Poem-a-Day - "We must be patient, we told ourselves"

January 10, 2023

Poems Honoring Ancestors

“To Mycorrhizae Under Our Mother’s Garden” by Brenda Hillman
“The Road” by Helene Johnson
“The Weavers Were the First to Know” by Arielle Taitano Lowe
“Grandfather’s Breath” by Ray McNiece
“Inupiaq Women” by dg nanouk okpik
“Nálí, Her Solo” by Laura Tohe
“Undivided Interest” by Gwen Westerman

“Wit in Draw Me After—if that’s what it is—has nothing to do with cleverness and everything to do with quality of touch or tone, and linkage. It definitely isn’t antithetical to lyricism so much as it’s a kind of counterpoint within the compositional field of a given poem. It’s a pitch of mind that exists along a continuum, which is to say, it’s part of a scale—to use another musical term, one that Eliot himself does.”

Read the latest enjambments interview with Peter Cole on his collection Draw Me After (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022). Read poems from the book on Poets.org:

“Tav: ת”
“Edensong”
“This Pig I”

more at poets.org

Honoring Charles Simic

“Silence of falling snow,
Night vanishing without trace,
Only to return.
I’m your humble scribe.”

We remember Charles Simic, who passed away in Dover, New Hampshire, on January 9, 2023. Simic authored more than sixty books in the United States and abroad, twenty titles of his own poetry among them, including The Lunatic (Ecco, 2015); Selected Poems: 1963–2003 (Faber and Faber, 2004), for which he received the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize; and The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1989), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990. Simic was appointed the fifteenth poet laureate consultant in poetry in 2007, and served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2000.

“Pigeons at Dawn”
“Secret History”
“On this Very Street in Belgrade”

more at poets.org

“The poems call out to the earth and those here and gone. These poems make me feel like I want to stand in a circle and hold hands.”

Tyree Daye is the author of Cardinal (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) and River Hymns (American Poetry Review, 2017), winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. Read and listen to Daye discuss the Poem-a-Day curatorial approach and more on Poets.org.

“Gin River”
“Dirt Cakes”
“Same Oaks, Same Year”
“No Ghost Abandoned”

more at poets.org

Poetry Coalition member Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po) is accepting applications for its second annual week-long retreat for emerging Native poets. The retreat will offer sixteen fellows an opportunity to study with a distinguished poetry faculty member and become a part of an exciting community of Native writers. Learn more and apply by February 1, 2023 here.

#PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week

Check out our #PoetryNearYou Pick of the Week: Indigenous Voices: An Evening of Poetry and Conversation featuring Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow Rena Priest, Laura Da’, Cedar Sigo, and Arianne True. Co-hosted by Washington Center for the Book, s’gʷi gʷi ʔ altxʷ: House of Welcome, Humanities Washington, and the Washington State Arts Commission (ArtsWA). January 17 at 7 p.m. PST at s’gʷi gʷi ʔ altxʷ: House of Welcome (2800 Dogtooth Lane NW, Olympia, WA) and livestreamed. Register for this free event here.

more at poets.org

Apply for the 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships

The Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships are $50,000 awards given to honor poets of literary merit appointed to serve in civic positions and to enable them to undertake meaningful, impactful, and innovative projects that engage their fellow residents, including youth, with poetry, helping to address issues important to their communities, as well as create new work. We are accepting applications for the 2023 fellowships until February 17, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. ET. Find out more here.

Apply for the 2023 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award

The Harold Morton Landon Translation Award is a $1,000 award recognizing a poetry collection translated from any language into English and published in the previous calendar year. The 2023 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award will be judged by Anna Deeny Morales. Learn more and apply here by February 15, 2023 (11:59 p.m. ET).

more at poets.org

Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg, South Carolina, is seeking a full-time executive director.
Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, is seeking a visiting assistant professor of rhetoric, writing & public discourse.
W. W. Norton, Inc., in New York City is seeking a full-time marketing manager.

Revisit last week’s Poem-a-Day selections with us on Poets.org:

January 1: “New Year’s Chimes” by Francis Thompson
January 2: “cinquains written during a tropical storm” by Urayoán Noel
January 3: “I Went Out to Hear” by Leila Chatti
January 4: “Elastic Love Contrapuntal” by Sarah Cooper
January 5: “To the Young Second Lieutenant Standing Behind Me in Line” by Rob Greene
January 6: “off the shore of oneself as in . . .” by Renia White
January 7: “A Gull Goes Up” by Léonie Adams

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fifteenth poet laureate consultant Arielle Taitano Lowe latest enjambments interview

Poem-a-Day - "We must be patient, we told ourselves"

Key phrases

Older messages

"Materials for a Gravestone Rubbing" by Matthew Wimberley

"I'm Not Faking My Astonishment, Honest" by Paige Lewis

"Winter Remembered" by John Crowe Ransom

"A Gull Goes Up" by Léonie Adams

"off the shore of oneself as in . . ." by Renia White

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