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Poetry Magazine

Poetry Magazine

September 2010

Poems from Daisy Fried, Geoffrey Hill, Ange Mlinko, David Shapiro, William Logan, Jacob Saenz, Yusef Komunyakaa, Matthew Zapruder, and Wislawa Szymborska; Tony Hoagland on the tribes of poetry and Michael Robbins on Robert Hass.

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SEPTEMBER PODCAST

Each month the editors of Poetry magazine talk about the issue. Listen here to the most recent episode.
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Nothing Plus the Idea of Chocolate
Poems from David Shapiro, Jacob Saenz, Maria Hummel, and Matthew Zapruder; Tony Hoagland on communication sickness and the poetics of vertigo.

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DISCUSSION GUIDE

Guide Interested in discovering other ways to approach a poem? Have a look at our discussion guide for the September 2010 issue.

DISCUSSION GUIDES AND OTHER LEARNING RESOURCES »

Current Issue

Featured Poem

The Shortest Night

Yusef Komunyakaa

I went into the forest searching

for fire inside pleading wood,

but I can’t say for how long

I was moored between worlds.

I heard a magpie’s rumination,

but I don’t know if its wings

lifted the moon or let it drift

slow as a little straw boat

set ablaze on a winding river.

I learned the yellow-eyed wolf

is a dog & a man. A small boy

with a star pinned to his sleeve

was hiding among thorn bushes,

or it was how the restless dark

wounded the pale linden tree

outside a Warsaw apartment.

Night crawls under each stone

quick as a cry held in the throat.

All I remember is my left hand

was holding your right breast

when I forced my eyes shut.

Then I could hear something

in the room, magnanimous

but small, half outside & half

inside, no more than a song—

an insomniac’s one prophecy

pressed against the curtains,

forcing the ferns to bloom.

Featured Prose

A Deeper Consideration

By Clive James

Had he not been a poet, John Berryman would have been a Shakespearean scholar, and well qualified for the task, even though his drinking habit was as ungovernable as his beard. In addition to his vast knowledge of the field, Berryman had unusually sensitive instrumentation for measuring the intensity of language. READ MORE »