At some moment every day I call up a memory of one or another of my family members who have passed on, so I was especially taken with this poem by Tim Nolan, who lives in Minnesota. His forthcoming book is ‘The Field,’ (New Rivers Press, October 2016).
Several years ago, I co-edited an anthology of poems about birds, and I wish I’d had the opportunity to include this one, a delight. J. Allyn Rosser lives in Ohio. Her most recent book is “Mimi’s Trapeze” (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014).
I’m well into my seventies, and I warm to simple, peaceful scenes. Here’s a fine love poem by Patricia Traxler, a Kansas poet, whose newest book, “Naming the Fires,” will be out in early 2016.
Glenna Luschei, who makes her home in California, has traveled the world, and like all good poets has paid attention to what she’s seen. Here’s a fine poem not from Cambodia or Greece but from Tucson, about the belongings some of us leave behind for others to carry ahead. It’s from her book,…
Twenty years ago my wife and I had visitors from New York, and their car broke down on a country road about a mile from our home. One of them panicked because there were no phone booths from which to call for help. Nebraska is a place where there can be a lot of room between one land-line an…
The following is just one of three fine poems John Drury, who lives and teaches in Ohio, has written about the summer jobs he had when young. Many of us have thought, with him, “So this is experience,” though we might have added a question mark. His most recent book of poems is Sea Level Ris…
Surely, some of you have paged through an old book and come upon a dried flower, fragile as a spider web, the colors faded. Here’s a fine poem about pressing flowers by Chelsea Woodard of New Hampshire, from her book “Vellum.”
I once knew an artist who seemed to live on those little envelopes of free sugar that one can find on tables in restaurants. And he took the little “watercolor pans” of jelly, too, stuffing his pockets. Here’s a poem by Ned Balbo, who lives in Baltimore, about another sugar snatcher.
How’s this poem for its ability to collapse all the years from childhood to middle age in a matter of fifteen short lines? George Bilgere is one of this column’s favorite poets. He lives and teaches in Ohio.
Poets often do their best work when they’re telling us about something they’ve seen without stepping into the poem and talking about themselves. Here’s a lovely poem of observation by Terri Kirby Erickson, who lives in North Carolina.
