New Poetry with Audio!

Donald Revell
Stephen Burt
Paul Hoover
Jonah Winter
Cathy Wagner
Reginald Shepherd
Nin Andrews
Sophia Kartsonis
Sandra Miller
Joshua Harmon
Devin Johnston
Chuck Zerby
Sara Henning
Ognjen Smiljanic
Lance Phillips
Peter Drake
Kathleen Byrne
Ernest Hilbert
Garth Greenwell
Marc McKee

Criticism

Brian Henry on Kinsella
Gabriel Welsch on Northrop
Gabriel Welsch on Smith
Cecily Iddings on Ruefle
Christopher McDermott on Wenderoth

Stephen Burt is Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. His book Randall Jarrell and His Age was recently released by Columbia University Press. His criticism and essays have appeared in The Boston Review, The Yale Review, The TLS and elsewhere.

Aimee Mann

            The melody always ahead of the words, or else

the plot that leaves the words

            behind: lives waver and rise, and never become

what anyone meant to make.

            Drum kit and amps set up on a “magic” carpet—

tassels, crimson- and earth-tones,

            from which the kick drum threatens to take flight;

melismatics, letdowns, imperfections,

            and bending over a microphone to check:

Save me save me the slower the better,

            the sentence stretched

to cover spaces left for repartee

            and baffled by the bloom and buzz of tones,

the proud expansion of a tune

            called craft, called also consolation,

making us, too, lean over the rail and feel, like

            willows, we are

here and are right to be here, and we see our own

            equipment for living: pedal, capo, flange,

a set list for a crowd of cheering

            grownups, eager to know,

and not to lose, what we have ceased to be.

Chris Wilcox: Frog Babies

                        ‘alone I saw while whistling my third eye’

            a sort of a summons

            my own waterproof right hand

            plunged into the surf to meet

inchoate and salt

                        the buoyant

O foam  erase and soothe

                        comprise for us              some prokaryotic self

umbilical a new                          life                   

the old laid bare

split lost compelled dissolve a sort of a

                                                            song of a

siren sense      

emerge and breathe

emergency       

emerge and lose yourselves

the arc retreating waves leave

                                                            cold in sand

webbed breathing           of visible touch

            round shoulders and a ribcage                 open up

            some face                     some separate               newness                       some

recesses to

this salted freezing air

Paysage Moralisé

Mom and Dad must have believed they had found a safe place:

The ten- and twelve-year-olds they could place

In the neighborhood schools, the teens who would take their place

In a few years, and the young adults who would replace

Themselves if all went well could each find a place

In this frivolous landscape, which nonetheless offered no place

Without its form of scrutiny. Sneakers displaced

The gravel and kicked open a secret place

Under the storm drain, its covers yanked back into place

Above the echoing concrete; a tourney took place

Around the one basketball hoop. Over at the Przewalskis' place,

Each child might gobble her dinner, then clear her place,

Fold up the steel-and-calico place-

Mats and towels, then sprint off to that dank place

By Kate's below the street sign from BLOEME PLACE,

A sign the fretful township would replace

Each spring till they renamed it. It was no place

To write home about, but it wasn't your place

To complain: imagining, in your place,

Some Jenny and Jake who, seeing you leave, took your place,

You might feel safe, or nearly lose your place

In the slow novel of your own life (date and place

Of publication unknown) in which you place

As a supporting character. You mark your place

With a match, shut the book, and attend: "I've been running in place,"

Said Ellen, meaning only that her displays

Of mental acuity seemed to have taken place

Not as stunts, nor as ends in themselves, but just as place-

Holders for later goals she could never quite place

In a field of view, but ran towards, hoping to place

In the annals of distance, as if to plac-

Ate the team on which the whole town plays,

You yourself, on the other hand, have kept your place

In the bleachers complac-

Ently all along…. As they sprint towards Kate's place,

The sunlight keeps them, in its sewn-up lace,

Content with a kiss, a trophy for second place,

And everything else you hoped to run away with, in your own time, and in the first place.

Steam

Something substantial

                        and uncontrolled, false

starts, a lover's down-

                        town coming into view—

like a game of charades

            played with, or by, the sun—

the taller boy

            with freckles is your past—

the ovals on the paving stones, your

            technical and profitable future—

                        *

            You make a phone call

                                    or no phone call, this ordinary

day like one dictated in a dream—

                                    its outdoor

            faces and thighs, municipal

fountains, belt buckles, and fallen, half-winged

            gingko leaves and leavings, stay

and cannot give you leave

Variations on a Theme from Saint Paul

Giving up is not the adult decision.

We fell in a well. We know we will not return.

Each of us sees the other as our mission.

We kick at each other as if we had nowhere to turn.

We come apart when we come together: fission.

It is not important what we learn.

We have got used to living with derision.

We cannot quite survive on what we earn.

We give up well. We starve well, and we burn.

What should the body do with indecision?

What should we have done—what long division,

What narrowing furrow, ragged track, return—

Given one more crack at the same decision?

It is better to marry than to burn.