One of my first memories of Ada Limón involves a party in Brooklyn nearly 15 years ago. Ada was across the room, in a beautiful blue coat. A mutual friend introduced us, whispering as she did that “her poems are even lovelier than her coat is.” Within months, I knew this to be true. I am lucky to know Ada: We moved in similar circles in New York in our twenties, and left about the same time. I came home to California, and she moved to Kentucky, while still keeping her ties to Sonoma, her hometown, active with regular trips. […]
Tag: poem
‘Just Us’ by Paul Wilner
by Paul Wilner
The Rape Guy approaches the podium, with practiced confidence, Jimmy Stewart smiles. He knows the ropes, been through this drill before. He lives around the corner from my brother-in-law, who says he doesn’t know him but his wife is “delightful.’’ I’m delighted. Aren’t you? Who wouldn’t be? Just a drunken grope and grab, lurch and lock, his Irish Catholic pal always ready to turn up the noise, set the stage. Dominis vobiscum, the Latin Mass is still the best. Closeted libido, directed who knows where, Three in the room. Three’s a crowd, three’s company. Company man. It’s all good. Ask […]
Secretly Wishing for Impossible Futures: ‘Her Mouth as Souvenir’ by Heather June Gibbons
by Caleigh Stephens
Her Mouth as Souvenir (88 pages; University of Utah Press), winner of the 2017 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry, is a breathtaking and lyrical debut collection from Heather June Gibbons. Gibbons’ voice is a strong one, as she leads the reader through well-crafted and captivatingly honest free verse. Pressingly urgent and timely, Her Mouth as Souvenir is a study of action in the face of anxiety. The poems’ context includes larger societal trends, such as the technologizing world that presents “a strange kind of convenience, / to access at the tap of a fingertip / so much information without […]
Queering Language: ‘Feeld’ by Jos Charles
by Annah Omune Sidigu
A few days ago, I woke up half-dreaming in the made-up language of Jos Charles’s feeld (64 pages; Milkweed Editions), which is to say I landed softly. feeld –– which is currently longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award in poetry –– challenges the reader to engage with a singular, complex voice (“Chaucerian English [translated] into the digital twenty-first century,” as Fady Joudah notes on the book’s jacket), but one that is also accessible and refined. Throughout the book, which contains sixty short poems, it is evident Charles is a poet who values breath and space. Both aurally and visually, the […]
The Grief of the Particular: ‘Be With’ by Forrest Gander
by Meryl Natchez
Reading Forrest Gander’s work makes the reader feel as if she’s entering a world larger than her own, one with a broader vocabulary, richer imagery, and a deeper understanding of the relationships between the ordinary and the unknowable. Sometimes one is baffled, but more often feels stretched, welcomed into a cherished complexity. On the cover of his newest book, Be With (92 pages; New Directions), the names of the title and author in severe san serif type are pinned between black lines and the absence of lines. It’s a perfect cover for a book that explores absence and presence, loss […]
‘Thoughts and Prayers’ by Paul Wilner
by Paul Wilner
guns and roses, money, honey, what’s the point. raise, hold, stay, fold, left out standing in the cold. If I had a thought, I’d tell you, bow my head if there’s a prayer. no such luck, no such mercy i am waiting, I am old. give us this day our daily bread, maybe we’ll feed it to the dead. Paul Wilner’s work has appeared in The Paris Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. You can read more of his writing in ZYZZYVA No. 106 and No. 109. […]
A Blossom on a Chain Link Fence: ‘Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God’ by Tony Hoagland
by Meryl Natchez
Tony Hoagland’s books probably have the most intriguing titles of any contemporary poet. The newest one, Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God (74 pages; Graywolf Press) follows hard on Recent Changes in the Vernacular, from Tres Chicas Books, out late last year. What Hoagland does better than any other poet is select the exact details to throw the cognitive dissonance inherent in contemporary American life into stark relief. Never sentimental, often fond, and always accurate, his lines cut through to the essence of experience. Yet they are leavened by tenderness and longing, a wry acceptance of the human condition. […]
Craft Talk: Dean Rader on Poetry Workshops, Writing Hurdles, & Looking Outward
by Ingrid Vega
Diligent readers of ZYZZYVA will have noticed Dean Rader’s dazzling poems in numerous issues of the journal, most recently in our Art & Resistance-themed Issue 111. We’re pleased to announce that Rader will also be leading a ZYZZYVA Writer’s Workshop in Poetry on August 18th, which is currently accepting submissions. The deadline to enter is June 18th –– so do not delay! The poet recently took time out of his busy schedule, which includes teaching writing at the University of San Francisco, to discuss the merits of the Workshop format, writing hurdles he’s overcome, recent poetry collections he’s read, and much […]
National Poetry Month: ‘Richer than Anyone in Heaven’ by Jennifer Elise Foerster
by Jennifer Elise Foerster
April represents National Poetry Month, intended as a way to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To celebrate, each Wednesday we will be taking a deep dive into both ZYZZYVA’s recent and distant past to share some choice selections. For the final week of April, we present Jennifer Elise Foerster’s poem “Richer than Anyone in Heaven” from ZYZZYVA No. 95, Fall 2012: I abandoned my shoes at the corner of Market & Pine. It was hailing. We were holding tin pots above our heads. Collecting the granulated wind and singing. I don’t care about my shoes, I said. The city […]
National Poetry Month: ‘Creation Myth’ by Austen Leah Rosenfeld
by Austen Leah Rosenfeld
April represents National Poetry Month, intended as a way to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To celebrate, each Wednesday we will be taking a deep dive into both ZYZZYVA’s recent and distant past to share some choice selections. For the third week of April, we present Austen Leah Rosenfeld’s poem “Creation Myth” from ZYZZYVA No. 107, Fall 2016: In the beginning, there was only darkness. Not the dark of the prairie at night, fireflies nestled like hot pearls in the grass. More like the sense of something approaching, weaving a black basket in the sky. Days […]
National Poetry Month: ‘Art Wong is Alive and Ill and Struggling in Oakland California’ by Marilyn Chin
by Marilyn Chin
April represents National Poetry Month, intended as a way to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To celebrate, each Wednesday we will be taking a deep dive into both ZYZZYVA’s recent and distant past to share some choice selections. For this second weak of National Poetry Month, we present Marilyn Chin’s poem “Art Wong is Alive and Ill and Struggling in Oakland California” from ZYZZYVA No. 9, Spring 1987. You can order selected back issues of ZYZZYVA here: I. Chi Pai Shih was born in the Year of the Boar. And a bore he was; his […]
National Poetry Month: A Q&A with ‘I Know Your Kind’ author William Brewer
by Meryl Natchez
It’s rare that any book of poems, not to mention a first book, is as powerful as I Know Your Kind (96 pages; Milkweed) by William Brewer. This book, rooted in the physical and spiritual landscape of West Virginia, tackles the opioid epidemic in verse. Focusing on the small town of Oceana (nicknamed Oxyana for the record number of overdoses there), Oceana acts as a stand-in for West Virginia as a whole, which has the highest OD rate in the country. The book is at once dreamlike and visceral, and the images in it draw on the beauty and pain […]