Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 18
the idea of blackbirds, the bones of a feeling, an assembly of hares, and more
A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).
This week: the idea of blackbirds, the bones of a feeling, an assembly of hares, and more. Enjoy.
So hard
when I hear nothing
not to be nothing
falling on the concrete floor.I’ve noticed that there are no more blackbirds in our neighbourhood. I wonder if they are dying out everywhere now and what will happen to all the poems and songs in their honour? I love the Beatles song. In a few years’ time, perhaps no one will understand that the morning has become emptier and that an idea of blackbirds was important in our lives. Funny. How people cling to themselves and what has been. It’s somehow charming and nonsensical at the same time.
Kati Mohr, Curtains Are Not Necessarily More See-through In Broad Daylight
“Everything is covered in blood related to sound” (Pascal Quignard)
Pascal Quignard organized the International Festival of Baroque Opera and Theatre at Versailles in the early 1990s. However, in 1994, Quignard suddenly renounced all his musical activities. No more music, he declared. He was finished. What followed was the publication of a book, The Hatred of Music, on the power of music and what history reveals about the dangers it poses. These ten treatises about the danger in listening aim “to convey to what point music can become an object of hatred to someone who once adored it beyond measure.”
Quignard’s beef is actually with the omnipresence of sound, a sonic super-profusion that has metastasized into a force of death more than of life. “Rhythm holds man and attaches him like a skin on a drum,” he wrote. Q mines a pet peeve of Glenn Gould’s when he concludes that “concert halls are inveterate caves whose god is time.” Ultimately, it is an irresistible book about how we hear, and how what we hear can destroy it.
Alina Stefanescu, “The disordered and passionate application” of the non sequitur image.
There is not enough love to smother
every wound. A single day demands
five stages of grief and four stages of
anger. Or all nine parts of disbelief.
The summer sky explodes with
lightning in the late afternoon
as if it too can only take so much.There is a strangeness in normalcy
like it shouldn’t be and yet it
should. How else will the days
pass if we cannot play hopscotch
when we pass a chalk grid on a
side street, if we do not sing
along with the radio, even if we have
forgotten the lyrics, if we will not slow
down the last forty pages, because
a book must end, but not just yet.Rajani Radhakrishnan, How much do we need to know?
I don’t want to say a whole lot about the poems, as I often say more than needed. But the description is “studies in an undead mood.” And that’s how I feel about it: the book is guided by mood, ambience and impression, and it wrestles with pervasive dread. Also, uniquely among things I’ve put out, this one has pictures (nothing fancy, mostly internet detritus from my camera roll). See a couple samples below.
Lastly, the print is limited to 35 numbered copies. Don’t sleep! They’ll disappear.
RM Haines, NEW BOOK IS HERE
“Life is long,” a poet friend said to me recently as I was reckoning with a similar rupture. But life was not long for Emily Dickinson, who died suddenly in her fifties, not a single grey on her auburn hair in the small white casket cradling her body and a posy of violets. Life is a feather borrowed from the swift wing of time. If she had lived longer, perhaps Kate would have returned to spend her remaining days with Emily and not with her English lover, or perhaps they would have met again in perfect disenchantment, in perfect friendship. “If” is the widest word of all, the immense alternate universe in which all of our possible lives live. Hope is what we call the bridge between this universe and that one.
Dizzying, the tumult of waking. It seems as I watched, the early rhodie opened a bit more a bit more. Daily I stood under the crab apple to breathe in the rising perfume, a bit more a bit more, not wanting to exhale in the still cool morning, the usual human din briefly lulled to the dull roar of a distant dirt mover and plank-on-plank rattle from a neighbor’s construction crew. Buzz of bee moving through the whiteness above me. It was an intimate moment: me, the blossoms, the busy bee. The world was there but not.
Marilyn McCabe, windows. The windows turned to night and night turned into a heavy rain. Then the rain
In our hands we hold the lost,
but our bright eyes stare fiercely
into the heat, harm, hardship
that destroyed them, and thus us
as well, in some other way.
I don’t know if the crowds roar
or blood pounds red in my ears.PF Anderson, Mitzvah 121: Blow the Trumpets Before God In Times of Catastrophe #NaPoWriMo
This is the first new month that has started without my dad being here. I’ve learnt that I want to tell everyone what I learned from him. I’ve learned that one of the best things I can think of to do right now is carry forward the very special parts of him to the best of my ability. I’ve also learned that writing some of this down in a poem felt right, but that reading said poem when we gathered together to say goodbye to him required a large hanky and plenty of time for deep breaths. […]
The way he turned his head to look and smile
never minding being interrupted.
That quiet, gentle, I’m alright, thanks my love.
The time I called himfrom somewhere between Crawley and Croydon.
Parked up. Feeling lost.
To hear him tell me exactly where I was
based on the wrong turns I had taken.Sue Finch, SOMEBODY’S MISSING
My dad passed away this week. I feel shocked by this every time I say it. This post is not about my dad, but it felt wrong not to acknowledge that after the last few hard months, things here continue to be hard and sad.
Somehow, there’s still been joy and fun in the last couple of months too. This extrovert writer is especially happy when I get to throw myself into a sea of writers and spend days totally immersed in the writing world […]
Katie Manning, AWP, PCA, & the San Diego Writers Festival
I never want to forget that we live in a world like this, among creatures that know nothing of our human preoccupations. The paths were muddy and mucky, the sun warm on my face, the smell of wet earth and waking plants strong; nesting blackbirds scolded me from swaying reeds, and song sparrows and white-throated sparrows made music as beautiful as any I can imagine. I will miss going to the lake this year, so it’s important to me to find places and time closer to home where I can leave urban life behind for a while, rest, and recharge my senses and spirit. Meeting that turtle’s beady eye renewed my faith in nature, if not humanity, and that was enough for today!
Beth Adams, A Walk in the Woods on Election Day
I want to thrive. Today. Full stop. In spite of (waves arms wildly) everything. I want to thrive not as an act of resistance, but simply because I am 60 years old, and I don’t want to give away what’s left of my life waiting for some better time that might not come before I go. Since none of us ever know how many years we have left, this stance, I think, is valid for anyone at any age.
Rita Ott Ramstad, No such thing as bad weather?
On April 30 […] I felt like I walked into the light again, as the sciatica calmed and the cold faded out. It reminded me of emerging from serious depression, an experience I’ve had the bad and good fortune to undergo several times. Suddenly you look around and think, oh, I’m better, and only then realize how not-there you were for weeks. […]
It wasn’t the easiest trip, given the sciatica, but in other ways the timing was lucky, as in escaping Spain right before the big blackout. And while I could have used more energy during this first week of spring classes, my verve is perking back up as I need it for more barding around with this new book that is so much about my mother’s death as well as mycelium and other occult life. I just recorded a podcast with The Mushroom Hour; I will read at Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville on Sunday 5/4 (live and hybrid, sign up here); I’m joining the always virtual Wild and Precious Life series this Wednesday 5/7; and I’ll be in Baltimore for the Hot L series at Ivy Bookstore on 5/11. That last is Mother’s Day. I wonder if I’ve just delayed the seasonal sadness, or whether I’m genuinely healing from mother-loss, too?
Lesley Wheeler, Dark corridors
What is it knocking on the walls of this little house in the forest? Are we mostly scared of imaginary and unseen and unknown things? Are we afraid of monsters? Wild animals? Maybe zombies, werewolves, devils and demons? Or are we scared of actual threats like axe murderers and serial killers? Or let’s be honest here, are we scared of this alone time with our manuscript and the fact we have no excuses right now but to finish the work and write, write, write and push ourselves from night, towards day, towards the light and the last pages.
It is of course, mostly, the latter, and so instead of working on the book … I think I see a flicker in the night. Then I tell myself a wild horror story and scare myself rigid. I write this Substack post, it is all about fear and how I wish to boil the bones of this feeling down to get to the sticky glue.
Salena Godden, Fear Of The Last Pages
I’m working on an ekphrastic poetry collection titled The Artist’s House, inspired by my llongtime association with visual artists, musicians, dancers, and writers. My poetry and my novels often feature artists or a response to their work. It’s because I grew up with an artist father who painted constantly and invited many artists to our home and shared studios with them. He took us to working studios, local art exhibitions, and art museums in the Los Angeles area. More about my childhood with art and artists here.
The smell of oil paint and turpentine evokes these childhood memories and the wonder of a Saturday morning, watching my father mix oil paints and dash colors and shapes onto a white, gessoed canvas. In the mid-50s he painted these fishing boats at the dock in San Pedro, where we lived. It represented his passion for sport fishing. I loved the flaring spotlights, the night blues, and the way light and midnight blue meet and interpenetrate. My father’s time and focus on his art showed a lifelong devotion. Even as he eased into dementia, a brush was still in his hand. Once, in his basement studio, he confessed, “I don’t know how to mix paints anymore.” But he kept trying.
Rachel Dacus, Art & artists are a theme in my fiction and poetry
I’ve been reading a lot of contemporary poetry. It comforts me somehow, even when the poems are sad or angry poems (that seems to reflect the times, which poetry can do). Your own writing, who has it? Does it exist on some hard drive somewhere? You always were excellent at organizing things. A talent I envy and do not possess. […]
When a person we love dies, I guess there’s an impulse–almost an instinct–to memorialize them, at least among those of us in “Western societies.” Or maybe it is a human impulse, I can’t say. I have written too many poems of elegy, and there will be more; but sometimes, it takes awhile before I feel I have the right perspective or frame of mind to write about them, or about my feelings of loss. Today, so much reminded me of you, Beejay, that I had to write something. If not a poem, then an epistle–the way I used to write to you, of ordinary things, the garden, cats, seasons, poetry.
Happy birthday, wherever you are.
Ann E. Michael, Correspondences
It did make me feel somewhat philosophical, turning 52. I’m still around, even after multiple doctors said I wouldn’t be. I’ve lost friends in the last few years, friends who seemed much healthier than I am. So much seems random, out of our control. This leads me to think that maybe we should let go of some of the things that keep us from living a full, joyful life, right now. Don’t put off fun, or things you love. […]
Imagine my surprise when I discovered my poem, “Lessons You Learn from Final Girls,” from Field Guide to the End of the World, was up on the Daily Kos this week (right after Yusef Komunyakaa, whose birthday is apparently a day before mine) as birthday poets. See the link here.
Jeannine Hall Gailey, Birthday Dinosaurs, Birthday Poems on Daily Kos, Hummingbirds, and More
I woke up thinking about Frankenstein, about ways I might teach my British Lit class even if I’m off campus for some of the teaching days. I woke up thinking about online discussion posts, but now I’m thinking about a collage/erasure poem. Now I’m thinking about a wide range of projects that could use erasure and collage. It’s an interesting way of thinking about assessment: choose a page, make an erasure poem, add collage elements, and write analysis showing how your creation shows understanding of the work.
Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Routes to Erasure/Collage Poems
It was the dead time between Christmas and New Year and I couldn’t breathe, so I went outside for some air. My eldest joined me and we traipsed the pavements of our town as dusk fell, before turning onto a footpath to cross a playing field. Here, in the unlikeliest of settings, we encountered the mysterious circular assembly of hares, better known as a ‘parliament’ or ‘council’.
This remarkable sighting in the edgelands of north Bristol became a totem for me through the traumatic years during and after my divorce. A marvel few people have the privilege of witnessing had been revealed to me and one of my children: how, then, could we not get through this ordeal together?
Sadly, despite my magical thinking, our depleted family was further fractured by the inevitable fall-out of that rupture, with my eldest ultimately choosing to go no-contact with their three siblings and me. In an effort to make some sense of the situation, I began to explore this estrangement – carefully – through poetry, turning again to the hares in the hope I’d find some redemption through them.
At first, I expected this poem to be just one of forty or so that might comprise a collection, but during its writing it became more important than I’d anticipated, positioning itself as a potential envoi. At the same time, it increased in complexity, particularly with regard to time. As well as inhabiting what the critic, Jonathan Culler, calls ‘the lyric “now” or moment of utterance’, it looks back to when my eldest and I were apparently in step with each other, and forward to when I’ll be dead and the only reconciliation possible would be for my child to make alone. In this respect, it seems to be in the spirit of poems Thomas Hardy and Ted Hughes wrote for their dead wives, only with the status of narrator and addressee reversed.
Drop-in by Deborah Harvey (Nigel Kent)
I have an odd superstition about getting published.
I believe that the real goal of writing and sharing our work is not just to get fame and fortune, but rather to help us get connected to our authentic “tribe.” I have a belief that whoever gets published alongside me in a journal or anthology is someone I’m supposed to know – or their poem is one I’m supposed to read. […]
I therefore believe that every time I get a piece published, I need to read the full journal I’m published in, and if I don’t I believe the poetry gods punish me by refusing to give me any more acceptances until I do! Therefore, when I get a piece published, I make time to do this specific ritual that helps me not only make new poetry friends, but also find my next submission target.
Tresha Faye Haefner, A Strange Ritual That Helps Me Decide Where to Submit My Work
In preparation for my Creative Retirement Institute course on May Swenson, beginning next Tuesday afternoon, I’ve been reading Swenson’s poetry and a collection of essays, Body My House: May Swenson’s Work and Life, edited by Paul Crumbley and Patricia M. Gantt (Utah State Univ. Press, 2006). I also searched for my photographs from my visit to her archives at Washington University, St. Louis, and I found my 2022 blog post about it.
Believe me, I have come very close to contacting CRI and screaming, “I can’t do it!” But, in calmer moments, I think it will be a good distraction from all else that’s going on in my life. Show up, Bethany, it’s only 4 weeks, 8 hours total. Read some poems together, talk about the poems. Talk about Swenson’s creative life and ideas and how far the tendrils of her influence have reached. Easy-peasy.
Of course we will read “Question” and “Centaur,” also “Bleeding” and more of Swenson’s iconographs.
Bethany Reid, Nature: Poems Old and New
[Karen] Solie’s poems offer both deep wisdom and a lightness across the line; a sparkle, if you will, of truth, if that idea might still be one that holds any resonance: the heart of one true thing articulated across an otherwise landscape of dark. Her poems craft deep wells of meditative thinking, lines that turn a leaf over in one’s hand, to study every side.
The landscapes of her poem-scenes are solid, foundational; shifting from poem to poem but always returning, book after book, to the foundation of the people, physical detail, climate and intimacy of rural Saskatchewan, a sense of home and prairie Solie has in common with Prince Edward Island-based poet Bren Simmers [see my review of her latest collection here]: the further out either of them might move through the world, the stronger the pull to return back to the landscapes that shaped them. As Solie writes, as part of the extended and descriptive “THE GRASSLANDS”: “And when you do venture in / with your tire tracks and snake gaiters // the hospitality of grass / is a dry loaf, cracked cup, mattress of prairie wool, / northern bedstraw and great blanket flower, / wild licorice, clover, corn mint, bergamot, // and heat, rippling like curtains / as the grasshoppers saw away – / leave your packed lunch out they will eat it in an hour – [.]”
There is almost a kind of restlessness articulated through these poems, with an inability to remain still even across multiple poems on and around stillness, but rarely in the same geography, the same moment, beyond that aforementioned Saskatchewan (and Toronto, I’ve noticed). The poems, together, cite a restlessness, or perhaps a curiosity, perpetually seeking to reach across another horizon to seek a better understanding of what might be out there, whether through moments across geography, or even across the narrator’s own past. It it the clarity, one suspects, she seeks.
rob mclennan, Karen Solie, Wellwater: poems
Andrew Taylor, who was credited as editor of the vast two volume Collected Poems of Peter Finch in 2022, has now written a companion volume that is part-biography, part-critical analysis.
As I like much of Finch’s work, it was perhaps inevitable that I would appreciate Taylor’s efforts to give it perspective. […]
I’m not so sure about Taylor’s claim that Finch has been overlooked and underrated. You could say that most poets, short of poets laureate of one kind or another, always are. I think Finch has fought for his own space and recognition, partly through performance as well as through his willingness to engage socially or professionally with those who hold literary influence, and, perhaps because he has been so persistent, has become known and respected, I was going to say, within the poetry community, except there is no such thing. It’s just a place where some poets can be bothered to fight for validation and others can’t, so some are visible and others not so, or not at all. Finch has fought, and has done it, it seems to me, ferociously. Unlike those with less stamina, his reputation has increased and established itself over the decades. I admire him for that.
Bob Mee, THERE’S EVERYTHING TO PLAY FOR, THE POETRY OF PETER FINCH by ANDREW TAYLOR
In the British Library there’s a manuscript collection containing many of George Herbert’s Latin poems, including a little occasional epigram which is very probably also by Herbert, but for no obvious reason has been left out of previous editions of his work. The poem is about a gift of gloves.
Here is a transcription of the poem and my own translation:
Wren cum Chirothecis
Candida amicitiæ nascentis pignora, sed quæ
Nescio quo dicam nomine dono tibi
Græca mihi supplet, supplet vernacula nomen
Deficit ad numeros sola latina meos
Et iuste male nempe voco, quod debeo donum
Pollicitum satis est reddere; dono nihil.Pure tokens of a friendship that’s begun — but which
I cannot name — I give to you.
Both Greek and English offer me a name
It’s only Latin verse cannot contain
My gift. Fair’s fair; it would be wrong to call
What’s owed a gift; if I fulfill
A promise, then that’s not a gift at all.Occasional verse of this kind — I mean poems written to and for a specific person, to mark a specific event — are often the most difficult to interpret. Frequently we just don’t know enough about the context — their attitudes, relevant recent events, what they agree or disagree on, which of them is the senior or more powerful, what their shared intimacies or injokes might be — to be sure of interpretation, especially when it comes to tone. Imagine for a minute that you dash off a teasing letter to an old friend, or an awkward email to a good friend of your boss, and how hard it would be to reconstruct the tone and context of such exchanges if a historian encountered them without any other information.
These are historian’s problems, of course, but they overlap with questions of literary judgement and interpretation especially because of the particular difficulty of assessing the tone of poems like this. ‘Wren cum chirothecis’ has recently been edited by Robert Whalen and Luke Roman, and I believe they plan to include it in the forthcoming complete edition of Herbert’s work for Oxford University Press. But Whalen and Roman, I think, slightly over-interpret the epigram to Wren. They take the final phrase, dono nihil (literally, ‘I give nothing’) to mean that the poem was not in fact accompanied by a gift after all — that the prospect of a gift (of gloves) is proposed and then withdrawn, making it a kind of mock- or even meta-occasional poem. I think this is almost certainly wrong: there are quite a lot of examples of Latin poems saying, roughly, “thanks for nothing — this gift is so pathetic you might as well not have bothered”, but they are always satiric at best, if not outright invective. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here at all.
Victoria Moul, Why do you walk through the fields in gloves?
You became a doctor and wrote a book titled Bedside Manners. As a medical doctor, what is your specialty? How has your career in medicine informed your poetry in general and your haiku?
Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology are my specialties. My writing and my work inform each other. No doubt, I am a better doctor because of it. The writing, if we do it well—by that I mean, with courage and setting aside the usual protections that keep us from the truth—is a pathway to enlightenment. That kind of understanding brings us to fundamental truths about how the body and the mind work, an area of interest to the healing professions, though we leave much unexplored in our educational processes. It’s all about compassion, empathy, kindness, and making a connection that emboldens trust. How else can we change our lives to accept the often invasive notion of getting better?
You also collected an anthology titled, Poems for the Time Capsule. What was the inspiration behind publishing this book?
I have taught poetry for thirty-five years at a wonderful place called the Fromm Institute. The professors there are allowed to choose their topic. There is no homework, no tests, just explorations of knowledge. The students are all educated and arrive there not to advance their careers but to gain knowledge and understanding. In order to have a text to demonstrate my opinion about the best poems of all time, I created this offering, Poems for the Time Capsule and a second version to use in the classroom. I also have placed it in doctor’s waiting rooms. Reading great poetry builds trust, which is so valuable in the healing professions.
Jacob D. Salzer, David Watts
At this point, a therapist would have me list all my successes: I raised a good-hearted child who’s a hell of a writer and musician; I had a book published by Simon & Schuster; I have two Master’s degrees; I’ve been in a stable and loving relationship for more than 40 years; I make good art.
But for each of those things, I can add the failures: my child is sad, my book was panned, etc.
Sometimes people tell me I’m a badass: tough, confident, impressive. But badasses don’t spend their days inert, playing games on their phones and crying while the TV murmurs in the background. Badasses know their worth and don’t settle for less. Badasses brush themselves off after a swing and a miss and swing again, and they don’t stop swinging. I’m more of a broke-ass bitch.
I don’t say these things because I want sympathy or reminders of my value. And this didn’t come from the suck voice or imposter syndrome. I’m not an imposter. I have a strong mind and I make some good stuff and I still like to squeeze all the juice I can from this life. I’m just being honest about the demoralization of a job search—at any age. And I’m showing you the ways I cope—or don’t—with my failures.
A lot of us feel this way at times, and it can impede action. However, even as I stew over my lack of worth to the business community and my brokeassery, I do what I can. I went to three May Day marches, in DC and Maryland, on Thursday. I went to the Flower Mart (first time ever for this forever city resident) yesterday. I’m heading to an in-person Indivisible meeting today. I’m planning a doll-head and thrifted ceramics indoor/outdoor fountain. And I’m trying to figure out how to turn myself into Blossom, one of the PowerPuff girls, even though I’m more of a Buttercup. (Buttercup won’t go over well on LinkedIn.)
Leslie Fuquinay Miller, No Crying in Baseball
sometimes i wish i would
have left that interview halfway through.
i would have said, “there is a hole
in the sky that is calling me more than this.”
i wish we could get real with each other.
i want people to tell me i didn’t get the job
to my face. i want them to say,
“you looked too crazy for our
pretty white building.” then i can laugh.
i’m convinced i can hear it between
the form rejection’s lines. i don’t apply
to jobs anymore. i plant garlic. i leave offerings
for fairies on the windowsill. i check my bank account
like a morning mass. no eucharist
just the stingy taste of spruce tips
from the cutting board. sometimes feed my fingers
into parking meters to buy myself
just a little more time.Robin Gow, form rejection
a softening of the heart
a lowering of walls
advice over the phone:
avoid the arealater we learn
someone shot himself
in the dark on the campus lawn
avoid the areasell yourself short
sell yourself cheap
just sell yourself
avoid the areaJason Crane, POEM: Avoid The Area
In “The Rabbi,” Marc Chagall placed a sassy rabbi in a vivid yellow and green space as he takes a pinch of snuff. His dark gaze challenges, engaged in a metaphoric parable. It is self-critique, myth, provoking. “Degenerate Art,” an exhibition at the Musée Picasso in Paris, tells how the Nazis dragged this luminously yellow canvas through the streets of Mannheim, with the tag, “Taxpayer, you should know how your money was spent.” It is chilling, the philistine, ideological and disgust all wrapped up in a familiar package.
Jill Pearlman, The Now-Parable of Degenerate Art
We witness the world coming at us—
profits and poverty, despots and detainees.
Galaxies of goodwill and a moon refusing to turn maniac.
Wars coming at us. The bullet that killed Lorca coming at us.
Fury, forgiveness, and imprisoned humanity.
Our weary world is spinning faster. Behind us is history, and even that is changing.
Suddenly, we’re different but still living in our skin.
Rust, reprisal, and death-pallor promises coming at us. Ma Rainey blues and the incendiary jazz of revolution.
We move through smoke and dust, search for stable stars in the night sky.
Across our knuckles, a tattooed map to find our way home.
We allow no one to alter the image to lead us astray.
Rich Ferguson, We of the World
The trees are leafing out again at last.
Flying little chartreuse flags, crumpled
like wet laundry before they spread
and take up space.If this were a love poem
I would say, I want you to take up space
and stretch toward the sun, exuberant
as the birds who can’t stop singing.If this were a love poem
I could say anything at all
and you would know I really mean
all I want is for you to bloom.Rachel Barenblat, Spring
Play heart-rendingly
on your instrument so as to move
the coldest juror and melt the prison bars— Blindness
and the long road back— A shorn head, loosened
cuffs; chains snapped for a body restored—Luisa A. Igloria, The Underworld
And here’s a bonus poem, not really written “after” [Gale] Wilhelm, but still somewhat inspired by her work […]
spit on the spirit
till it’s holy
& filled with holeslike rain articulating
the surface of a lake
we kissDick Whyte, Gale Wilhelm – 4 Short Poems (1929-1930)