Rebecca Foust | Women's Voices For Change

Rebecca Foust was the 2017-18 Poet Laureate of Marin County. Her 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. 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

Jane Hirshfield: “Today, When I Could Do Nothing”

By Rebecca Foust

In the poem, the speaker finds the confines of her small shelter-in-place space invaded by a visitor in the form of—an ant. But Jane Hirshfield takes the opposite view, welcoming the tiny creature into her home and then rescuing it to release it again outside.

Poetry

Athena Kildegaard:
“a safe, well-defined, acceptable unknown”

By Rebecca Foust

In the poem’s last lines, “evidence” is a crucial word. Seeking “a safe, well-defined, acceptable unknown,” perhaps, we look for scientific validation of the mystery, a concept fundamentally not susceptible to this kind of metric.

Poetry

Martha Silano: “When I begin to dig”

By Rebecca Foust

“When I begin to dig” begins with what sparked the poem: Martha Silano’s discovery that the English word “verse” derives from Latin for “to turn,” itself derived from the action of a plow’s turn at the end of a furrow during field cultivation.

Health

“After Being Asked if I Write the ‘Occasional Poem’” by Kimiko Hahn

By Rebecca Foust

This is an invocation to witness and to acknowledge our shared responsibility for what happened to a little girl seeking refuge and who died days after entering US custody.

Poetry

“litany” and “Inevitable” by Mahogany Browne

By Rebecca Foust

“litany” opens with a bold and simple statement of identity—“today i am a black woman in America”—then moves into an ironic “lullaby” about what that means for too many such women.

Poetry

Lucille Clifton: “blessing the boats,” “homage to my hips,” and “won’t you celebrate with me”

By Rebecca Foust

These three Lucille Clifton poems are ones I love for their fresh, fierce, and sassy voice; compression; deceptively simple diction; rejection of punctuation and other conventions; humor and honesty; and above all, their joyous message of female empowerment, agency, and strength.

Poetry

Georgia Johnson Douglas: “Black Woman,” “Foredoom,” and “The Heart of a Woman”

By Rebecca Foust

In this week’s poems, the fixed forms and elevated diction sound archaic to contemporary ears, but their ideas were revolutionary in Georgia Douglas Johnson’s time and remain relevant today.

Poetry

“Song for my Daughter” and “Song for my Son,”
by Emily Pérez

By Rebecca Foust

These poems show how a mother’s fear for her daughter is often the flip side of her fear for and of her son, of what he as a representative of his gender might do. How do we negotiate this very difficult terrain?

Poetry

“Anniversary Declaration,” by Amanda Moore

By Rebecca Foust

I had fun subverting the idea of an "Anniversary Declaration," which one might assume will be momentous and romantic, by addressing the dailiness and occasional strife that can accompany a long marriage, no matter how happy it is.

Poetry

“Magpies Recognize Themselves in the Mirror,”
by Kelli Russell Agodon

By Rebecca Foust

How do we respond to our fellow humans when they break down in front of us? Do we recognize ourselves in them? Or do we judge them for not being able to keep it together?

Poetry

“Southbound Epithalamium,” by Melissa Crow

By Rebecca Foust

Today’s poem reveals its form in its title; an epithalamium is “a song or poem in honor of a bride and bridegroom,” and it derives from the Latin & Greek words epi- (at or near) and thalamos (room or bridal chamber).

Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Bitch,” by Carolyn Kizer

By Rebecca Foust

The poem makes us laugh when we read it, but like all the best laughter, it comes with a gut punch. The idea of having an inner bitch who gets to unreservedly express our feelings towards an ex—well, that is funny. But also painful.

Poetry

“Snorkeling,” by Allison Funk

By Rebecca Foust

The poem evocatively opens with a question: “What if, late in my life, / an old love returned?”

Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “All the Hungry Falcons,”
by Dion O’Reilly

By Rebecca Foust

"I read somewhere that as falcons starve, their vision sharpens. I knew I wanted to write about that hunger and the resulting enhanced power—like a superhero’s power." — Dion O'Reilly

Poetry

Poetry Sunday: “Figures,” by Wendy Videlock

By Rebecca Foust

What “Figures” seems to be both expressing and enacting is the infinite interconnectedness of things and the way that metaphor (and other figures of speech) can help us in apprehending that mystery.

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