Sandra Shapshay: At once tiny and huge — what is this feeling we call ‘sublime’?
Have you ever felt awe and exhilaration while contemplating a vista of jagged, snow-capped mountains? Or been fascinated but also a bit unsettled while beholding a thunderous waterfall such as … Continue reading
Juniper White: Erato
Meet me in the white space between the words, where the language of tongues has no boundary, and end sheets frame the rooting around. We’ll dance the iambic dance, frolic … Continue reading
Michael T. Young: Scrawl
He likes to repeat to himself a phrase from a Keats letter: I will clamber through the clouds and exist. It steadies him like leaning against trees, or brewing coffee … Continue reading
Al Maginnes: Source
Out of sore feet, out of roadsides sooted with dusk, out of gravel, jeweled crumbs of shattered glass, out of the wide gesture of the hand toward heaven, out … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: The Prosody of an Ineradicable Sob
My poems, whatever their other springs may be, flow from the meter of my inner voice in creative conflict with an ineradicable sob. When my breathing is interrupted by a … Continue reading
Robert Gibb: After the Reading
White cups floating above the waters in their cut-glass vase, The tulips have finally opened, while beside her— Pittsburgh, winter—windows shimmer with freezing rain. It’s the morning after the … Continue reading
Philip Terman: All Her Life
Philip Terman?—you don’t know me. I’m Patricia Lamb, Palliative care nurse. Do you know what that means? I work with patients who are dying. And I received an odd … Continue reading
Mike James: What I Know About Poetry
some things keep happening a rock rolls down a hill, bounces, bounces, rolls along makes a sound every time it bumps the dirt cracks itself and the silence … Continue reading
Emily Dickinson: ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant’
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Waltz Me Deeper
I seem to be arriving at a goal I had not aspired to. The distance between my writing and my being in the world is lessening. My speaking voice is … Continue reading