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Jay Wright

A resonant devastation
exalts the spirit, and the earth will turn
counter to that exaltation.

Light assumes its place, fancy stern
enough to promise attraction
to a dust it will only spurn.

The poet must think of action
at a distance, only to earn
a proper and skillful passion.

But a singer can only learn,
from the true pitch of abstraction,
a power difficult to burn.

Oh, such lyrical negation
pays in temper, or taciturn
patterns of stringless vibration.

You will go swiftly to your urn
Without a proper distraction,
a state you cannot overturn.
from the book THIRTEEN QUINTETS FOR LOIS / Flood Editions
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Cover of Jane Wong's book, How To Not Be Afraid 0f Everything
Under the Influence of Jane Wong

"Not all Wong’s writing about food is sweet or savory, but all her writing about food—and food as more than food—is potent, searing, charged with unforgettable flavor. It’s the language, the imagery, the investments in personal, familial, and public history that make this writing nothing less than delectable."

via THE RUMPUS
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Cover of Jane Augustine's book, Traverse: Collected Poems 1969 - 2019
What Sparks Poetry: 
Susan Tichy on Jane Augustine's Traverse


"Spare, unselfconscious, nearly transparent, Augustine’s poems reach out to the things of this world like a ship whose constant soundings describe its own location. No part of her lived experience is excluded, so a reader may find herself meditating on a painting, carrying a backpack, searching for a homeless man under a scaffold, or pulled suddenly back to a parent’s death-night twenty years before."
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