☀ Today's Poem: "When the Sky Is No Longer" Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Today's Headline: Review of Bei Dao's "Sidetracks" and Eliot Weinberger's "The Life of Tu Fu"

Students and Educators This April, we have a special invitation for you to celebrate National Poetry Month by writing about your favorite poem found on Poetry Daily. We'll publish the most interesting responses throughout April, and send a free book to everyone whose work is featured. FIND OUT MORE March 13, 2025 When the Sky Is No Longer Lena Khalaf Tuffaha a womb, prayers now besieged inside your throat hum over whistles and shrieks—the long howl puncturing what was. Silence is the first casualty. You no longer fear the clamor, not because you are brave, but because you've learned that death arrives noiselessly, hovering in the bowels of a missile, that the clamor means you are alive and someone else is dying. You note the bleakness of your own heart wanting to live in spite of this. from the book SOMETHING ABOUT LIVING / University of Akron Press READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM Share Tweet Forward An Online Reading with Ken Bluford Tuesday, March 18, from 7.30 pm to 8.30 pm EST Join Poetry Daily for a reading and conversation with Ken Bluford, author of Skip Tracing, and next week's What Sparks Poetry essayist. "Skip Tracing by turns beguiles and disturbs us with its 'skips,' bringing to mind both John Ashbery and the Black avant-garde, the twelve-bar blues and the shocks and disembodiments of contemporary life." Skip Tracing is his first major collection. Free Registration Bei Dao's Sidetracks and Eliot Weinberger's The Life of Tu Fu "Bei Dao and Eliot Weinberger share more than a publishing house. Both also overlap significantly in the poetic traditions that inspire them. Bei Dao writes, 'I am the jailer who guards over my whole life / letting the key’s fleet steed pass through the keyhole of light.' This is a reference to a classic work of Chinese literature that Weinberger cites as well: 'Life’s so short, said Chuang Tzu, it’s like watching a white colt run by through a crack in a fence.' While the poems of Weinberger and Bei are both practices in self-reflection, each poet also unmistakably delivers a political message and focuses seriously on victims of political violence." viaLOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES What Sparks Poetry: Gregory Pardlo on Other Arts "I had been working on a poem 'about' my mother (who is also named Marion), and I was struggling to find an approach that would discover something worthwhile about one or both of us while honoring the mystery of difference that separates us. What was driving my interest in this poem? Was it love or some attempt to control my mother, however symbolically? I knew I couldn’t write fairly (forget objectively) about this person whose identity was so important to my own." 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. © 2025 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030 Design by the Binding Agency

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