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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

On Tuesday we continue our series of prose features with Major Jackson's "A Mystifying Silence: Big and Black," from the September/October issue of American Poetry Review:

"... in a country whose professed strength is best observed in its plurality of cultures, what seems odd to me (and this I find most appalling about contemporary American poetry) is the dearth of poems written by white poets that address racial issues, that chronicle our struggle as a democracy to find tranquility and harmony as a nation containing many nations. Why is this?"

Look for it on Tuesday on our news page.

We hope you enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller
Editors

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2. Sponsor Messages

Tupelo Press $10,000 Dorset Prize for 2007
Open to All Poets Writing in English
Submission Period: September 1 - December 15, 2007 (Postmark)

$10,000 prize with publication by Tupelo Press (in paper and hardcover editions), a book launch at Poets House in New York City, and national and international distribution through Tupelo Press and Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, Inc., Ingram and Baker & Taylor. Full guidelines ...

Write Where You Live: The Low-Residency MFA Program at Queens University of Charlotte
A community of writers in-residence and on-line.  A low student-faculty ratio, never more than four to one.  On-line workshops that continue throughout the semester.  An award-winning faculty, including a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and multiple Pushcart Prize winners. Find out more about us ...

Colrain & Compleat Poetry Manuscript Conferences
For Poets With a Book-Length Manuscript: first conferences to provide the faculty, connections, and method necessary to set poets with a completed or in-process manuscript on a path towards publication.
 
Faculty for 2007 includes editors and publishers Jeffrey Levine (Tupelo Press), Martha Rhodes (Four Way Books), Jeffrey Shotts (Graywolf Press), Chase Twichell (Ausable Press), Michael Simms (Autumn House Press) and others; workshop leaders include Joan Houlihan (Concord Poetry Center); Frederick Marchant (Suffolk University), Ellen Doré Watson (Smith College), Daniel Tobin (Emerson College) and others.

Shenandoah, Fall, 2007
Shenandoah, Fall, 2007 A new "Sabbaths" series and interview with Wendell Berry / hunting with Fred Chappell and Hamp Markel /  Pam Durban's powerful, sorrowful story about a haunted enclave of veterans / birches, Bibles, wolves, gawkers at the grassy knoll / Ann Pancake on a dog with a squall bawl mouth and Mark Sanders's memoir "A Dog Named Loneliness" / "you must grasp the cello with your knees and guide the bow across her neck like a lovely murder" /  a surgeon pondering death / owl-oak-rabbit-joy / Betsy Boyd looking at grief and dessert /  war and more in the art of William Dunlap / Jeffrey Hammond examining writing, Babel and seed of hope glowing in lucid utterances

Online School of Poetry: Advanced Poetry Writing Workshop — Creating the Dramatic Monologue
An eight-week online workshop led by Tom Daley at the Online School of Poetry. Starts Sept. 23, 2007. Cost: $250. Models include Robert Browning, Patricia Smith, Ezra Pound, Ai, & Randall Jarrell. Send 3 poems in the text of an e-mail to tom@onlineschoolofpoetry.org to be considered for the workshop. Instructor is a recipient of the Charles and Fanny Fay Wood Academy of American Poets Prize.

Seventh Annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize
BOA Editions welcomes your submission to the seventh annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. The winner of this first-book award will receive $1500 and publication in our New Poets of America Series. This year's judge is
Jean Valentine. Entries are accepted between August 1 and November 30, 2007. Submit one copy of your manuscript, our entry form, and the $25 entry fee to BOA Editions, PO Box 40490, Rochester, NY 14604. The winner will be announced in March 2008. Order forms and additional information ...

Kinereth Gensler Awards 2007
Alice James Books welcomes submissions for the Kinereth Gensler Awards. Poetry manuscripts of 50 – 70 pages will be accepted with a $25 entry fee. The award is open to poets living in New England, New York or New Jersey starting no later than 12-1-07. Postmark deadline is 10-1-07. Winners receive $2000, publication and serve a 3 year term on the Alice James Books Editorial Board. Detailed guidelines ...

University of Arkansas Press
The University of Arkansas Press may be the only university press founded by a poet, Miller Williams. The Press publishes four poetry collections a year under the editorship of Enid Shomer. Past authors include Billy Collins, Philip Appleman, John Ciardi, R. S. Thomas, Robert Mezey, Frank Stanford, David Baker, Ron Koertge, Alice Friman, Laurence Lieberman, Jo McDougall, Michelle Boisseau, William Trowbridge, Robert Gibb, Christopher Bursk, Harry Humes, Samuel Hazo, Patrick Phillips, Annie Boutelle, Gary Fincke, R. T. Smith, Elton Glaser, Greg Rappaleye, and Elizabeth Hadaway. Submission guidelines ...

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• New books by Glen Downie and Sheri Benning reviewed by Barbara Carey. (Toronto Star)
• Robert Pinsky introduces poems by William Butler Yeats and Barry Spacks. (The Washington Post)
• Katie Haegele downloads poetry podcasts. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
• James Fenton discusses poetry reading professionalism. (Guardian Unlimited)
• Stephen Romer reviews Peter Dale's translation of Paul Valéry's Charms. (Guardian Unlimited)
• Ted Kooser introduces a poem by Betty Adcock. (American Life in Poetry)
• The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto: A Bilingual Edition, edited and translated by Patrick Barron, reviewed by Eric Ormsby. (The New York Sun)
• Tricks of the Light: New and Selected Poems, by Vicki Hearne, edited by John Hollander, reviewed by Louisa Thomas. (The New York Sun)

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4. Selected New Arrivals

These and other new arrivals are available for purchase via Poetry Daily/Amazon.com.

• Expectation Days, Sandra McPherson
• California Sorrow, Mary Kinzie
• New Selected Poems, Mark Strand
• A Choice of Shakespeare's Verse, ed. Ted Hughes
• World in Place of Itself, Bill Rasmovicz
• The Handbook of Creative Writing, ed. Steven Earnshaw
• Definite Space, Ann Iverson
• Deed, Rod Smith
• Complex Sleep, Tony Tost
• Gomer's Song, Kwame Dawes
• Auto Mechanic's Daughter, Karen Harryman
• Eel on Reef, Uche Nduka
• My Angie Dickinson, Michael Magee
• Novel Pictorial Noise, Noah Eli Gordon
• Figures for a Darkroom Voice, Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson
• The Essential George Johnston, ed. Robyn Sarah
• Creature, Creature, Rebecca Aronson
• Eden in the Rearview Mirror, Susan Elbe
• Toward Any Darkness, Rick Mulkey
• Epistles, Mark Jarman
• The Preacher: A Poem, Gerald Stern
• Libido Dreams, Glenna Luschei
• The Doves Flew High, David Krieger
• Adventures of the Minor Poet, David Starkey
• Selected Poems, John Hewitt
• Bloodaxe Poetry Introductions 3: Jack Gilbert, Jane Hirshfield, Galway Kinnell, W.S. Merwin, ed. Neil Astley

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5. This Week’s Featured Poets

Monday - Danielle Chapman
Tuesday - Sandra McPherson
Wednesday - Jànos Pilinszky / tr. Ted Hughes
Thursday - Adrienne Rich
Friday - Maxine Kumin
Saturday - Paul Guest
Sunday - Marvin Bell

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6. Featured Poets September 10 - September 16, 2007

These and other past featured poets may be found in our archive:

Monday - Nick Laird
Tuesday - Ray DiPalma
Wednesday - Paulo Henriques Britto / tr. Idra Novey
Thursday - Cathy Song
Friday - Guy Goffette / tr. Marilyn Hacker
Saturday - Brendan Galvin
Sunday - Bernadette Mayer

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

These poems will be retired from our archive during the coming week.

Patrick Phillips - "What Happens"
Carol Rumens - "Little Epic"
Thomas Kinsella - "The Route of The Táin" and "Tao and Unfitness at Inistiogue on the River Nore"
David Roderick - "Excavation of the John Alden House" and "Notes on the Riverbank"
Stanley Plumly - "Paraphrase of the Parable of the Prodigal Son"
Stephanie N. Johnson - "Wine Water"
Bruce Bond - "Bach's Idiot Son"

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8. Poem From Last Year

Excavation of the John Alden House

We needed an alphabet to get our grid laid out.
Then we tore grass from the site and found
a pike-head, a spoon, a key with a hollow shank.
Voices behind us chipped into the ground,

our careful process of hunting, and then the ground
became an entrance to a room of cryptic scale.
The clays were tough but fill-soils gave with ease.
We found a bridle bit and hand-wrought nails,

a bell-metal blade with letters worn from its hilt.
The cellar bulged inward. Walls tilted in places.
With cautious hands we pulled grist
from the past, turned space into negative space.

We needed a new language to weigh each item:
a pintle and fork, the lock of a snap-hance gun.
The harder something was, the better chance
we had of finding it, yet the dirt saved a glass pane

and hoard of light, a written history of clouds.
We set up lines and sifting trays, ate lunch
beneath the plow zone. The chimney of stones
had been salvaged for something, but a trench

of ash remained. An Oak Tree sixpence fell
from a wall and relayed a human substance.
Then it owned us, that room, a museum
where other hands had slipped by chance:

a quill pen, a brass ring with the image of St. Peter
holding the key to Heaven. There was evidence
of water, of atmospheric weight. Ice divided
the ground, and though our alphabet was spent,

the dirt lulled us with empty spools, with half
of a cock's head hinge. The masonry was powder.
Some beams needed relief, so our backs provided it,
our shoulders. We thought we heard a murmur

from the earth, but the sound was a wasp nest
inside a skull. When our brushes found a delft tile
and wooden doll, a pin with an inlay of pearl,
we no longer knew the value of farthings or shells.

David Roderick
Blue Colonial
Copper Canyon Press

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Copyright © 2006 by David Roderick. All rights reserved. Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.