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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

A quick update on our extended spring fund drive: our totals through Friday's online and snail mail: $47,445. Thank you so much, all!

Two more weeks to go in our spring drive: if you've not yet made a donation, please join your friends-in-poetry and help us close the gap to our goal of $55,000! You'll find everything you need to contribute by credit card, PayPal, or check on our secure donation page, where you will also be able to follow our progress toward our goal.

In the meantime: on Tuesday we continue our series of prose features with "What Is It Anyway," from Quote Poet Unquote: Contemporary Quotations on Poets and Poetry, edited by Dennis O'Driscoll, just out from Copper Canyon Press:

"Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley."
—Charles Simic

"Poetry is energy, it is an energy-storing and an energy-releasing device."
—Miroslav Holub

"Poetry is the eroticization of thought—psychic vitality."
—Cal Bedient

"A poem... is the attire of feeling: the literary form where words seem tailor-made for memory or desire."
—Carol Ann Duffy

Look for it on Tuesday on our news page.

Thank you all once again for your loyalty to Poetry Daily and thank you again and again for your support! Enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller
Editors

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2. Sponsor Messages

Subscribe to The Kenyon Review!
Subscribe to The Kenyon Review today!  Receive four issues of the best contemporary fiction, poetry, essays and reviews for $30.  Want more? Receive eight issues for $50.  Luminous writing, extraordinary covers, exceptional talent.  Subscribe online today!

Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award
$2500 & Publication
A first book of poems will be selected from an open competition. The winner receives publication with Southern Illinois University Press and a $1000 prize. The winner also receives $1500 as an honorarium for a reading at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. $25 entry fee. Postmark deadline: July 1, 2008.
Mail to:
Crab Orchard First Book Award
Faner 2380 - Mail Code 4503
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
1000 Faner Drive
Carbondale, IL 62901

For guidelines, visit us online ....

VABC Broadside Contest—The Taste Test
The Virginia Arts of the Book Center is running a poetry contest to hear about what blooms your buds. Pick a taste, any taste. Make it good, make it bad, make it salty. Our mouths should water.

The prize: a limited edition letterpress broadside, created by VABC artists, and a special appearance on Poetry Daily’s internationally reviewed website.

Contest Guidelines: Entry fee $10 for two poems. Deadline: June 1
Form, eligibility, and full details here ...

Joiner Center Writers' Workshop
William Joiner Center's 21st Annual Writers' Workshop, June 16-27, at UMass Boston, situated on Boston Harbor. Taught by a distinguished and caring faculty.

Instruction in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, playwriting, and translation. Faculty includes: Fred Marchant, Demetria Martínez, Doug Anderson, Brian Turner, Larry Heinemann, Carolyn Forché, Sam Hamill, Bruce Weigl, and others. Workshop classes, seminars, consultations and reading series.

Letter of interest and writing sample required. Tuition: $400 two weeks; $220 one week; deposit, $25. Visit us online for more details. Phone: 617-287-5850. E-mail: michael.sullivan@umb.edu

Mendocino Coast Writers Conference
The Mendocino Coast Writers Conference announces its 2008 faculty: Daphne Gottlieb, poet, Susan Woolridge, poet, James D. Houston, Novelist, Marianne Vil***uva, Short Fiction, Jody Gehrman, Young Adult, Michael Datcher, Memoir. For more details, visit our website ...

Shenandoah
A German air show suddenly goes wrong / Brandon Schrand’s journey to self down the bone road / Ha Jin, Laphroaig, Lucy Ferriss, Jennifer Chang / Julie Speed’s red horse / "a knife at the center of the earth" / a new look at Frost's "The Star-Splitter" /  Joyce Carol Oates's "Bleeed" / David Kirby on the Impressionists and "The Phantom Empire" / mothers & sons / sea & shore / Albert Goldbarth on celery, Vermeer, mules, hard evidence, ore & "Trees and flowers – again?" / Laura Brodie's account of a woman in desperate need of Spiderman / AND "fireflies and wind-stir, on which these words ride" Visit us online...

Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference
For Poets With a Book-Length Manuscript: first conference to provide the faculty, connections, and method necessary to set poets with a completed or in-process manuscript on a path towards publication.
 
Faculty includes editors and publishers Jeffrey Levine (Tupelo Press), Martha Rhodes (Four Way Books), Jeffrey Shotts (Graywolf Press), Susan Kan (Perugia Press), Peter Conners (BOA) and others; workshop leaders include Joan Houlihan (Concord Poetry Center); Frederick Marchant (Suffolk University), Ellen Doré Watson (Smith College), Steven Cramer (Lesley University), Daniel Tobin (Emerson College) and others.

Latino Poetry Review
Latino Poetry Review (LPR) publishes book reviews, essays, and interviews with an eye towards spurring inquiry and dialogue. LPR recognizes that Latino and Latina poets in the 21st century embrace, and work out of, a multitude of aesthetics. With this in end, its critical focus is the poem and its poetics. LPR is published by Letras Latinas—the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
In addition to workshops there are panel discussions, readings, poetry & song concerts, conversation, socials, and much more. Set in historic West Chester, Pennsylvania the conference nurtures craft in a pleasantly
egalitarian community.

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• David Biespiel highlights Dennis O'Driscoll's Quote Poet Unquote: Contemporary Quotations on Poets and Poetry. (The Oregonian)
• Katha Pollitt reviews That Little Something by Charles Simic. (The New York Times)

• Will Carol Ann Duffy become England's first woman poet laureate? (Guardian Unlimited)
• Adam Phillips reviews Stephen Romer's Yellow Studio. (Guardian Unlimited)
• Mary Karr introduces poems by Emily Dickinson. (The Washington Post)
• Charles Bainbridge notes Hidden River by Stephanie Norgate and The Recreation of Night by Tamara Fulcher. (Guardian Unlimited)
• Ruth Padel reviews Moniza Alvi's Europa and Split World: Poems 1990-2005. (Guardian Unlimited)
• And more....

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4. Selected New Arrivals

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

Satin Cash, Lisa Russ Spaar (Persea Books)

Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography, Stanley Plumly (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

The Dirty Side of the Storm, Martha Serpas (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

Matter of Fact, Eamon Grennan (Graywolf Press)

Colosseum, Katie Ford (Graywolf Press)

They Lift Their Wings to Cry, Brooks Haxton (Alfred A. Knopf)

The Four Seasons, ed. J. D. McClatchy (Everyman's Library)

A Bigger Boat: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Scene, ed. Susan McAllister, Don McIver, Mikaela Renz, Daniel S. Solis (University of New Mexico Press)

Reflections from Pete's Pond, H. Palmer Hall (Pecan Grove Press)

Coming To Terms, H. Palmer Hall (Pecan Grove Press)

Praying Up the Sun, David Taylor (Pecan Grove Press)

Nothing to You, Suzanne Roberts (Pecan Grove Press)

Visiting Home, Paul J. Willis (Pecan Grove Press)

The Heat of What Comes, Joel B. Peckham (Pecan Grove Press)

Weekend Update, Mark DeFoe (Main Street Rag)

Disappointed Psalms, Brian Clements (Meritage Press)

And more....

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5. This Week’s Featured Poets

Monday - Eavan Boland
Tuesday - Debora Greger
Wednesday - Sarah Lindsay
Thursday - John Koethe
Friday - Astrid Cabral / tr. Alexis Levitin
Saturday - Jeff Hardin
Sunday - Jacqueline Osherow

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6. Featured Poets May 12 - May 18, 2008

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

Monday - Brian Turner
Tuesday - Julio Martínez Mesanza / tr. Don Bogen
Wednesday - Seth Abramson
Thursday - Yi-Fen Chou
Friday - Darcie Dennigan
Saturday - Allan Peterson
Sunday - Phillis Levin

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

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

Reginald Shepherd - "Eve's Awakening"
Eric Pankey - "Corpus Hermeticum"
David Baker - "Posthumous Man"
Kathleen Jamie - "The Well at the Broch of Gurness"
Rachel Rose - "Ablution"
Regan Good - "A Stone Should Mark the Place"
John Hennessy - "Dialing While Intoxicated"

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8. Poem From Last Year

A Stone Should Mark the Place

In a public park, fringed by wilderness.

No marker there, no sense of what occupied space—
the invisible drift that caused my heart to break.

Two dogs, both wolves, rush and jangle as they race.

Dogs run with mouths open, growl in raucous, ferocious merriment.

Ancestral wolves push through the dogs' domestic faces.

Dark waters, wet leaves, O strange and shifting place,
where what's done can never be undone—

The natural law is wearing winter's face.

O strange and shifting race, with mouths open, two dogs,
no, two wolves run toward me, and still nothing marks the place—

Regan Good
The Paris Review
Spring 2007

Copyright © 2007 by The Paris Review Foundation. All rights reserved. Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.