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"Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing  with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring  with replacing the noun. It is doing that always  doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that.  Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and  pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is  what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no  matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a  great many kinds of poetry." 
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[Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), U.S. author. "Poetry and Grammar," Lectures in America, Random House (1935).]

The Irish Special edition launch at the
Cork International Poetry Festival 2017

Why Read War Poetry? by Constance Ruzich

From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill

Constellation of epiphanies by Rajesh Sharma

David Whyte in conversation with Lois P. Jones

Deep Fish—Three Passes at Larry Levis’ Immortal Poem  by Suzanne Lummis

Photo Caption: A picture of Larry Levis giving a lecture, at the Aspen Writers' Conference, 1980.
“He was jealous of my Hawaiian shirts, so he went out and bought one of his own.”
– Kurt Brown

FB post, Ira Sadoff: “Larry wasn't awake for this one either. But he could say wise things about poetry in his sleep.”

Suzanne Lummis writes - The creation tales and lore of some Native American tribes, some Northwest Coast people certainly, and the Yuchi of the Southeast, posits the existence of three worlds. The Western tradition, in most of its expressions, holds to the idea of two— “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  Of course, exceptions can be found, especially in poetry. 
I like to ask my students, the advanced classes, where Larry Levis’ “Fish” is best appreciated—for these poets have probably already attempted what he makes look so very easy—“Where does this poem take place, in the world below, the world above, or this one?”
There is a silence while the group considers the poem from this new point of view then someone will speak up. All three.    
Indeed, it moves fluidly, seamlessly, through and around the lower, middle and upper realms, each a chilly landscape glittering with a few sharp details that seem cut with an X-Acto Knife. 

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Read the essay here

from the Guest Editor of Issue XXXIV
​

Lois P. Jones

Whether through illness, death, divorce, violence, our lives shift tectonically and they do not shift back. Are our eyes now permanently opened to suffering?  These recent years seem to move beyond virus to a cumulative anguish – our history, our wars and guns, the damage we’ve wrought to person and to place. The poems in this issue heighten our awareness beyond pain and our need to fracture, bringing together voices that shift and deepen our understanding of this blue tilting earth. True poetry is panoptic. It sees the past, present and possible futures we may know. It asks that we continue to witness beauty. 

Read more

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Book reviews

Review of Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee by Hanna Pachman

Essays

Writing a Poem that is Larger Than You Are by Diane Frank

Poet in Focus​

Last known photo of Federico García Lorca, with Manuela Arniches on the terrace of Café Chiki-Kutz, Paseo de Recoletos 29, Madrid, July 1936

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editors' Recommendations
​

International Poetry of the First World War Ed. Constance Ruzich (Bloomsbury, 2020) reviewed by Kathryn White

After Grief, by Shikandin, Red River, 2021 reviewed by Pramila Venkateswaran

Witnesses of Remembrance by Kunwar Narain (translated by Apurva Narain) (Eka, 2021) reviewed by Mathura

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​Book review of We Are Not a Museum by Pramila Venkateswaran by Rohit Dey

Wings to Soar High, by Amir Or reviewed by Seth Michelson

War Music – An Account of Homer’s Iliad, Faber and Faber, edited by Christopher Reid

The Singer of Alleppey by Pramila Venkateswaran, Shanti Arts LLC (2018)

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Featured Poet

Cynthia Hogue’s most recent collections are Revenance, listed as one of the 2014 “Standout” books by the Academy of American Poets, and In June the Labyrinth (2017).  Her tenth collection, instead, it is dark, will be out from Red Hen Press in 2023. Her third book-length translation (with Sylvain Gallais) is Nicole Brossard’s Distantly (Omnidawn 2022). Hogue’s Covid chapbook is entitled Contain (Tram Editions 2022). Among her honors are a Fulbright Fellowship to Iceland, two NEA Fellowships, and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets (2013). She lives in Tucson.  

Editor's Choice

Saddiq Dzukogi is a poet and Asst. professor of English at Mississippi State University. He is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla (University of Nebraska Press, 2021), winner of the 2021 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the 2022 Julie Suk Award. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships from the Nebraska Art Council, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Pen America, and Ebedi International Residency. His poetry is featured in various magazines including POETRY, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Poetry London, Guernica, Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, and Prairie Schooner. Saddiq lives and writes from Starkville, Mississippi.

 Editor's Choice

Zakia Carpenter-Hall is an American writer, tutor and critic living in the UK. Her poetry reviews and poems have both been published in Poetry Wales, The Poetry Review, Wild Court, Magma and elsewhere. Human Ecologies (2021) is her ecopoetry film commissioned by The Scottish Poetry Library in partnership with Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival and Obsidian Foundation. 

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János Áfra, Zoltán Csehy, Mónika Ferencz, András Gerevich, Ákos Győrff, Benji Horváth, Tibor Juhász, István Kemény, Árpád Kollár, Dénes Krusovszky, Gábor Lanczkor, Zoltán Lesi, János Marno, Hajnal Csilla Nagy and Others. ​(edited by Lanczkor Gábor ​and Balazs Szollossy)

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John Montague,Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, John W. Sexton, Matthew Geden, James Harpur, Bernard O’Donoghue, Moya Cannon, Mary Noonan, Enda Wyley, Paul Casey, Seán Lysaght, Celia de Fréine and others. (​Edited by Patrick Cotter)

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Martinus Nijhoff, Gerrit Achterberg, M. Vasalis, Hanny Michaelis, Gerrit Kouwenaar, Lucebert, Hans Lodeizen, Mark Boog, Hagar Peeters, Maria Barnas, Alfred Schaffer, Mustafa Stitou, Ramsey Nasr, Kira Wuck, Ester Naomi Perquin, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Donald Gardner and Jane Draycott (Edited by David Colmer)

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.​Anju Makhija, Rizio Yohannan Raj,Manohar Shetty, Arundhathi Subramaniam, A.J. Thomas, Sampurna Chattarji, K.Srilata, Mani Rao, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih and others. (Edited by Abhay K)

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"A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named." 
[Friedrich Von Schlegel (1772-1829), German philosopher. Aphorism 114 in Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798), translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Pennsylvania University Press (1968).] 

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