Black inkblot Poetry Daily logo
Julien Strong
Each year I lose a little more of it,
the spaces between the vertebrae
slowly sighing closed
like an accordion that after
a full day of playing dances
lets out a long atonal breath—
the exhalation
of every song it ever made
as the musician prepares
to lay the instrument
gently in its box.
from the journal THE SOUTHERN REVIEW
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
I used to be almost 6'2" and only realized how attached I was to that number when, like my tall parents before me, I began shrinking. "Height" came to me one night as I was falling asleep. When I turned the light back on to jot down the word "accordion," the entire poem appeared. 

Julien Strong on "Height"
Cover of Your Face My Flag
On Julian Gewirtz's Your Face My Flag and Never Turn Back

"What underlies Gewirtz's broad vision and imagination? Gewirtz the historian sees large without losing sight of turning points that could have turned otherwise. Gewirtz the poet sees small, limning his subjects' constraints without sacrificing their freedom. As the historian searches for coherence, the poet weaves possible futures."

via LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
Cover of Voyager
What Sparks Poetry:
Jacob Sheetz-Willard on Srikanth Reddy's Voyager

"Reading Reddy's collection, for me, has a similar effect. In repeating Waldheim's language but stripping back the rhetoric, he insists on a distinction between sound and significance—what's said and what we can intuit beneath the public performance of language. His poetry offers a lesson in the imaginative potential of erasure and the politics of silence."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
donate
View in browser

You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. 
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2023 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency