believe in one paradise and then there is the paradise you come to know. The shoes lined up in pairs by the door and the herd moving with its mysterious intent across a dark plain. The blue of the sky which is the zenith of all colors and the love of the man in the next room, strong and rough as a hog's back. My mind has a slow metabolism, it is slow to understand what anything means but it understands that if you look at something long enough, it will have something to say to you. The sun that is strangely bright on some days, a poisoned canary, and the crop of winter rocks in a meadow in April. Learning decades later the name of the hospital where you were born and watching the child eat a mango as though it is time he is eating, time shining on his lips. On fewer days I agree with the poet's dread of being the wrong person in the right world, and believe in adhesion, in never showing up empty-handed, even if the pleasure I know best is fused with the abject. There is always the other side of the heart, its coaxing: You are here. You can begin again. You can rise. from the book MOVING THE BONES / Milkweed Editions READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM Share Tweet Forward Many of the poems in my new book, "Moving the Bones," are about the concerns of someone in mid-life: the aging of parents, taking stock of one’s life, and reflecting on one’s relationship to vocation and purpose, in my case, being an artist. “Pleasure” is situated in that mid-life perspective, a perspective steeped in experience and also avid for what’s ahead. Rick Barot on "Pleasure" "Short Conversations with Poets: Carol Moldaw" "The first person forces me to ask myself if I can stand behind what the poem expresses as well as how it expresses it. I also want those two things to be one and the same. In a way, every word is on trial when writing a poem, and sometimes I feel that I’m on the witness stand being interrogated by another part of myself, trying to get to the bottom of things. And I’ve sworn to tell the truth." viaMCSWEENEY'S INTERNET TENDENCY READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES What Sparks Poetry: Jennifer Chang on Drafts "In truth, I misremembered the statue, I misrepresent it; in my poem, there is more than one enslaved person at Lincoln’s knees. But this is not the only reason I could not get the draft right. I wanted to capture the feeling of two friends wandering in a city, the ebb and flow of their conversation. Most of all, I wanted the poem to do what letters do: bridge a distance in geography and in time: the future, the past, Washington, D.C., Texas, the thaw that makes some late winter days feel like spring." READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE donate View in browser You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. If you would like to unsubscribe please click here. © 2025 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030 Design by the Binding Agency

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