Tag: poetry playlist

National Poetry Month Poetry Playlist: Virginia Smith Rice’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from one of our Sundress authors, Virginia Smith Rice!

Here are two Tranströmer poems. He has been an incredible influence on my work, and these are two (of the many) that continue to resonate with me throughout the years.

Tomas Tranströmer ,  from Friends, You Drank Some Darkness,  tr. Robert Bly


TRACK

2am: moonlight. The train has stopped
out in a field. Far off sparks of light from a town,
flickering coldly on the horizon.

As when a man goes so deep into his dream
he will never remember that he was there
when he returns again to his room.

Or when a person goes so deep into a sickness
that his days all become some flickering sparks, a
swarm,
feeble and cold on the horizon.

The train is entirely motionless.
2 o’clock: strong moonlight, few stars.

 

SOLITUDE

I have been walking a while
on the frozen Swedish fields
and I have seen no one.

In other parts of the world
people are born, live, and die
in a constant human crush.
To be visible all the time – to live
in a swarm of eyes –
surely that leaves its mark on the face.
Features overlaid with clay.

The low voices rise and fall
as they divide up
heaven, shadows, grains of sand.

I have to be by myself
ten minutes every morning,
ten minutes every night,
– and nothing to be done!

We all line up to ask each other for help.

One.

 

Virginia Smith Rice will be reading from her debut collection tomorrow at 7PM at Powell’s Bookstore in Chicago!

 

FINAL FINAL

 

——–

Virginia Smith Rice earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University, where her poetry manuscript, “One Voice May Survive the Other,” received the Distinguished Thesis Award. Her work appears, or is forthcoming, in 2River View, Denver Quarterly, Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, Stirring, Stone Highway Review, Superstition Review, and Weave, among others. She was the Assistant Poetry Editor at TriQuarterly, and currently works as an art teacher in Woodstock, IL. Her first full-length collection, When I Wake It Will Be Forever, was published by Sundress in 2014.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Andrew Koch’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from Sundress Assistant Editor Andrew Koch!

 

So, it’s obviously really difficult to track down the poems that are one’s most favorite or have been most influential, right?  Are we all together on that one?  I mean, there are So Many Poems, you guys.  There are also so many factors that could impact one’s writing that sometimes it’s hard to discern if it was poetry that left that flavor in your mouth or if maybe you’re still just hungover.  On any given day, for instance, it can be hard to distinguish between accidentally drinking spoiled milk and, say, reading Robert Frost.  Or maybe, between an especially foul bout of indigestion and Billy Collins.  Who’s to say?!

For another example, I just stumbled upon this poem the other day called “Symptomatic” by Nick Lantz and I think it might be one of the best poems I’ve ever read.  However, spring just recently sprang where I live and all the dogwoods are blooming, so, there’s that.  The poem strikes a seemingly impossible mix of moods between heartbreaking, pathetic, humorous and endearing.  Also, it somehow pulls off using a parking garage as a compelling metaphor.  While it’s not a sonnet, the final stanza seems to be something of a ‘turn’ that is striking in its brute force but also strangely fitting for a poem that deals with making the best out of what you have.

Symptomatic by Nick Lantz

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if Robert Hass’ “The Problem of Describing Trees” is the most generous poem about the shortcomings of poetry ever written.  Ever.  On the chart of ‘favorite’ versus ‘influential’ this one is definitely higher more on the latter than the former.  But I think that’s also part of the point of this poem.  The line “It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us” is probably the first line of poetry I read that became a personal mantra.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell if it was the wind in the trees that stirred your creative juices, or if it was the poem about the wind in the trees that did it.

The Problem of Describing Trees by Robert Hass

 

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Andrew Koch is a recent graduate of the University of Tennessee with a BA in creative writing. He’s had work published in Mojo and a piece forthcoming in you are here. In the fall of 2014, Andrew will be attending the MFA program at Eastern Washington University.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Margaret Bashaar’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from Sundress author and Stirring poetry editor, Margaret Bashaar!

 

The poem I read that made me want to write poetry FOR REAL was “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

 

And then when I was maybe 15 I read “Ecstatic” by Yusef Komunyakaa and almost died of poetry love.

Ecstatic

Joy, use me like a whore.
Turn me inside out like Donne
Desired God to do with him.
Show me some muscle,

Sunlight on black stone.
Coldcock me about the head
Till I moan like a bell, low
As the one Goya could hear

Through the walls of
Quinta del Sordo.
Tie me up to the stocks those Puritans
Handled so well in Boston streets.

Don’t let me down. I beg
You to use all your know-how
In one throttle. Please, good God,
Put everything into your swing.

 

And it’s not so much a single poem, but Frank X. Walker’s book When Winter Comes was hugely influential to me when writing Stationed Near the Gateway. His use of voice is superb and it remains one of my favorite books of poetry.

http://www.frankxwalker.com/books.htm

 

And then there was that time I sat on an airplane and sobbed while reading Rowing and The Rowing Endeth by Anne Sexton while everyone looked at me funny.

Rowing by Anne Sexton

The Rowing Endeth by Anne Sexton

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Margaret Bashaar’s first full-length book, Stationed Near the Gateway, is due from Sundress Publications in 2015. Her poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine.

National Poetry Month Playlist: T.A. Noonan’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from SAFTA’s Literary Arts Director and Sundress Publications Associate Editor T.A. Noonan!

“America,” Allen Ginsberg
Picture it: I’m a high-school freshman reading Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Frost. I flip through my textbook and find “America.” My mind was blown. (Seriously, I didn’t even know you were allowed use the word “fuck” in a poem before reading Ginsberg.) This poem was the first to make me realize that there was so much about poetry I didn’t know and needed to find out.
“Angels of the Love Affair,” Anne Sexton
Pure invocation, this is easily my favorite Sexton poem and one of the most influential poems of my life. I’d read “Her Kind” at eighteen or so and thought, Okay, she wrote about witches. Maybe I can do that, too. But it was “Angels of the Love Affair” that convinced me that the stories I wanted to tell with The Bone Folders were worthy.
“Fall,” Robert Hass
I was lucky to take an independent study in Contemporary Poetry as an undergraduate, and this was the very first poem we read there. It still resonates, reminding me simultaneously of childhood and marriage, fear and delight.
“To Judge Faolain, Dead Long Enough: A Summons,” Linda McCarriston
Another piece introduced to me in the aforementioned independent study, “To Judge Faolain, Dead Long Enough: A Summons” was the first poem addressing domestic abuse I’d ever read. To this day, the last few lines strike me as the most brutal curse ever committed to paper.
War Music, Christopher Logue
It almost feels like cheating to pick this, as it’s a multi-volume project. Still, Logue was the first to get me to rethink the nature of translation, and I really have a thing for book(s)-length projects.
Nox Anne Carson
Another cheat. Really, I could pick anything from Anne Carson. I’ve made no secret of my intense love affair with her work. That said, this book moved me to tears from the moment I saw it. No mass-market book I own will ever be as beautiful. No elegy will ever feel as real.
——
T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and Dress the Stars (Dusie Kollektiv, 2013). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming inReunion: The Dallas Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, specs, Delirious Hem, Phoebe, and more. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she will be moving to Knoxville in January 2014 to serve as the Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy for the Arts.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Jennifer Jackson Berry’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from author Jennifer Jackson Berry!

I’ll Write the Girl by Jan Beatty
Jan Beatty is a teacher, a mentor, and a friend.  She has been a strong supporter of my work.  I love so many of her poems, but this one is a favorite.  We need to write what we need to write, and this poem speaks to that.

Eating Together by Li-Young Lee
I had to choose a poem to memorize & recite from the collection The Rose by Li-Young Lee for an undergraduate workshop class I took at the University of Pittsburgh with Toi Derricotte.  I didn’t see the point, so I was going to skip.  I was having dinner with a friend before the evening class, and he (always the more conscientious student) forced me to do the assignment.  It helped that he memorized it with me over Sbarro slices.  It was the first time I paid such close attention to every word.  It was a worthwhile experience, and I can still recite the poem.

I Am Offering This Poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
This was one of the readings at my wedding.  It will always hold a special place in my heart.

 

—

Jennifer Jackson Berry lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and works as a claims adjuster for a mass transit bus line. She has taught high school English, as well creative writing and composition at the post-secondary level. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Stone Highway Review, 5AM, Main Street Rag, Jet Fuel Review, Amethyst Arsenic, and Mead, among others. She is the author of the chapbooks When I Was a Girl (Sundress Publications, forthcoming in 2013) and Nothing But Candy(Liquid Paper Press, 2003). She holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University’s MFA program. She is an active member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Chris Petruccelli’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from Stirring editor, Chris Petruccelli!

Carroll-Hackett’s poem is a reminder of what I want out of place–a familiarity that runs deep enough to be knowledgeable with something called spikenard. The poem also reminds me of issues I’ve been dealing with lately (i.e. desire of place, creating a sense of place in people and the danger therein).

Among the Things He Does Not Deserve by Dan Albergotti

I discovered the Albergotti piece around when my partner and I broke up. I saw myself as the he who doesn’t deserve anything and that was particularly harrowing. At the time, it was what I needed to read and I like to think the poem spurred me into some much needed critical self-assessment.
—
Chris Petruccelli is a graduate student at the University of Missouri. He earned his BA in geography at UT and claims eastern Tennessee as home. He likes to drink whiskey, smoke cigarettes and study forest dynamics. His poetry has appeared in Josephine Quarterly, Connotation Press, and Gingerbread House Literary Magazine.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Donna Vorreyer’s Picks!

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications 2013), Donna Vorreyer!

Jack Gilbert’s “Michiko Dead”
Jack Gilbert’s “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart”

Until I was introduced to “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart” in a class I was taking with poet Katie Ford, I had appreciated poems but never really been stunned by one. You know, the take off the top of your head kind of stunned, as Dickinson says. It taught me that image, even if it isn’t perfectly clear or explained, has a power that exposition will never have. That a poem can speak to both the heart and the head. And it has become a sort of ars poetica for me- what better explanation of poetry is there than “How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.”

After being introduced to Jack Gilbert by Katie, I immediately went and bought The Great Fires, which has become the book I read over and over to keep trying to unlock its beauty. “Michiko Dead” is both heartbreaking and ordinary, just like loss is in life. It explains the ongoing and uncomfortable nature of grief as something we never truly put down or away. It’s also one of the best teaching examples of metaphor. The simple language in the complex extension of the metaphor make it ideal for the teenagers I teach.

 

 

Donna Vorreyer is the author of three chapbooks:Womb/Seed/Fruit (Finishing Line Press), Come Out, Virginia (Naked Mannekin Press), and Ordering the Hours (Maverick Duck Press). She is a poetry editor forMixed Fruit, and her work has appeared in many journals, recently in Sweet, Linebreak, Rhino, Cider Press Review, Stirring, and Wicked Alice. Donna lives in the Chicago area where she teaches middle school and therefore often acts like she is twelve years old. Her first full-length collection, A House of Many Windows, was published by Sundress Publications in 2013.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Chris Barton’s Picks!

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors, interns, and SAFTA staff are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from Sundress/SAFTA intern, Chris Barton!

 

“A Supermarket in California”  Allen Ginsberg
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/supermarket.html

I enjoy this poem because of the different levels of place. On one hand this is a poem about the desire to be a writer, “shopping for images,” a historical place. But there is also a complex loneliness in Ginsberg’s wandering around a supermarket full of people that blossoms through a series of tensions: individual/community, nature/commodity, and mainstream/alternative lifestyles. What is on one level a melancholic poem about seeking inspiration within a consumer space, a ‘reconnection with art or nature’, becomes a self-aware meditation on this act, a sort of ‘poem in spite of’ that reconceptualizes the focus of American poetry, and adds a sense of freedom to its future direction.

 

Poem [The eager note on my door said, ‘Call me’]  Frank O’Hara
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/supermarket.html

I came to appreciate this poem after reading a lot of O’Hara. What I enjoy is the inaccessibility of the events inside a narrative that’s very casual and inviting. Again, setting is important to the function of the poem. We can assume the action takes place from one apartment to the other, but this is never plainly stated. The poem functions more as an emotional space. What begins, like most O’hara poems as a beautiful, light-hearted narrative evolves into a jarring image of death. The poem moves from one emotional extreme to another in an abrupt, almost violent way. The only meaning that is derivable is from this juxtaposition of images, which ultimately doesn’t allow for a logical understanding. What is allowed for is a comment on meaning as contextual, and often through a construction of difference—dead “leaves brighter than grass”.

 

“Ryan Gosliing” Mira Gonzalez

http://jsykes.tumblr.com/post/71022818006/ryan-gosling-i-am-becoming-increasingly

I put this poem on here because I read it recently and really liked it. It is a kind of pop art poem that title deals with class and extreme levels of individualism—stardom, celebrity idealization, and our tendency to define ourselves by larger abstract interests like fan clubs. What I like is how flat the language of the poem reads, and how sharply this flatness contrasts with the title. There is a long history of celebrating the self in an ecstatic egocentric way in poetry that this poem resists. The narrator has a very average view of their self that is refreshing, and deals with feels of anxiety and isolation in a direct way that seems very human to me, and still provides a sense of companionship.

 

 

Chris Barton is a 2013 graduate from the University of Tennessee. His work has appeared in Still and Polaris. Books he has enjoyed recently are Begging for It by Alex Dimitrov, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin, and Selected Poems, Frank O’hara. He currently lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Karen Skolfield’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from Stirring Poetry Editor, Karen Skolfield.

 

Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish”
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22238



 

Jack Gilbert’s “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart”

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-forgotten-dialect-of-the-heart/




Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Streets”

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15680

 

Philip Levine’s “They Feed They Lion”

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/levine/they_feed_they_lion.php

 

 

Karen Skolfield‘s book Frost in the Low Areas (2013) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry and the First Book Award from Zone 3 Press. She is a 2014 Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow and winner of the 2014 Split This Rock poetry prize and the 2012 Oboh Prize from Boxcar Poetry Review. Skolfield is the poetry editor for Amherst Live, a twice-yearly production of poetry, politics, and more, and she’s a contributing editor at Tupelo Quarterly. She teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts.