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Poetry Magazine

Poetry Magazine

November 2009

Poems by James Schuyler; a portfolio of new work by 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellows Eric Ekstrand, Chloë Honum, Joseph Spece, Jeffrey Schultz, and Malachi Black; translations of Gottfried Benn by Michael Hofmann; “The Poet Takes a Walk” featuring Peter Cole, Kay Ryan, W.S. Di Piero, and others.

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NOVEMBER PODCAST

Each month the editors of Poetry magazine talk about the issue. Listen here to the most recent episode.
BROWSE THE ARCHIVE »

Poetry Takes a Walk
New poems from James Schuyler, new translations of Gottfried Benn, plus Peter Cole on walking in Jerusalem.

MORE EPISODES »

DISCUSSION GUIDE

Guide Interested in discovering other ways to approach a poem? Have a look at our discussion guide for the September 2009 issue.

DISCUSSION GUIDES AND OTHER LEARNING RESOURCES »

Current Issue

Featured Poem

The Young Hebbel

Gottfried Benn

You carve and sculpt, the deft chisel

in a soft shapely hand.

I beat my head against the marble

to knock it into shape,

my hands work for a living.

I am still a long way from myself,

but I want to become Me!

There is someone deep in my blood

who cries out for homemade

Olympuses and worlds for humans.

My mother is such a poor wretch,

you’d laugh if you saw her,

we live in a tight annex,

built onto the end of the village.

My youth is like a scab:

under it there is a wound

that every day leaks blood.

It disfigures me.

I don’t need sleep,

food just enough to keep from starving.

An implacable struggle

and the world bristling with sword points.

Each one hungers for my heart.

Each one, I, unarmed,

must melt in my blood.

Featured Prose

San Francisco

By W. S. Di Piero

Habit is a stabilizing psycho-biological compass. I have a major one: to take a walk as soon as I get home after even a short flight, not just because I don’t have a car and the ground is where I feel ready to deal with the things of the world, but because when I’m up in the ether, I feel physically incomplete. Locomotion makes me more palpable to myself, fleshed out, self-locatable. So I observe the habit, climb three flights to my apartment, drop my bags, walk back down the stairs, then down the hill through my neighborhood. If I’m still travel-dressy, I buy my lettuce and avocados at the corner market or plant myself in a cafe wearing suit and white shirt or whatever I wrapped myself in before departing that now-nearly-forgotten-wherever. READ MORE »