November 2017 Vol. II No. XI
Not your ordinary poetry magazine!
If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!
Regular Features Pages
​General Poetry with Suzanne Robinson
Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin
Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch
Translations with S. Ye Laird
International Poetry
with Rameeza Nasim, and Tendai Rinos Mwanaka
Sentimental Poetry with Anthony Watkins
​ModPo & Experimental Poetry with Anthony Watkins
Fiction
Better Than Fiction!
Featured Poem of the month​
I AM A WOMAN WHO
​
I am a woman who sits beside the ocean,
listens to its rhythm
and hears the song of life.
​
I am a woman who loves trees,
tells them her stories
then listens to their wisdom.
I am a woman who dreams of fireplaces on rainy days,
looks out at squalls on the water,
and lights candles to brighten the gray.
​
I am a woman who sees a face in flowers
and smiles back at them.
I am a woman who genuflects to look into children’s eyes,
delights in their stories,
and hears the wisdom that comes from their lips.
​
I am a woman who rises with the sun,
sits on the moon,
and rides a star in her dreams.
​
The author of the acclaimed book, A Life Interrupted: Living with Brain Injury (Pearlsong Press), Louise Mathewson’s short stories, narrative essays and poems have appeared internationally in numerous publications including Wordgathering: Journal of Disability Poetry, and the first volume of the bestselling book series, Cup of Comfort. A traumatic brain injury survivor, Louise advocates for those who have been affected by brain injury, stroke and other disabilities. Online at www.louisemathewson.com.
REFLECTION SINKS
In a ray of sunshine
she sits atop the lake
rippling beside her
as she shivers in the breeze
but warmed by sun she calms
her reflection sharp as a mirror
until the sun sets
and the water rises
as she begins to sink.
SNOW REMNANTS
The crack in the pavement
smiles with remnants of snow
still gleaming between its borders
until afternoon sun melts it
into a tiny river
frozen at sunset.
​
Diane Webster grew up in Eastern Oregon before she moved to Colorado. She enjoys drives in the mountains to view all the wildlife and scenery and takes amateur photographs. Writing poetry provides a creative outlet exciting in images and phrases Diane thrives in. Her work has appeared in "The Hurricane Review," "Philadelphia Poets," "Illya's Honey," and other literary magazines.
....and now...
...from the mind of...
the Mad Poet
In Memoriam Richard Wilbur (1921-2017)
​ Better Than Starbucks The Interview
​Richard Wilbur interviewed by Jason Gray in the summer of 2004
This interview was first published in
The Missouri Review, Volume 27, Number 3, Winter 2004
Richard Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017) was born in New York City. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize, for New & Collected Poems (1988) and Things of this World (1956), for which he also won the National Book Award. His other numerous honors included the Wallace Stevens Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Frost Medal, the Bollingen Prize, the T. S. Eliot Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Prix de Rome Fellowship. He was a former poet laureate of the United States and a chancellor emeritus of the Academy of American Poets. Retired from a teaching career that included Harvard University, Wesleyan University and Smith College, he lived in Cummington, Massachusetts, at the time of this interview. His books included eight volumes of poetry, children’s poetry, several translations of Molière and two books of prose. His new Collected Poems was released at the end of 2004.
​Jason Gray is the author of Photographing Eden, winner of the Hollis Summers Prize, and two chapbooks, How to Paint the Savior Dead and Adam & Eve Go to the Zoo. His poems have been featured in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, The New Criterion, and elsewhere. He is the associate editor of The Writer's Chronicle.
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;
Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”
Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.”
​
​
Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” from Collected Poems 1943-2004. Copyright © 2004 by Richard Wilbur. Reprinted with the permission of Harcourt, Inc. This material may not be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.