Poetry News

Happy Valentine’s Day / All That / & Emily Critchley

By Harriet Staff

The Los Angeles Review of Books has asked some of their favorite poets to read poems to you! Heart-Shaped Box: LARB Poetry Valentine Edition includes Dan Beachy-Quick, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Natalie Diaz, Alex Dimitrov, Eloise Klein Healy, Sean Hill, Brett Fletcher Lauer, Dana Levin, Adrian Matejka, Jill McDonough, Lynn Melnick, John Murillo, Meghan O’Rourke, Jessica Piazza, Sarah Vap, and Matthew Zapruder.

Flavorwire also has poets choosing poems–Dimitrov makes an appearance there, too, talking Plath.

We’re also having a good time reading every post tagged with “Love” at Lauren Berlant’s Supervalent Thought.

Then there’s the fourteenth issue of LVNG Magazine, which was released today, and is chock-full of great work.

So HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY. We don’t usually think about love poems unless someone wants us to read one at a wedding, y’know (a joke!), but here’s a fantastic one from Emily Critchley’s Love / All That / & OK. She knows a thing or two about love, we daresay.

from ‘The Sonnets’
 
I took it for a “door” because that’s what
the man told me. Tried to walk
through it. Couldn’t
take your time, couldn’t
take mine. Unannounced.
While the arch leans bilingual
& equivocal.
Not backed by police
or any kind of force.
So B’s furry but not all that ‘cute’
no more ~ an intellectual thing ~
Like small & pointy, but lacking
brightness, see? & I like buildings
that match structural intent wth design
 
 
 
In summer. Flotilla of scraps
pulled into remnants
by a dead pulley system.
B is right, straight, & points (i)
his dick into the crowd.
Don’t hype up sympathy
for laughs, we cld do this
feelingly if our guts were only
in it, not the cat.
Well, hey, who’s counting
whose failure to be integral, honest,
whole. The sign said
for belief go right
& right again







(i) ‘I’m free, right, and point a gun,’ Catherine Wagner, 
‘everyone in the room is a representative of the world at large’

Tags: Emily Critchley, Los Angeles Review of Books
Posted in Poetry News on Thursday, February 14th, 2013 by Harriet Staff.