What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In The Poems of Others, invited poets pay homage to the poems that led them to write. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.

W. H. Auden
Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all
But will his negative inversion, be prodigal:
Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch
Curing the intolerable neural itch,
The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy,
And the distortions of ingrown virginity.
Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response
And gradually correct the coward's stance;
Cover in time with beams those in retreat
That, spotted, they turn though the reverse were great;
Publish each healer that in city lives
Or country houses at the end of drives;
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at
New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
from the book COLLECTED POEMS: W. H. AUDEN / Vintage International
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What Sparks Poetry:
David Blair on W. H. Auden's "Petition"

"Naturally, I enjoyed the subtle rhymes so much that I did not even notice them, nor the poem's sonnet form, a perfect spell working on my barely conscious mind because here, in the last line and a half of the poem, was a sentiment so sudden that I could, without embarrassment, sport around with it typed and taped to my binder on a strip of paper, a fortune cookie fortune, a restaurant's first dollar: 'look shining at / New styles of architecture, a change of heart.'"
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"Five Poets Who Find Music in the Personal, the Political or in Music Itself"

"'Howdie-skelp': the slap a midwife gives a newborn. Poem-sequences dominate Muldoon’s storm of slaps against piety, prudery, cruelty and greed. 'American Standard,' named after a toilet brand, riffs for pages on lines from T. S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' while churning through contemporary concerns like gerrymandering, immigration, and grotesque politicians and their media platforms. Like Eliot, Muldoon's after big, apocalyptic vision; unlike Eliot, Muldoon is willing—no, compelled—to clown."

via THE NEW YORK TIMES
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18th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival
January 10-15, 2022

We are pledged to create an extraordinary week of virtual poetry workshops and events for you in the safety of your home.
 
Workshop Faculty: Kim Addonizio, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Chard deNiord, Mark Doty, Yona Harvey, John Murillo, Matthew Olzmann and Diane Seuss. One-On-One Conferences with Lorna Blake, Sally Bliumis Dunn, Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, and Angela Narciso Torres. A special Craft Talk by Kwame Dawes. Special Guest Poet: Yusef Komunyakaa. Poet-at-Large: Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
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