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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

This week, we continue our prose series with Meghan O'Rourk's "The Eros in Democracy," from Poetry, June 2017: Gwendolyn Brooks:

"Why does a book-length poem called Riot (1969), which details the civic unrest in 1968 Chicago after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, conclude with not a bang, as it were, but with an intimate domestic scene between two lovers?"

Look for it here.

Enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller

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2. Sponsor Messages

 Instant Messages
Instant Messages is a new kind of writing, a mash-up of straightforward and accessible poetry, koan-like brain teasers, the delicate observations of Haiku, surprise one-liners, daily mumbling, text-based art, and aphorisms of penetrating insight. All wrapped together in a common theme: things and experience are “messages,.” where meaning awaits.

"Bite-sized wisdom on an invisible stick” —Billy Collins

"wonderful, surprising, often profound - made me daydream.” —XJ Kennedy

 Patricia Spears Jones Wins Jackson Poetry Prize
Poets & Writers congratulates Patricia Spears Jones on winning the eleventh annual Jackson Poetry Prize. In their citation, judges Henri Cole, Kwame Dawes, and Mary Szybist describe her poems as "made of fever, bones, and breath." Spears Jones, the judges say, "has steadily and quietly enriched the American poetic tradition with sophisticated and moving poems . . . More of us should know who she is, and even more should read her." The Jackson Prize, which carries a $60,000 award, was established in 2006 with a gift from the Liana Foundation to honor an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recognition. Learn more at pw.org

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• Rebecca Foust introduces Brenda Hillman's "En Route to Bolinas, a Rose." (Women's Voices for Change)
• David Roderick introduces "History," by Noah Blaustein. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Sarah Kanowski profiles Sharon Olds. (ABC Online)
• Martin Saunders reviews Joseph Millar's Kingdom. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
• Azaria Podplesky talks with Christopher Howell about his latest book Love's Last Number. (The Spokesman-Review)
• New books by Jonathan Lethem, edited by Christopher Boucher; Adam Kirsch; Tom McCarthy; and August Kleinzahler, reviewed by Heather Scott Partington. (The New York Times)
• Matthew Zapruder introduces a poem by James Tate. (The New York Times Magazine)
• Shaun Miller interviews James Galvin. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• And more...

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4. Selected New Arrivals

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

• Double Portrait, Brittany Perham (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. )
• Angel Hill, Michael Longley (Wake Forest University Press)
• Belle Turnbull: On the Life & Work of an American Master, David J. Rothman and Jeffrey R. Villines, eds. (Pleiades Press and Gulf Coast -The Unsung Masters Series)
• The Pilgrims of Tombelaine , Glenn Shea (Salmon Poetry)
• Allow the Stars to Catch Me When I Rise, Adam Hughes (Salmon Poetry)
• Butterflies of a Bad Summer, Karl Parkinson (Salmon Poetry)
• Hoops of Holiness, Maurice Harmon (Salmon Poetry)
• Santiago, Cheryl Follon (Bloodaxe Books / Dufour Editions, Inc.)
• Missing Persons, Hilary S. Jacqmin (The Waywiser Press)
• The Ten Winners of the 2017 Whiting Awards, Introduction by Jo Ann Beard (Whiting Foundation)
• Paterson Light and Shadow, Poems by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Photographs by Mark Hillringhouse (Serving House Books)

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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 - Kathryn Nuernberger
Tuesday - Ben Lerner
Wednesday - Donika Kelly
Thursday - Todd Boss
Friday - Debora Greger
Saturday - J. P. Grasser
Sunday - E. J. Koh

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6. Featured Poets June 19, 2017 - June 25, 2017

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

Monday - Julie Roorda
Tuesday - Arthur Sze
Wednesday - Alice Friman
Thursday - Candice Reffe
Friday - John Stupp
Saturday - Jill McDonough
Sunday - William Wenthe

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

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

Lisa Rosenberg, "from Flight"
Bruce Cohen, "Beach Day"
Laurence Lieberman, "Transvestite"
Jessica Fisher, "Speedwell"
Frederick Seidel, "Psalm"
Aracelis Girmay, "luam, new york"
Jay Deshpande, "Bewilderment"

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8. Poem From Last Year

Psalm

Today is Monday, and I am carbon free. 
I don't mean carbon free, I mean sweet land of liberty. 
I mean I'm reducing my carbon footprint 
As I walk fast past the freezing flowering on Broadway, 
The pear trees blowing off steam in white bloom 
Despite a sudden cold front chilling the warmth. 
I hear airplanes high-fiving and helicopters choppering. 
Fire engines bellow and ambulances going through a light go woo woo. 
It's an election year, and it's time to declare whom you're for.

I'm for a fine Airedale named Hobbes—
After the philosopher, the dog walker walking him explains—
And I'm for all the other animals I greet on the sidewalk. 
Hobbes! I can tell you're a good boy! 
Hobbes pauses and looks up at someone 
He can tell understands him. 
A seven-year-old I'd never met came over to me 
At Grandparents Day at my grandson's school 
In Brooklyn, and started talking to me as if I were his.

He said both his grandparents were dead. 
But don't you have four? 
He said his mother was in Paris. 
He said his father was buried at sea. 
He was Huck Finn, with a gap 
Between his two front teeth and in his story, who like Hobbes 
Seemed to know whom he was for. 
The trees in the center strip of Broadway not yet in bloom 
Stick up like antlers above the ones in flower.

There is no excuse for not voting next November 
For the clouds or for the stars or the moon, 
And last night there was even a bright planet 
Next to the moon sliver when I came home drunk. 
The pigeons are cooing and moaning and mating 
To my disgust down here on earth this Monday. 
Today is Monday, and in Florida and endlessly 
An unarmed black kid seventeen years old has been shot dead 
By a neighborhood watchman, a Latino gentleman.

Who will watch the watchmen? 
A huge angel perched on top of a tree in the bright sunlight 
Of the Broadway center strip doubles the height of the tree, 
And of course looks extraordinary; what an extraordinary sight 
On its hind legs like a dinosaur, a monster angel standing on a tree. 
I try to imagine a huge winged white of light, 
Unmistakably the product of another dimension. 
I bend down to tie my shoelaces that have come undone. 
I know I will have to look up eventually into your gun.

Frederick Seidel
Widening Income Inequality 
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Copyright ©2016 by Frederick Seidel
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission