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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

For our prose selection this week: "Interview with Frank Bidart" by Shara Lessley, conducted for the National Book Foundation and included in Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016, by Frank Bidart (Farrar, Straus and Giroux):

"The solutions that I felt I found aren't going to be the solutions that work for someone else. But I'll be happy if my poems seem to say to younger writers that you still can be as bold about setting a poem down on the page as Wordsworth was or Mallarmé was or Ben Jonson was or Pound was or Ginsberg and Lowell and Bishop were. Getting the dynamics and voice down are what's crucial. Whatever it takes to get the whole soul into a poem."

Look for it here.

Enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller

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2. Sponsor Messages

 Vermont College of Fine Arts MFAs in Writing
Vermont College of Fine Arts offers a traditional low-residency MFA in Writing program—now celebrating its 35th year—along with a residential MFA in Writing & Publishing program.

 Diode Editions Book & Chapbook Contests
Diode Editions Book & Chapbook Contests Now Open. At Diode Editions our mission is to beautifully craft our books, and to fanatically support our authors.

 Palm Beach Poetry Festival
January 15-20, 2018, Delray Beach, Florida 
Deadline to apply for workshops: November 10
Workshops, readings, interview, gala and performance events with Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Chard deNiord, Beth Ann Fennelly, Ross Gay, Rodney Jones, Phillis Levin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Tim Seibles. Admission is by application. For more information, visit www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org or email srw@palmbeachpoetryfestival.org

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop Music, by Michael Robbins, reviewed by Justin Taylor. (Los Angeles Times)
• Rebecca Foust introduces "Sunday Morning at the Caffe Mediterraneum," by Wendy Sloan. (Women's Voices for Change)
• Harry Clifton reviews Milosz: A Biography, by Andrzej Franaszek. (The Irish Times)
• "A Chinese Poet's Unusual Path From Isolated Farm Life to Celebrity" - Kiki Zhao profiles Yu Xiuhua. (The New York Times)
• Bidisha on the poetry of Tania Hershman. (The Times Literary Supplement)
• Loren Glass interviews Marvin Bell. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• And more...

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4. New Arrivals

These new arrivals are available for purchase via Poetry Daily/Amazon.com.

• Silencer, Marcus Wicker (Mariner Books)
• Rough Fugue, Betty Adcock (Louisiana State University Press)
• Promise, Sally Van Doren (Louisiana State University Press)
• The Stranger World, Ryan Wilson (Measure Press)
• I Know Your Kind, William Brewer (Milkweed Editions)
• Krakatoa Picnic, James Heflin (Hedgerow Books)
• Field Notes, Mary Cresswell (Submarine)
• Drugstore Blue, Susana H. Case (Five Oaks Press)
• Clinch River, Susan Hankla (Groundhog Poetry Press)
• SUBWOOFER, Wesley Rothman (New Issues Poetry & Prose)
• Small Gods, Matthew Minicucci (New Issues Poetry & Prose)
• The Clinic, Memory: New and Selected Poems, Elaine Feinstein (Sheep Meadow Press)
• Map and Atlas, Joan McBreen (Salmon Poetry)
• Sleeping Under the Juniper Tree, Pauline Stainer (Bloodaxe Books)
• Incendium Amoris, Steve Ely (Smokestack Books)
• Bad News, Good News, Bad News, Edward O'Dwyer (Salmon Poetry)
• Silent in Finisterre, Jane Griffiths (Bloodaxe Books)
• A House for Last Year's Summer, Terry Hermsen (Bottom Dog Press)
• Unlikely Designs, Katie Willingham (University of Chicago Press)
• Enter Here, Alexis Rhone Fancher (KYSO Flash)

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5. This Week’s Featured Poets

The work of the following poets will appear as Today's Poem on the days indicated:

Monday - David Budbill
Tuesday - Maureen N. McLane
Wednesday - Randy Blasing
Thursday - Ned Balbo
Friday - Mary Jo Salter
Saturday - Adrienne Su
Sunday - Anders Carlson-Wee

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6. Featured Poets August 14, 2017 - August 20, 2017

These and other past featured poets may be found in our archive:

Monday - Ron Smith
Tuesday - Frank Bidart
Wednesday - Grace Schulman
Thursday - Joyce Schmid
Friday - Tomás Q. Morín
Saturday - Sandra Simonds
Sunday - Paul Martin

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

These poems will be retired from our archive during the coming week.

Amanda Jernigan, "Final Correspondence, on a Gallery Notecard"
Truong Tran, "from speculative Notes"
Alice Oswald, "Shadow"
Daniel Nadler, "[The bird is in the center of the sun.]"
Leon Stokesbury, "That Time of Year"
Rae Armantrout, "Assembly"
Elise Hempel, "The Soloist"
John Blair, "The Truth You Heard"

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8. Poem From Last Year

Shadow

I'm going to flicker for a moment
and tell you the tale of a shadow
       that falls at dusk
               out of the blue to the earth
               and turns left along the path to here

               groggily under its black-out
being dragged along crippled over things as if broken-winged

not yet continuous
no more than a shiver of something
with the flesh parachute of a human opening above it

but lengthening a little as it descends through the rings
of one hour into the next

               with the rooks flying upwards snipping at the clouds

until at last out of that opening here it lies
my own impersonal pronoun
crumpled under me like a dead body

it is faint
it has been falling for a long time

look when I walk
it's like a pair of scissors thrown at me by the sun
so that now as if my skin were not quite tucked in
I am cold cold
trying to slide myself out of my own shade
but hour by hour more shade leaks out

       or if I stand
if I move one hand
I hear the hiss of flowers closing their eyelids
and the trees
as if dust was being beaten from a rug
shake out their birds and in again

it's as if I've interrupted something
that was falling in a straight line from the eye of God

       and if I do nothing
the ground gives up
the almost minty clarity of its grass begins to fade
the white moths under the leaves
are amazed

Alice Oswald
Falling Awake
W.W. Norton

Copyright © 2016 by Alice Oswald
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission