I take great pleasure in pursuing spectacular poems. And given how much poetry is being published at this point, this is not not an easy task. So much good work is being published! So aside from looking for work by the poets I admire, I look for editors with great taste. Or magazines and presses who consistently rely on editors with great taste.
These are some of the poems I’ve found that are spectacular! Or I think they are, at least.
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“The Remnant,” by Kwame Dawes
Kwame Dawes‘s poem, “The Remnant” (from Kenyon Review: Spring 2023) positions his reader in the horrible middle of the Anthropocene, or the horrible middle of life when you’re entering the Anthropocene. And I recognize there are many poets of his generation (Vievee Francis and Jorie Graham, among others) who are writing so directly into this…
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“When Absence Becomes a Form of Presence,” by Chelsea Dingman
I came across this poem in Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week from the beginning of this month. And I have to say my first reaction is water, what the feelings around postpartum might mean to water, a human body immersed in water or consisting of water, relating to water in a meaningful way, especially…
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“A poem to forget one line after another,” by Andrew Dally
Reading through the latest issue of FENCE, Dally’s poem stands out. I like repetition, and how various a repetition-note can play out in a poem. This issue featured five of Dally’s poems, and in the others, his repetition serves as a kind of shift, where the poem moves from one frame of thinking to the…