Poetry Sunday: “Empathy,” by A. E. Stallings
This is one of the best political poems I’ve ever read, and I hope you will find yourself as moved by it as I am.
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Poetry Sunday:
“Discussing Useful Life at the Tax Depreciation Seminar I Remember a Line by David Baker,” by Jeanne Wagner
This poem was conceived during my last year working as an accountant. The partners had flown in an expert from New York who was presenting very sketchy strategies for shortening the useful life of assets, thereby increasing the deductions.
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Poetry Sunday: “Sin,” by Forough Farrokhzad
Forough Farrokhzad wrote when, as now, Iranian women faced deeply-rooted and widespread discrimination and prejudice, and she is widely regarded as Iran’s leading women poet and an advocate for women’s liberation and independence everywhere.
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Poetry Sunday: “The Dress Code” and “Wish,” by Caitlin Doyle
Both poems this week are in form, and together they help make a point I’ve been pushing for some time in these columns: form can set you free in your writing and reading of poetry.
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Poetry Sunday: “The Streaming,” by Elizabeth Spires
The poem’s intent is not to complain about or wish relief from all the bad-news bombardment, but a deeper concern about how that bombardment “hardens” us and so lessens our humanity.
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Poetry Sunday: “Walking Through the Grass at Night,” by Ellery Akers
The poem is somewhat about being alone and a speaker who conjures life into inanimate objects to populate her world.
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“Not Elegy, But Eros,” “The Old City,”
and “Ode to the Joke,” by Nausheen Eusuf
All of Nausheen Eusuf's poems show an uncommon amount of mystery, subtlety grace, wit, and intelligence, but many—including the ones offered to you today—make me catch my breath.
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“On the Way to Grandma’s Funeral” and
“What the Confederate Flag Means to Me,” by Glenis Redmond
Every poem in "What My Hand Say" is influenced by the poet’s historical and actual experience with racism, and some take it head-on.
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Poetry Sunday: “Making Zelnik at the Sibling Reunion,” by Karen Paul Holmes
My new book, "No Such Thing as Distance," was partly inspired by the Macedonian culture in which I grew up. How better to reflect that heritage, and also the closeness of my family, than through a cooking poem?
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Poetry Sunday: “Prepositional,” by Lorna Knowles Blake
“Prepositional” speaks of a long relationship between the speaker and her beloved and examines the stability of their unit (“us”) against (in relation to) the larger backdrop of history and the even larger backdrop of nature and time, creating a truly unique and universal valentine.
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Poetry Sunday: Poems by Lee Harlin Bahan
I highly recommend "A Year of Mourning" for readers interested in translation or the sonnet form, as well as anyone suffering the pangs of unrequited love.
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Poetry Sunday: “Are You in the Room with Me Now?” by Maw Shein Win
We readers understand that the speaker is in fact weeping at the end of the poem, but we also understand that something powerful is holding her back from acknowledging or owning her tears.
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Poetry Sunday: “Immigrants,” by Judith Ayn Bernhard
I want my poetry to reflect sympathy for people who have come to this country seeking refuge and solidarity with all who struggle for a better life.
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Poetry Sunday: “Eve Recollecting the Garden,”
by Grace Bauer
There is a story being told in the poem, and it is a compelling one—the timeless battle of the sexes, with a contemporary feminist taking a bead on traditional religious creation myths and assumptions about original sin.
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Poetry Sunday: “Burning the Old Year,” by Naomi Shihab Nye
What is being described in today’s poem is more of a personal than cultural ritual, but Naomi Shihab Nye speaks with such power and authority that she makes of it her own credible myth.
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