Poems for the People

David Wagoner "Wading in a Marsh"

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:37:19 +0200

A lucky find for this traveller half a world away. A very northwestern poem from the Seattle poet's 1981 collection "Landfall." (pictured here is the cover of his Collected, from 2005, probably the better investment).

Bruce Bond "Milk"

Wed, 8 Jun 2011 20:24:26 +0200

This poem is newly published in the Winter/Spring 2010 issue of Crab Orchard Review and has not yet been reprinted in any collections of the poet's work.

Heather McHugh "Recurrent Dream"

Mon, 6 Jun 2011 19:35:24 +0200

A finalist for both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award, McHugh's work is smart and snarky, and more formal, usually, than you're probably thinking it is.

Rainer Maria Rilke "You Who Never Arrived"

Sun, 5 Jun 2011 01:04:46 +0200

Likely composed for his long-time lover Lou-Andreas Salome, this is a poem of devotion to a not-quite-consumated and possible future.

Mischa Willett "Hadriana, My Love"

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:11:58 +0200

A poem of my own, from the book WAX, available for the iPhone/iPad through the iBooks app. Thanks for your indulgence.

www.mischawillett.com

Terrific music from "The Fretful Porcupine"

Sierra Nelson "We'll Always Have Carthage"

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 03:49:20 +0200

I'm sending you a postcard from the end of the world.

Brad Davis "Quiet Words"

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:45:53 +0200

A place-poem from the book "Like Those Who Dream" that is deceptively simple. Those who know mythology will be right to detect a note of menace in those ferries going back and forth across the water.

Czeslaw Milosz "Realism"

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:52:20 +0200

A poem from the end of Milosz's considerable life and output. The viewer enters the artwork as a pilgrim to it, and slips gracefully through the ice of his own twilight.

Percy Bysshe Shelley "Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici"

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:54:55 +0200

This short lyric is the last finished poem we have of Shelley's. He was in the middle of "The Triumph of Life," when we drowned off the Italian coast in the Bay of Spezia along with Edward Williams, husband to this poem's likely addressee, Jane Williams.

Richard Kenney "Air Sublime"

Sat, 22 May 2010 02:01:28 +0200

Experiences of the sublime are supposed to overwhelm one's intelligence. However tawdry the airline industry has managed to make flying, it's still FLYING.

Mark Halliday "Refusal to Notice Beautiful Women"

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:09:39 +0200

Halliday's ingenious productivity suite.

Bruce Beasley "Self-Portrait in Ink"

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:15:17 +0200

Why all these poems out poets'-selves? Is the self a suitable topic for poetry? Beasley opens a pretty interesting vein of discussion at the close of the confessional school in this smart, and sonically-motivated piece on the transience of ink.

Alfred Lord Tennyson "Ulysses"

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:32:28 +0100

The problem of a leader who doesn't know his people; the problem of men and women passing their lives in front of televisions.

Laura McKee "Strategy for the Decline"

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:46:37 +0100

A meditation on art-making, and cycling, and any striving, from Seattle poet Laura Mckee.

Dylan Thomas "Fern Hill"

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:10:06 +0100

In his apartment, they found 40 copies of this poem when Dylan Thomas died, each one slightly different, reflecting the perfectionist craftsman even in this child-like reverie of a farm in summer.

Dean Young "Ode to Hangover"

Mon, 1 Mar 2010 04:56:10 +0100

Dean Young's books are hip and smart, and, thanks to Believer books, beautifully produced. This poem has been useful on more than one occasion; a sort of "morning after" consolation.

W.H. Auden "Musee des Beaux Arts"

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:15:09 +0100

A classic piece of ekphrastica, Auden visits a museum in this terrific poem from 1938, and let's the work teach him. Visit the art blog I mentioned at Icarus Also Flew, to read more about the story of Icarus.

Matthew Dickman "Classical Poem"

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:36:08 +0100

From the book "All-American Poem," which is sprawling, and surprisingly vulnerable debut from a terrifically gifted, and generous poet from Portland, Or.