Rebecca Foust Rebecca Foust’s fifth book, "Paradise Drive," won the 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry and was reviewed in the Georgia Review, Hudson Review, Huffington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Review of Books, and elsewhere. Foust is the 2017-18 Poet Laureate of Marin County. Recognitions include the 2015 American Literary Review Award for Fiction, the 2015 James Hearst Poetry Prize, the 2014 Constance Rook Creative Nonfiction Award, and fellowships from the Frost Place, MacDowell Colony, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, and West Chester Poetry Conference. “Paradise Drive” can be ordered at www.press53.com. For more information visit rebeccafoust.com.
Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Migrant Earth,” by Deema Shehabi

By Rebecca Foust
Left explicitly unsaid but everywhere in the poem is the speaker’s terrible grief for her loss and also perhaps a roil of sorrow, regret, and even anger about what her mother had to endure during her life. That these emotions are hinted at but not stated is part of the power of “Migrant Earth.”
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Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Sieve,” by April Ossmann

By Rebecca Foust
“Sieve” begins, as all good poems should, with an attention-grabbing first line, “Young men seem all edges,” and then ups the interest ante with two delightful and apt similes, “shoulders like shelves” and my favorite, “bellies like slides / to the most obvious / of pleasures.” That’s a sly, possibly punning allusion to sex, of course, and one I haven’t seen before but that feels just right.
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Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “En Route to Bolinas, A Rose,” by Brenda Hillman

By Rebecca Foust
“En Route to Bolinas, A Rose” takes us on a journey that is spiritual as well as physical that leads us to the edge of a precipice, offering a glimpse into the darkness and mystery of the terrible eternal. That it does this by mimicking the action of human thought in a poem that feels light, vivid, and as fresh as a watercolor still on the easel to dry, is its genius.
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Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Nothing Gold,” by Ethna McKiernan

By Rebecca Foust
Today’s poem is a sad one, but in it the speaker’s great love for her father shines through, and that makes it beautiful. In telling her story, the speaker shows how well she has been taught by her father, and his great love for literature lives on in her person and writing, a living legacy and a wonderful poem for Father’s Day.
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Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Let Them Not Say,” by Jane Hirshfield

By Rebecca Foust
Whether or not we share the chagrin and distress felt by the speaker in “Let Them Not Say,” we are all undeniably part of a generation that will be judged by future generations. We all have skin in this game. That is a powerful message, regardless of which side of the current political controversy you now occupy.
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Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Mutanabbi Steet, Baghdad,” by Julie Bruck

By Rebecca Foust
In “Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad," the focus is on the human loss in the bombing, and the message is personal and painful. In 20 free verse lines, the poem takes us to Al-Mutanabbi street after the blast, in the company of a father searching for the remains of a son who’d gone there to shop for a writing notebook.
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