Very (Queer) Best of National Poetry Month
Author: Jameson Fitzpatrick
April 28, 2011
This April, magazines and blogs across the web have been running poem specials to celebrate National Poetry Month. With only a couple days left, I thought I’d take stock and share some of my favorites so far:
- “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve” by Adrienne Rich. “later spread/ sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair…” [Poem-A-Day]
- “Deer between fallen branches” by Ely Shipley. “The eye drowns/ in what it still might see.” [The Rumpus]
- Selections from The Other Poems by Paul Legault. “In the midst of all this hubbub over God’s bisexuality‚/ the wedding DJ tried to kill himself.” [Boston Review]
- “Two Masters” by Jerome Murphy. “Just listen to that dog outside your door/ while we nestle in the chill…” [jdbrecords]
- “Eat the Sinew’s Disbelief” by Amy King. “The world’s plans spill overboard, spinning an axis/ it barely owns.” [The Rumpus]
- “Speedway” by Cedar Sigo. “I cut out the ‘Heart with Snowflake’/ Myself but it is not mine…” [Poem-A-Day]
- “Nero’s Deadline” by C.P. Cavafy, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn. “Evenings of the cities of Achaea…/ Ah, the pleasure of naked bodies above all…” [NY Review of Books]
- “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. “I admired his sullen face,/ the mechanism of his jaw…” [Poem-A-Day]
- “The Lion’s Mouth” by Randall Mann. “My bowtie misses your bowtie./ My cords miss yours. Who says/ that love isn’ t sartorial?” [The Rumpus]
- “Piano Music for a Silent Month” by Susan Stewart. “Love is a lapse and lovers liars‚/ the father weeps‚ the mother sighs.” [Boston Review]
- “Fugue 1” and “Prelude 3,” by Emmanuel Moses, translated by Marilyn Hacker. “the dead nourish the gods/ the gods grow with the living” [The Arty Semite]
- “Intersection” by Jan Steckel. “I’m a woman, but there’s a man in me./ He’s a bit of a fop, sort of a pansy.” [Lee Wind]
- “A Litany of Wants” by Neil de la Flor. “I want to cry, but it’s my birthday./ I want to receive his response to my (s)ext.” [The Rumpus]
- “Civilization” by Carl Phillips. “There’s an art/ to everything. Even/ turning away.” [Poem-A-Day]
- “Transparent to Visible Light,” by Samiya Bashir. “Yesterday’s news unfurled and snapped to/ across her father’s lap. Read: football,/ bombings, despots, plagues.” [The Rumpus]
