☀ Today's Poem: "Wilding" Shara McCallum

Today's Headline: "Michael Longley, 85, Northern Irish Poet of Nature and ‘the Troubles,’ Dies"

February 23, 2025 Wilding Shara McCallum Machetazo!, Bony Ramírez & Blonde Dreams, Alison Saar you can take the girl out of the wilderness you can strand her bewilder her for a time you can even hang her upside down in your rickety attempt to shake loose the source of her power but you won’t ever disentangle the wilding from her the force of a thousand suns unfurling and hurling her toward the ground you won’t be able to erase the traces of salt lacing her ravenous dreams oh you can try unwebbing her feet but the lizard in her will keep sunning itself as the day is long and at nightfall will crawl up your walls lurking at the corners of your vision goading you on while she thwarts your every endeavor abandoning her tail anything required of her to keep eluding your capture from the journal PLEIADES READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM Share Tweet Forward The poem is from "Behold," a forthcoming collection centered on my relationship to visual art and conversations with specific works of art and artists. “Wilding” resulted from my visit to the MFA in Boston in October 2023—from viewing the two works noted in the epigraph, which were displayed in close proximity to one another, and what that sparked in me. Shara McCallum on "Wilding" A Reading with Moriel Rothman-Zecher Monday, February 24, 2025 12:00 PM to 1:15 PM EST Calling all Poetry Daily readers in the Washington DC Metro region "Join acclaimed author Moriel Rothman-Zecher for an engaging reading and discussion of his novel, Sadness is a White Bird. Rothman-Zecher will share insights into his writing process and discuss themes explored in the novel, along with his broader body of work that continues to captivate readers and critics alike." Art & Design Building, Gillespie Gallery, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA "Michael Longley, 85, Northern Irish Poet of Nature and ‘the Troubles,’ Dies" "His subjects were consequential—love, nature and the nature of man—but Mr. Longley’s poems could have hardly been less Homeric in length. 'Ceasefire,' for example, unspools in 14 trim lines: three quatrains and a couplet....'He was interested in being concise, and a number of his poems are not much more than four lines. He may have been slightly out of the mainstream in that regard. But that was his ideal: the little poem. Something like scrimshaw—the brief, imagistic poem.'" viaTHE NEW YORK TIMES READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES What Sparks Poetry: Rowan Ricardo Phillips on Drafts "Each stage of the poem’s evolution reshaped its engagement with inherited forms. The invocation, the sound patterns, even the omission of forbidden—each choice was informed by an ongoing dialogue with Milton’s legacy. Yet through this recursive process, the poem became its own. The recursive act of writing allowed me to rework Milton’s themes of creation and rebellion through a contemporary lens, tracing a poetic lineage that spans from the epic tradition to the fractured rhythms of modern music." 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

͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏