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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

This week in our prose series, Harry Clifton on Dennis O'Driscoll, from Dublin Review of Books:

"There is a longer and shorter commentary to be written on the poems of the late Dennis O’Driscoll, who passed away five years ago and whose work now appears in collected form. The shorter version tells us that O’Driscoll, who grew up in Tipperary and moved to Dublin in 1970, quickly assimilated the mode and manner of translated Eastern European poetry at the time and applied it to the domestic and professional realities of the Ireland he lived and worked in as a civil servant, initially in Births, Marriages and Deaths, latterly in Customs and Excise, for nearly forty years... The longer version is more complex..."

Look for it here.

Enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller

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2. Sponsor Messages

 Passager Poetry Contest: Writers Over 50
Deadline: April 15, 2018
Reading fee: $20, check or money order payable to Passager/UB includes a one-year subscription (2 issues). Winner receives $500 and publication. Honorable mentions will be published. Submit 5 poems, 40 lines max. per poem. Cover letter, bio, SASE for results. No previously published work.
Send hard copy or use Submittable. No email submissions. Send to:
Passager Poetry Contest
1420 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Questions? contest@passagerbooks.com
www.passagerbooks.com

 2018 Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry
The Beloit Poetry Journal invites submissions for the 2018 Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry to be judged by Naomi Shihab Nye. A prize of $1,500 will be awarded for a single poem, which will appear in the journal. The editors will consider all entries for publication. Submissions open March 1 and close April 30. See www.bpj.org for more details.

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

 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. Follow on Instagram!

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

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

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• "Zombies, monsters, sci-fi, and big messages, without preaching" - Let’s Not Live on Earth, by Sarah Blake, reviewed by Frank Wilson. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
• "A melancholy love song to America:" - John Banville reviews The Long Take, by Robin Robertson. (The Guardian)
• Rebecca Foust introduces "The Dress Code," by Caitlin Doyle. (Women's Voices for Change)
• "Collectively... a self-created imaginative conscience" - The Bag Apron: The Poet and His Community, by John Montague; Cead Isteach/Entry Permitted, by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill; and Three European Poets, by Paul Durcan; reviewed by Michael O'Loughlin. (The Irish Times)
• "Does Having a Day Job Mean Making Better Art?" - Katy Waldman reports. (The New York Times)
• And more...

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4. New Arrivals

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

• Out of Speech, Adam Vines (Louisiana State University Press)
• Course, Athena Kildegaard (Tinderbox Editions)
• How to Wear This Body, Hayden Saunier (Terrapin Books)
• The Barbarous Century, Leah Umansky (Eyewear Publishing)
• Listening to a Pogrom on the Radio, Michael Rosen (Smokestack Books)
• The Great Plan B, Justyna Bargielska (Smokestack Books)
• Hyem, Robyn Bolam (Bloodaxe Books)
• Land of Three Rivers: The Poetry of North-East England, Neil Astley, ed. (Bloodaxe Books)
• The Book of Ephraim, James Merrill, Stephen Yenser anno. & intro.(Alfred A. Knopf)
• Posthumous Noon, Aaron Baker (Gunpowder Press)
• Lifting the Turtle, J.D. Scrimgeour (Turning Point)
• Everywhere I Find Myself, Leah Stenson (Turning Point)
• Chatterbox: A Book of Erasure Poems, Lynn Marie Houston (Word Poetry)
• Meandering, MaryEllen Letarte (CW Books)
• Two-Face God, Jason McCall (WordTech Editions)
• Heat Seekers, Lambert (Cherry Grove Collections)

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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 - W. S. Di Piero
Tuesday - Emily Van Kley
Wednesday - Michael Chitwood
Thursday - John Koethe
Friday - Elizabeth Spires
Saturday - Lynne Knight
Sunday - Marilyn Hacker

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6. Featured Poets March 19, 2018 - March 25, 2018

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

Monday - Julio Machado
Tuesday - Ryan Wilson
Wednesday - Margaree Little
Thursday - Edward Wilson
Friday - Matthew Dickman
Saturday - Matthew Buckley Smith
Sunday - Joelle Biele

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

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

Kathy Fagan, "How We Looked"
Kevin Cutrer, "The Lesser Light"
Robert Gibb, "Spring Sequence"
Tadeusz Dąbrowski, tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, "Jam Jars"
Amit Majmudar, "The Bear"
Rick Barot, "The Grasshopper and the Cricket"
David Kirby, "Foreign Movies"

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8. Poem From Last Year

Spring Sequence

i.

So far all the perennials seem to have survived the winter,
The bed of fennel retrenching itself in one showery stem.

A mild run of days and I'm out here pulling up stakes,
Hoeing weeds whose roots reach down into frozen ground.

ii.

March thaw—the vultures on the updrafts like flakes of ash,
The forsythia in their little haze of yellows by the road.

Daffodils and lilacs. And just this morning, along the creek,
I saw skunk cabbage, the dark mottled flames of their spathes.

iii.

Again this year, underneath the awnings and latticed roofs,
The seedlings are exhalations of the potting soil set out in flats

At Chapon's. Snow Crown, Jade Cross, Golden Summer—
My cart fills up, at twilight, with the names of the earth.

iv.

As if the darkness spilled from crevices of sweet green light,
Two katydids, sheathed and translucent as leaves,

Trill from perches on my bedroom wall. I lie awake listening
To their bodies' crescendos. Tonight I don't have to sleep alone.

v.

Crossing the sets of train tracks back from beside the river,
I see how things go forward by twos: rails, ties, gravel beds,

The first of the ox-eyes now blooming along the roadsides,
The pincushion teasels within their collared whorl of spines.

vi.

Today I bedded the tomatoes in the shred excelsior of straw,
Spread side dressings of compost, pinched off any side-shoots.

The world one thing after another, soon it will be cucumbers.
"In the end," said Tu Fu, "I will carry a hoe."  

 

Robert Gibb
AFTER
Marsh Hawk Press

Copyright © 2017 by Robert Gib
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission