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'The coast affirms that lines are always changing'

For Kayleb Rae Candrilli, as for many of us, the dramatic change of setting - in their case, the arrival at the coast facing the grand Atlantic - can shift our sense of being in significant ways. For the poet, their affirmation “that lines are always changing” brings a certain comfort. Even more significant is the epiphany that ends the poem: “the tide tells me/ my body can morph/ as many times as...

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American Life in Poetry

'I need you like the earth needed the flood after dearth'

There is a bit of slapstick comedy in this poem of conundrums. In 'Multiple Man: Guest-starring me & You', Gary Jackson knows that he is playing a game with perception — is the “you” himself or someone else — perhaps a past lover?  But in the end, it does not matter, because the sense of loneliness ...

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American Life in Poetry

'I will miss you, armadillos and ... tarantulas crossing the road in the dark'

There is a certain delightfulness in the rhythm and play of ‘Moving to Santa Fe’ by Mary Morris, in which she enacts the farewell song of someone moving from an old home to a new one. In Morris’ case,...

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American Life in Poetry

'She says she wants to be a queen in her own right'

Humour in poetry does not always soften the blow secreted within a poem. Michelle Peñaloza knows that a tiny grenade sits in the middle of ​‘Doppelgänger’, a seemingly passing comment, but one full of...

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American Life in Poetry

'I love you without knowing how or when this world will end'

Craig Santos Perez packs into this love sonnet, 'Love in a Time of Climate Change', echoes of many famous love poems, from Robert Browning’s 'How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43)', to Shakespeare’s 'Sonnet ...

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American Life in Poetry

'You see only what you want to see. Maybe you always did.'

The elegant irony of Elaine Equi’s lament - what the Germans, I am told, call, Weltmüdigkeit, (world-weariness) - in her poem ‘In an Unrelated’, about the very contemporary phenomenon of ‘the news cyc...

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American Life in Poetry

'A song sparrow hit the window just as summer began'

Bruce Willard’s poem ‘Song Sparrow’ captures with such intimacy the interruption of the comforting rituals of time: seasons changing, children growing older, water under the bridge, the world continui...

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American Life in Poetry

'wait on the chicken to know he gone and it take a while'

When historical figures become the subjects of poetry, there is a rich opportunity for transporting us into the emotional world of such people through the beauty of the imagination. The facts of Anarc...

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American Life in Poetry

'It's all yours, this father you make each day'

The monk’s tonsure is intentional, a shaved bald spot as part of the rituals of sanctification, but here, in his poem, ‘Tonsure’, Young sees this hereditary marker as a complex sign of the things a ma...

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American Life in Poetry

'We take on trust the dead are buried and gone'

Dorianne Laux is one of our treasured poets. Her elegant poems grow out of the familiar. 'Urn' is beautifully inventive in the way she connects the moment of uneasy childlike delight in the inexplicab...

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American Life in Poetry

'Veiled, he's mysterious as a bride'

What haunts this loose sonnet by Carrie Green is loss, anticipated loss, but loss, nonetheless. Yet, what emerges is an elegant “pre-elegy”. A tender anthem to a father and to the sweetness he represe...

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American Life in Poetry

'It takes three days to tow our brokenness across the state'

Jehanne Dubrow’s finely crafted sonnet, her own “simple machine”, reminds us so well of that moment, full of contradictory emotions, when the things we think are “unfailing”, fail us. She reflects on ...

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American Life in Poetry

'No matter how wide the final margin, a lone ballot never counted so much'

It’s been some months since our last election, but it is always good to be reminded, in this poem by Kamilah Aisha Moon, of how precious and hard-won the right to vote and the act of voting are.

 

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American Life in Poetry

'Lost in a foaming green crawl, I grew smaller than me'

For many of us who live in landlocked states, an encounter with the tumult and power of the sea can be a bracing encounter with nature. Here, in a poem I came across in a clever new anthology called R...

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American Life in Poetry

'I went to the hospital to hear my heart beat in her various chambers'

There is nothing quite like the relief of good news from the doctors. Of course, it is a reminder of the bad news we eventually expect, the faith that the word “cure” demands of us. I have always enjo...

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American Life in Poetry

'I want to kiss them as I hurt to be kissed'

Sasha Pimentel’s poem is a splendid example of the poetic device called the conceit, which refers to an extended metaphor, and of course, the image here is the violin. Yet the title of the poem is tak...

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American Life in Poetry

'The truth is I love watching you trot away from me'

It is reassuring to know that other dog owners struggle with the strange way in which we project our humanity on animals and ignore the implications of such an “unnatural” act. Nikki Wallschlaeger’s n...

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American Life in Poetry

'You are the most beautiful dark'

I heard Yona Har­vey say in an inter­view that this loose Shake­speare­an (“the bard”) son­net was writ­ten for her teenage daugh­ter, which makes its deep, lay­ered beau­ty a touch­ing mon­u­ment to ...

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American Life in Poetry

'And when the owl stirred, a fine dust fell from its wings'

In many cul­tur­al tra­di­tions, an encounter with an owl at night is an omi­nous sign. But here, in a poem by recent Shel­ley Memo­r­i­al Award win­ner, Arthur Sze, (first pub­lished in 1982), there ...

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American Life in Poetry

'I hold my life above a sieve'

There is a long and ancient tradition of poetry as a form of prayer. Here, in a poem from his new collection of new and selected poems, The Naked Prince, South Carolinian poet Ben Greer brings to my m...

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American Life in Poetry

'Moths sing of you from wherever moths go to sing'

Sometimes defining what we mean by love causes us to fumble around, until we find the right language, or, as in this case, the perfect lived image that captures it all. Tyree Daye does this here in hi...

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American Life in Poetry

'Each bite an ordinary weapon we wield against the shrinking of mouths'

The insane birds in 'Almost Forty', by the always eloquent and emotionally generous poet Ada Limón, seem to be warning of the coming of winter, but it is time, really, and its passing, that they anthe...

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American Life in Poetry

'Animals long believed gone crept down from trees'

Tracy K Smith, former poet laureate, has a wonderful way with strange and haunting images, that still manage to tell a resonant story. I think of the old story she tells here - how future generations ...

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American Life in Poetry

'Watching the troubled people running and crying'

I have a memory of Lucille Clifton responding to a young poet who asked her how she managed to be a productive publishing poet despite having to raise six children, by saying, “I wrote shorter poems.”...

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American Life in Poetry

'I keep that scrap of paper in my pocket'

June Jordan died in 2002, an American child of Jamaican immigrants whose remarkable poetry is collected in The Essential June Jordan, a new collection published by Copper Canyon Press. This eloquent f...

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American Life in Poetry

'Mama, with an axe, trudged tirelessly each day through deep snow'

Missouri poet Kitty Carpenter could have chosen any number of titles for her poem, a moving and difficult accounting of how the roles of parent and child change as a result of the passing of time; but...

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American Life in Poetry

'Little one, it starts with a heart'

It must be one of the great mercies of life that time provides us with the magical capacity to turn memories of the complete alarm of caring for an infant child into a delightful bit of nostalgia. Adr...

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American Life in Poetry

'Here every flower grows ragged and sideways and always beautiful'

I have heard so many poets say that they feel like outcasts, until they meet other outcasts and dreamers, people who seem to feel like them, and suddenly they feel affirmed in their difference, and, a...

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American Life in Poetry

'Nothing moving but his quick beating heart'

José Alcantara’s poem, which appeared in the winter 2020 issue of Rattle, seems simple enough - a splendid and hopeful account of a familiar moment - a bird stunned by a collision with glass, held in ...

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American Life in Poetry

'We go nowhere for weeks. We're stiff and silent in these rows'

Only 0.03 per­ cent of us end up doing jury duty each year. But we all car­ry an aware­ness that it can be us next. Accord­ing to casi​no​.org a quar­ter of Amer­i­can adults serve on jury duty at lea...

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American Life in Poetry

Kwame Dawes takes over as editor of American Life in Poetry

Award-winning poet, author, and editor Kwame Dawes has published his first weekly column as American Life in Poetry editor, in partnership with the Poetry Foundation and University of Nebraska-Lincoln...

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American Life in Poetry

'They whirl out the door, the blue sky a sudden surprise'

Pat Emile, who served as assistant editor to American Life in Poetry for over a decade, was described by past editor Ted Kooser as the “Jill-Of-All-Trades for this column”. I was fortunate enough to e...

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American Life in Poetry

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