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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from Townies, by Emiliano Gomez
I feel like there are always questions someone should be asked after they’ve said they’re from somewhere. Something more than just, “Where’s that?” When I was in the Navy, people would ask where I was from, and I would say, “Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.” And they would always think I was saying something stupid, because where…
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“Split the Lark,” by Angelo Mao
There could be an argument that Angelo Mao’s poem, “Split the Lark,” is just a play on nothing. The openly ironic game where a poem toys with nothing. It pretends nothing is nothing, and when it shows that to be true, then it turns the poem to ask why are there all these ways to…
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“Cenotaph: Salt Cedar and Shed,” by Richard Greenfield
I’m not sure what I would identify as the event occasioning Richard Greenfield’s poem, “Cenotaph: Salt Cedar and Shed.” Working from the title, I would set it on the unusual equation of a salt cedar and a cenotaph. Like the poet looks out of his window and there’s a salt cedar that has grown past…