Poetry

In this perilous weather, the car lights on the Mass Pike are
my shepherds, whose reconnaissance I bless, mum blossoms

splashed upon the darkness, in league with their errant cousins
-in-color, the orange reflective dashes marking lanes.

He remarked that the summer was over, Petersburg’s nightless days would turn back into dayless nights. And he said this too, that the whole idea of a woman writing poetry was ridiculous.

In this interview with Carolyn Kizer’s biographer, we discuss her poem Semele Recycled; Kizer’s collected poems, wittily named Calm, Cool and Collected, published in 2000 by Copper Canyon Press, is…

These poems originally appeared in the chapbook Wake One Foot Because gin is moonlight and juniper,Because the righteous deadSend back tales of paradise,Because my daughter’s eyesAre as blue as a…

Selections from the book Lesbians A-Go-Go, edited by Mildred Faintly, published by 96th of October, and available here. It contains poetry by Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Renée Vivien, Anna Margolin, and…

A selection from Seraphina Powell’s translation of Akmatova’s Evening, which may be purchased here. For My Muse My muse, my sister, my self,looked me in the face;her eyes were clearand…

“I wish my goddamned life would quit trying to resemble a rather large, lousy novel . . .”

You’re so much fun when you’re drunk,
even though your stories don’t make any sense.
The elm trees’ leaves turned early:
autumn’s yellow pennants.

The willow spreads its leafless branches
against empty sky,
like the framework of a transparent fan.
If I’d never become your wife, perhaps
things would have been better.

From It Came from Amherst, Mildred Faintly’s just published annotated and selected poetry of Emily Dickinson. A careful reading of Dickinson makes it clear that she, far more than Poe,…