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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

On Tuesday we continue our series of prose features with Adam Kirsch's Introduction to The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry, his new book just out from W. W. Norton & Company:

"Once the modern poet has been defined... not as his age's interpreter but as its exemplary specimen or willing victim, all the virtues and vices of modern poetry, up to the present day, become almost inevitable. The virtues are daring honesty, subtle self-knowledge, an intimate (if not always explicit) concern with history, and a determination to make language serve as the most accurate possible instrument of communication, even at the risk of estrangement. The vices, which correspond to the virtues and call them into question, are sentimental egotism, an obsession with staying up-to-date, and a belief that distortion of language is interesting and praiseworthy in its own right.'"

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

"Discovery" Poetry Contest, from the 92nd Street Y & Boston Review
This year, the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center partners with Boston Review for its “Discovery” Poetry Contest (formerly, “Discovery”/The Nation). Four winners are awarded a reading at the Poetry Center (set for Monday, May 5, 2008), publication in Boston Review and $500 each. Jorie Graham, Reginald Shepherd and James Tate will judge in 2008. Deadline for receipt: Fri, Jan 18, 5 pm. Call to request guidelines, 212.415.5759, or visit us online...

Sawtooth Poetry Prize from Ahsahta Press
C.D. Wright will be the final judge for this year's Sawtooth Poetry Prize from Ahsahta Press. The Prize honors a manuscript of original poetry in English by a single author and carries a $1,500 honorarium upon publication plus 25 copies of the published book. Full entry guidelines are available with an SASE from the address below, or online. Submit manuscripts of 48-100 pages with a $25 entry fee between January 1 and March 1, 2008, to:

Sawtooth Poetry Prize
Ahsahta Press
Boise State University
1910 University Drive, MS 1525
Boise, ID 83725-1525

Last year's winning book, the true keeps calm biding its story, by Rusty Morrison, was selected by Peter Gizzi and is available January 15 from Ahsahta Press.

Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry
Four Way Books 2008 Intro Prize in Poetry
Brigit Pegeen Kelly, judge
Publication, $1000 award, reading in NYC
Submit a book-length collection between January 1 and March 31, 2008 via email or post.
$25.00 entry fee
Visit us online for guidelines and entry form.

Tupelo Press Snowbound Series Chapbook Competition
$1,000 and 50 copies of the winning chapbook upon publication by Tupelo.
The judge is Dana Levin.
Submissions should be postmarked by February 15, 2008.  Visit us online for full guidelines.

Spalding University Brief-Residency MFA in Writing
Spalding University offers a four-semester, brief-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing. At the beginning of each semester, students participate in a 10-day residency, after which they return home to study one on one with a faculty mentor. Students may begin in spring, summer, or fall. The summer residency is abroad (London/Bath, 2008). Spring and fall residencies are in Louisville. Concentrations are offered in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, writing for children, screenwriting, and playwriting. mfa@spalding.edu; 800-896-8941x2423

Shenandoah, Winter 2007
SHENANDOAH, Winter, 2007: Wells in a dry time / Mothers & Daughters / The Orchid of Divine Retribution / Weather inventions / The dirty shepherds / Poor Booker's bones / Lightning / Brahms / "No filthy doves that tempt" / Some unapproachable horses / Gone with the Wings / "Parable of the Capsized Canoe" / John Clare / Mistletoe / News of war /

Plus:  Poems by finalists for the 2007 Glasgow-Shenandoah Prize for Emerging Writers

15th Annual Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway, Cape May, NJ
January 18 – 21, 2008

It’s not too late to sign up for the Poetry Workshops led by Renée Ashley, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Kurt Brown, Douglas Goetsch, Kathleen Graber, James Richardson and a dozen or so others, and rooms are available at the Grand Hotel on the Oceanfront in Cape May, NJ. What’s that? You want to take a break from poetry? Okay, sign up for Song Writing with Nancy Falkow flying in from Dublin or get your hands dirty in Evoking Painted Memories in Shape & Form with award winning visual artist Barbara Bullock. Oh, you want to work in prose. I get it. We just added a 4th section of Creative Nonfiction, but it will fill up quickly so hurry up.

Our registration form may be downloaded from our web site. Questions? Call Peter Murphy toll free at 888-887-2105 or email info@wintergetaway.com. You won’t regret it.

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• Sixty Poems by Charles Simic, reviewed by Barbara Berman. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Robert Pinsky introduces a poem by Edward Thomas. (The Washington Post)
• Bill Press reviews The Pleasure of the Damned, by Charles Bukowski, edited by John Martin. (The Washington Post)
• Richard Tillinghast on Dennis O'Driscoll's Reality Check. (Dublin Review of Books)
• Susan Stewart on Robert Creeley's Selected Poems, 1945-2005, edited by Benjamin Friedlander. (The Nation)
• Frieda Hughes introduces a poem by Angela Readman. (The Times)
• Ted Kooser introduces a poem by Rynn Williams. (American Life in Poetry)
• Jean Sprackland's Tilt honored in the poetry category. (BBC)
• Joan Acocella on the poet, the phenomenon and Kahlil Gibran: The Collected Works. (The New Yorker)

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4. Selected New Arrivals

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

• More Daring Escapes, Steven Huff (Red Hen Press)
• New Wings, Robyn Bolam (Bloodaxe Books)
• The Shipwreck Dress, Terri Witek (Orchises Press)
• Confessions: Selected and Edited, Llyn Clague (Ibbetson Street Press)
• Pure Reason, Nikos Stangos (Thames & Hudson)
• Cartography of Water, Mike Burwell (NorthShore Press)

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5. This Week’s Featured Poets

Monday - Padraig Rooney
Tuesday - Ann Killough
Wednesday - Chris Martin
Thursday - Herberto Helder / tr. Alexis Levitin
Friday - Benjamin S. Grossberg
Saturday - Li-Young Lee
Sunday - Susan Andrews Grace

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6. Featured Poets December 31 - January 6, 2007

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

Monday - Teresa Leo
Tuesday - D. H. Tracy
Wednesday - Lawrence Raab
Thursday - Oliver de la Paz
Friday - Peter Campion
Saturday - Simon Perchik
Sunday - Rusty Morrison

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

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

Ben Lerner - "Twenty-One Gun Salute for Ronald Reagan"
Seth Abramson - "Public Defender"
Claudia Rankine - "Backed up in the Soul (Collected from CNN)"
Mary Cornish - "Lotus Feet"
Maura Stanton "God's Ode to Creation"
David B. Goldstein - "Modesto"
Nancy Pagh - "I Believe I Could Kneel"

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8. Poem From Last Year

Twenty-One Gun Salute for Ronald Reagan

I am wearing a Mikhail Gorbachev Halloween mask.
Blood is a vegetable when it forms part of a school lunch.
Tell the boys to go out there and win one for me.
The former president entered my room at night.
We celebrated by breaking off pieces of the wall.
I want the tone to have a very broad surface in relation to its depth.
I want a gun for protection.
              I want the form to enact the numbing it describes.
              I would shoot myself only in self-defense.

Pornography considered as a weapon system and v.v.
An accurate Civil War reenactment should include reinstating the draft.
The stigma attached to a diplomatically communicated disease.
It's important to talk to your readers about drugs.
The nipple is just visible under the anchorwoman's blouse.
This is your tax dollars hard at work.
I have deleted many beautiful lines.
              A highly accurate weapon housed in a silo.
              I can't stop crying.

I was drunk the night of the accident.
All the other painters were like, Why didn't I think of that?
I have agreed not to defend Poland from the east.
I have agreed not to defend Poland from the East.
Mom says we can keep it if we feed it.
Nightlights go out all over America.
Brutus is urging his comrades to seize a fleeting opportunity.
              We salivate at the sound of the bell.
              That part of the concept corresponding to the wrist

is slit, emitting music.
There go the conventions Dad gave his life to protect.
The Soviet director argued convincingly against the use of sound.
Characterized by alternating rigidity and extreme flexibility.
The president's legacy is speaking slowly.
An epistemology borrowed from game shows.
Love is made to highly realistic dolls.
              The passivity of dolphins has been wildly exaggerated.
              Abortion is murder.

A child could have painted that.
We dipped cicadas in WD-40 and ignited them with punks.
Magnetic resonance imaging reveals a degenerate hemisphere.
A diamond cheval-de-frise tops the White House.
The floral arrangement is based on outmoded ideology.
I am unmatched in my portrayal of subtle human emotions.
Workers report cracks in our mode.
              There is no beauty like the beauty of a throwaway line
              the split second before it's thrown.

We carried home the reader shoulder high.
I neither regret nor recall my presidency.
Carefully equilibrated parts designed to move in the breath.
It can easily be converted into a fully automatic.
Mikey likes it.
I prefer apostasy from the top down to belief from the bottom up.
You must cross four bases in a diamond pattern in order to score.
              The bang caused by the shockwave
              preceding an aircraft traveling at the speed of sound

is my middle name.
I am attempting to stress the absence of hope while implying resignation.
A trademark used in a figurative context and in lowercase.
Minute hooks fasten to a corresponding strip with a surface of uncut pile.
A moment of unprecedented clarity experienced as a loss.
The starlings nesting in the bell's flared opening
did not hear the toll that slew them.
              This is a masterpiece on a very grand scale.
              I have drastically relaxed the standards of sexual behavior.

The pathos is visible when you hold the poem to the light.
She comes twice a month, in the first and third quarters of the moon.
The Soviets have prevailed.
I am beloved for my hoarse voice, ample nose, and timeworn hat.
The silvery leaves change position at nightfall.
What if we start over underground?
I propose truth is reached by a continuing dialectic.
              I disagree.
              Your life isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

My practical designs include a 1934 Sears refrigerator
and the interiors of NASA spacecraft.
Infinite Mind; Spirit; Soul; Principle; Life; Truth; Love.
An ideal cage bird given the pronounced affection among mates.
I am fond of lightning without audible thunder.
Reach out and touch someone.
Even the most conservative among us have lost all faith
              in the possibility of evoking a common cultural framework.
              Nobody moves

and nobody gets hurt.
The stoatlike creature symbolizes guilt.
The meanings detonate at preset depths.
I have never felt like a real man.
The holocaust is advanced tentatively to test public reaction.
Weeping is substantially, but not technically,
an admission of wrongdoing.
              Flight attendant: Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my—
              Control tower: Take deep breaths.

A quick search has turned up the appropriate affect.
I respect the silky detail of your still-life paintings.
If you had been hypnotized, silly, you wouldn't know it.
This way the reader can answer other incoming calls.
Proceeds from the arms sales were then funneled to the Contras.
They held my father down and shaved his beard.
America is the A-team among nations,
              bursting with energy, courage, and determination.
              May I put my tongue in your ear?

Never wake a sleepwalker.
The Orient has regained the lamp and we are doomed.
Such a process of repetition is called reduplication.
The passion to be reckoned upon is fear.
The audience hears the voice of an on-screen character
who is not seen speaking.
These angels will eat anything—demon, sparrow, angel.
              My ability to appeal to white Southerners
              has diminished considerably

since I posed nude in the pages of Foreign Policy.
My government dropped an aluminum soap of various fatty acids
on my pen pal and her family.
Why don't we blame the sinking on Spain?
Financial benefits accorded to big business will be passed down to consumers.
Reading is cool.
A little shadow enhances the memory.
              We conduct ourselves in a free and easy manner
              but at heart are false and cold.

"God Bless America" was memorably sung by Kate Smith.
They were married hours before their double suicide.
You never called me before I was famous.
The names of the dead are inscribed in the wall.
The play is making Hamlet's mother uncomfortable.
I can't feel my legs.
The limit of latitude past which trees will not grow.
              Tear down this wall.
              Let them eat snow.

Then, without warning, our guiding star burned out.
We stood around the sleeping infant to see if she was breathing.
The poet notes that beautiful days and seasons do not last.
My emergence from my mother was captured on film.
All I ask is that we stop executing the mentally handicapped.
The stadium lights prevent the cereus from blooming.
But what if the mentally handicapped want to be executed?
              Big Bird towers over the human actors.
              We have both the right and duty to expand

into the blasted lands of southwest Asia.
Let's add touches of ethnic instrumentation.
I am attracted to women I do not respect.
The child makes a substantial advancement in poetics
with a canister of hair spray and a Bic.
Then you wake up next to a war criminal.
A rapid slide through a series of consecutive tones.
              The memorial will have to be continuous.
              Lift every voice and sing.

Your brother told me he feels mostly dead on the inside.
The strings are damped by wood and metal.
Station signals, picked up by elevated antennas
are delivered by cable to the receivers of subscribers.
Sexual abstinence is a partial solution.
A vague but strong attraction draws me to Moscow.
The white prizefighter doesn't have a prayer.
              Entities should not be multiplied needlessly.
              I can get you a healthy baby for five hundred dollars.

It's a lot better if you take out the plot.
Silvered surfaces face the vacuum.
The nightingale filled the pauses between sobs.
Mechanically separated chicken parts.
Crocodiles weep to attract victims.
There are such moments in life, dear reader, such feelings ...
One can but point to them—and pass them by.
              All that remains of pleasure is frottage.
              The clouds were sown with crystals of dry ice

to stimulate rain for the president's funeral.
Private-sector affluence, public-sector squalor.
The hostage is growing romantically attached to her captor.
Jesus likes me.
My visit to the dermatologist possessed a nightmarish quality.
Mercy, the speaker is instructing Shylock, must be given freely.
Then this girl stood up.
              She couldn't have been more than sixteen.
              What if we just stop killing people

no matter our reasons?
Mathematics and literature are antagonistic cultures.
The camera moves steadily on the dolly.
Tempered to break into rounded grains instead of jagged shards.
I orbited the earth forty-eight times aboard Vostok 6.
A term for dreamless sleep no longer in scientific use.
What about the love, she asked,
              the love, the love
              the love?

People were laughing and booing.
The studio manager was waving his arms.
The candidate said something about the road to hell.
Updates are ready to install.
Splash paint to achieve a spontaneous effect.
Children gain pleasure from both passing and withholding.
Oyez, oyez, oyez.
              They slipped the surly bonds of earth and touched the face of God.
              Is this thing on?

Ben Lerner
Angle of Yaw
Copper Canyon Press

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Copyright © 2006 by Ben Lerner. All rights reserved. Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.