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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.

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Current Issue

Featured Poem

Identification

Wisława Szymborska

It’s good you came—she says.

You heard a plane crashed on Thursday?

Well so they came to see me

about it.

The story is he was on the passenger list.

So what, he might have changed his mind.

They gave me some pills so I wouldn’t fall apart.

Then they showed me I don’t know who.

All black, burned except one hand.

A scrap of shirt, a watch, a wedding ring.

I got furious, that can’t be him.

He wouldn’t do that to me, look like that.

The stores are bursting with those shirts.

The watch is just a regular old watch.

And our names on that ring,

they’re only the most ordinary names.

It’s good you came. Sit here beside me.

He really was supposed to get back Thursday.

But we’ve got so many Thursdays left this year.

I’ll put the kettle on for tea.

I’ll wash my hair, then what,

try to wake up from all this.

It’s good you came, since it was cold there,

and him just in some rubber sleeping bag,

him, I mean, you know, that unlucky man.

I’ll put the Thursday on, wash the tea,

since our names are completely ordinary—

Featured Prose

The Bee’s News: Four Books

By Abigail Deutsch

Explaining how his mother died, Lolita’s Humbert Humbert offers: “Picnic, lightning.” Perhaps that’s why Martha Zweig’s Monkey Lightning makes me think of picnics. Like ratatouille, her work gives off one flavor, than another, and tends toward the acidic. Like wine, she induces dizziness. Like taffy, she demands a long chew. READ MORE »