Very (Queer) Best of National Poetry Month
Posted on 28. Apr, 2011 by Jameson Fitzpatrick in Features
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]
Related posts:
- Happy National Poetry Month
- Queer Spirituality: What Can Poetry Tell Us? A Conversation with Julie Enszer and Kevin Simmonds
- The Year in Queer Poetry
- Queer Mojo Press announces a call for submissions for an anthology celebrating queer poetry
- Why National Poetry Month is Like the Gay Male S&M Activists Leather Night
About Jameson Fitzpatrick
Jameson Fitzpatrick is a reader for Barrow Street and a poetry editor for Lambda Literary Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Vinyl, Knockout, Stirring, and the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival's Fresh Voices 2008 chapbook, among elsewhere. In the fall of 2012 he'll begin pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at New York University.
