By ALAN BAER, CARLIE HOFFMAN, CAMPBELL MCGRATH, and FARAH PETERSON.
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By ADAM CLAY, KHADIJAH QUEEN, ROGER REEVES, ANALICIA SOTELO, and RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ
To kick off Poetry Month we’re bringing you selections from Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s new anthology, You Are Here, out this month from Milkweed Editions.
As part of her signature project, “You Are Here,” 24th US Poet Laureate Ada Limón has commissioned fifty-two contemporary American poets to observe and reflect on their place in the natural world. The resulting anthology of original poems is a timely portrait of the myriad ways the natural world speaks to us and reflects us. Some of the poems included here contend with the destruction of nature, while others consider its abundance and resilience—and some do both at the same time. While these poems emerge from deeply personal perspectives, together they reveal that nature, like poetry, is universal—and that our interpretations of the natural world are grounded in the nature of our humanity. They also serve as a call for readers to take in the nature all around them, wherever they are.
(from the Foreword to You Are Here, by Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress)
New poems by our contributors CORTNEY LAMAR CHARLESTON, OLENA JENNINGS, MEGHAN MCCLURE, and JONATHAN FINK
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By VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA
Translated from Hindi by ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA
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New poems by our contributors CHRISTOPHER BAKKEN, CYRUS CASSELLS, JAMES RICHARDSON, CATIE ROSEMURGY
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New poems by our contributors BRAD CRENSHAW, JOANNE DOMINIQUE DWYER, ELIZABETH HODGES and OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK
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Sentences
By Oksana Maksymchuk
A ten-year-old, escaped
from a war waged across
a membranous border
New poems by LESLIE SAINZ, L.S. KLATT, and MICHELLE LEWIS
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***
The Alchemist
By L.S. KLATT
My neighbor really has nothing to do
but mow his grass & watch television.
It’s the quiet life for him. The adhesive
New poems by TIMOTHY DONNELLY, JANUARY GILL O’NEIL, and NGUYEN BINH
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—Timothy Donnelly, “Eglantine” and “Mill”
—January Gill O’Neil, “Us”
—Nguyen Binh, “Two of the Graves by the Highway” and “Uncle”
Eglantine
By Timothy Donnelly
after Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
Thorn-blossom! Tender thing, prone to solitude
like yours truly, don’t get it twisted if I reach out my hand—
it isn’t to pluck you, who are my beacon down this path, but a gesture
of acknowledgment common among my kind.
April Is Poetry Month: New Poems By Our Contributors
MARK ANTHONY CAYANAN, DAVID LEHMAN, and YULIYA MUSAKOVSKA (translated by the author and OLENA JENNINGS)
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Mark Anthony Cayanan
—Ecstasy Facsimile (These days I ask god…)
David Lehman
—The Remedy
—A Postcard from the Future
—Last Day in the City
Yuliya Musakovska (translated by the author and Olena Jennings)
—Angel of Maydan
—The Sorceress’ Oath
Poems by KERRY JAMES EVANS, CHINUA EZENWA-OHAETO, RICHARD MICHELSON, and LAKSHMI SUNDER
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Kerry James Evans
—Maria
—Honeybee Psalm
Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto
—It’s Either Men Made God or God Made Men
Richard Michelson
—Vermin
—The Wedding in the Cemetery
Lakshmi Sunder
—My Mother Cuts My Nails
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