Article
From the magazine:How Pantoums Can Tell Intergenerational Stories
By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion
On memory, oral history, and honoring elders.
Category
Pantoum
A Malaysian verse form in quatrains with an intricate repeating pattern.
Showing 1-20 of 23
- Article
From the magazine:
Writing Prompt: Pantoum
By River 瑩瑩 DandelionOn translating oral history into poetry.
- Poem
From the magazine:how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (ii)
By River 瑩瑩 Dandelionwe wore watermelon husks to hide
lost cargo floating east to hong kong
water lilies & crickets our last… - Poem
From the magazine:how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i)
By River 瑩瑩 Dandelionyou had to know the currents, & the sun
stay shallow to keep warm in the waters.
you had to believe you… - Glossary TermsA Malaysian verse form in quatrains with an intricate repeating pattern.
- Poem
From the magazine:
Convergence
By Kimiko HahnIambic lines drafted in silt
are revised when glaciers melt
so verses ending in heroic couplet
are more epigram than sonnet.
Revised when glaciers melt,
continents submit to a warning.
The land is more epigram than sonnet
—no—more erasure than given form.
As continents admit the warming,
the coasts... - PoemBy Natalie E. IllumA swimming pool hotter than bathwater.
Chlorine haze. My mother along the edge
encouraging me, with my Curious George, to swim.
Though I liked the Man with the Yellow Hat better.
Chlorine hazy and my mother at the edge.
Swim teacher says my legs are... - Poem
From the magazine:
Halcyon Kitchen
By Kiandra JimenezGranma cautioned in a kitchen off Century and Hoover:
Never throw your hair away. Burn it. Till yellow
cornbread bakes and greens release pot liquor,
her garnet-polished fingers unraveled each cornrow.
Never throw your hair away, burn it till yellow
flames flick up and turn... - PoemBy Chip LivingstonAccept my need and let me call you brother,
Slate blue oyster, wet sand crustacean,
In your hurrying to burrow, wait. Hover.
Parse opening’s disaster to creation’s
Slate, to another blue-eyed monstrous sand crustacean,
Water-bearer. Hear the ocean behind me,
Pursued, asking to be opened, asking... - PoemBy Donald JusticeOur lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don't remember... - PoemBy John Ashbery1.
Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of society
working as a team. They didn’t just happen. There was no guesswork.
The people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it.
We see the results in works as diverse... - PoemBy Natalie DiazHe sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps
when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.
O God, he said. O God.
He wants to kill me, Mom.
When Mom unlocked and opened the front door
at 3 a.m., she was in her nightgown,... - PoemBy Randall MannIf there is a word in the lexicon of love,
it will not declare itself.
The nature of words is to fail
men who fall in love with men.
It will not declare itself,
the perfect word. Boyfriend seems ridiculous:
men who fall in love with men
deserve... - PoemBy Evie Shockleydreaming the lives of the ancestors,
you awake, justly terrified of this world:
you could dance underwater and not get wet,
you hear, but the pressure is drowning you:
you’re awake, but just terrified of this world,
where all solids are ice: underwater boogie,
you hear,... - PoemBy Sasha SteensenPerhaps the universe is an extinguished building
with blue banners strung along
and the forest, more like a commodity
bordering bushes and asphalt,
something else to string our blue banners on.
Never was restoration swifter:
the leafless trees, the asphalt
less splintered and more splendid.
Never was restoration... - Poem
From the magazine:
O, She Says
By Hailey LeithauserO, she says (because she loves to say O),
O to this cloud-break that ravels the night,
O to this moon, its mouthful of sorrow,
O shallow grass and the nettle burr’s bite,
O to heart’s flare, its wobbly satellite,
O step after... - PoemBy Randall MannThis is what he dreams of:
a map of burned land,
a mound of dirt
in the early century’s winter.
A map of burned land?
A country is razed
in the early century’s winter.
And God descends.
A country is raised
because of industry.
And God descends,
messengers rush inside
because of...