14 years later

Poetry posted "To You" by Kenneth Koch to their Facebook page this morning. It feels aimed right at me, or, really, from me to my wife, in light of our 14 year anniversary yesterday. Happy Anniversary, Babe! I love you.

"Dream of Ink Brush Calligraphy" by Karen An-hwei Lee

I'm thinking this might be a good poem to get my students talking about form and its relationship to meaning.

"Dream of Ink Brush Calligraphy" by Karen An-hwei Lee from the Nov. 2010 issue of Poetry Magazine.

"The Swing" by Don Paterson

I just finished reading a review of Rain, the new book by poet Don Paterson, in the May 2010 issue of Poetry and I immediately sought out Paterson's "The Swing." A.E. Stallings ends the review with the last few stanzas. I'm very thankful that it's online at via Granta, where it was originally published in 2007, so that I could read the whole thing immediately.

"Natural State" by Albert Goldbarth

Also in the March 2010 issue of Poetry, "Natural State," a really, really good poem by Albert Goldbarth. I'll admit, I thought maybe I didn't like him. I take it back.

A stand-up comic and a wailing preacher walk into a bar: discovering Dorothea Grossman

I really liked the March 2009 issue of Poetry. The issue started with a whole slew of poems by Dorothea Grossman, a poet I'd never heard of before. My favorites were "I have to tell you," "The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car," and "Love Poem." They also published an interview with her in which she says, "I think what I’m always striving for is to keep a balance. I have a lot of humor in my stuff, and that’s fine. There’s the more serious stuff, too, but I like to mix it up. When I read in public, it’s very important for me to stress that balance. I don’t want to be a stand-up comic, for God’s sake, but I also don’t want to be some wailing preacher."

This only serves to make me like her more.