Poetry

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,…

So as we look at this, we can expect something like a wound made of fire opening in the sky around this rotation here. Already a falling of frogs has begun to fill local lawns

There comes to one a certain hour
when we rise above our pride, cast it aside
like baggage we’ve carried long enough.