☀ What Sparks Poetry: Matthew Cooperman on "Late Music"

Today's Headline: A Conversation: Ana María Caballero and Denise Duhamel

February 24, 2025 What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature in which we invite poets to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems. In our series Reading Prose, poets write about how the experience of reading prose, fiction, non-fiction, criticism, and theory, has sparked the writing of poetry or affected how they read poetry. Each Monday's delivery brings you a poem and an excerpt from the essay. Late Music Matthew Cooperman Feeling the lonesome sky on a long drive home, you make it so First frost, and the Black-eyed Susans staring, apparently "Existence precedes Essence," he said, we say Soon you will feel a foreboding in the Winter you have conceived pain in the belly, a weather map of the eastern seaboard, organ music grinding the Messiah, a boy building an igloo covered in powder —the wind howls ominously, see? Rain follows fire turns to snow of ash White, what have we done to Civilization? There is no snowman you have not rolled from memory Naturally, you can't always be reasonable, Humanism is what humans do Wash the blood from your hands Walk to the distant farmhouse covered in crows Spring, pack, make a pact, choose murder, lust, compassion, shame There is no such thing as not choosing from the book THE ATMOSPHERE IS NOT A PERFUME IT IS ODORLESS / Free Verse Editions READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM Share Tweet Forward What Sparks Poetry: Matthew Cooperman on Reading Prose "How will we spend our days? How will we attend to our rapidly accelerating planet? One habit of response is to read bracing prose, and for me, it’s often “the consolations of philosophy,” to quote an excellent recent example by Alain de Botton. From the Affective Turn to the Queering of Nature, Object Oriented Ontology to Anthropocene Studies, there’s an incredible florescence of philosophical writing going on internationally, as if climate change has triggered all our cells to wake up." READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE A Conversation: Ana María Caballero and Denise Duhamel "These collections are in intimate dialogue with one another: Caballero’s Mammal (Steel Toe Books, 2024) investigates the birth of children, exploring pregnancy and motherhood with poems that mirror its messy reality rather than our neat expectations. Duhamel’s Pink Lady (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025) investigates the death of a mother during the pandemic’s early days, chronicling the separation between mother and daughter during lockdown in a world suddenly transformed." viaBOMB READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES 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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