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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“Late Shift,” by Amy Woolard
What I admire in Amy Woolard’s poem, “Late Shift” is the construction of lateness, especially as you’re looking back from a later moment in life, or feeling like you might have been too late to really appreciate the life you were experiencing at that time. Young adulthood is strange, because it’s easy to reflect on…
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“Elliptical,” by Kristen Steenbeeke
Do you remember when every interesting poem was labeled “elliptical,” because it did this thing with juxtaposition or parataxis or dysjunction, and the subject matter or the poem’s voice was just spaced differently. And that made it more interesting. And God bless Stephanie Burt for setting those poems away from the LangPo and Narrative “in-fighting”…
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“Logical Argument,” by Lisa Lewis
“It happened” is the first thing you need to know reading Lisa Lewis’s poem, “Logical Argument” (from Annulet 6) What happened? It’s not clear. And it’s not even clear if “it” was the “logical argument” that’s standing at the top of the poem. Maybe “it” is something that happened, and now, following the “logical argument”…