u/listen_joyiscoming

This poem never loses its magic for me

There are a couple lines I’m not totally convinced by, but there are many that I love. I am moved by this poem that captures—more than many elegies— the ongoing nature of grief, the movement, the presence that absence leaves

Published in The Many Days: Selected Poems of Norman MacCaig

I find this poem very charming.

Also if anyone knows the translator for this version, please tell me! I’ve been searching far and wide for the answer. I enjoy other versions but I especially like this ending

Those last two lines!

Someone asked for bee & honey poems in this sub recently and this is one of the first poems that came to mind for me.

I sent it to a couple disabled friends in the early years of the pandemic. It makes a good poem postcard 💌

This was published through an organization that does arts therapy (specifically poetry workshops) for kids in Ukraine.

You can view their anthology A New Odyssey on the website but right now it’s only fully available in Ukrainian.

I found out about Poems Not Bombs through Ilya Kaminsky (if you haven’t read his books Dancing in Odessa and Deaf Republic, they’re both masterpieces) and I was deeply moved by both the concept of this work and the individual poems themselves. God, heartbreaking and gorgeous.

Published in her book Shirt in Heaven

Went to a thrift store to get some books for my friends’ kids and found this gem

This poem haunts me and I’m grateful for it.

“Tell him / that it is we who are important” rings in my mind all the time

Another favorite from When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

This poem made me feel. And I admire the winding structure, how when I finish I immediately want to start it again

The turn at the end works so well for me 🥹

This ode delights me

I find this poem so moving. And love the thread of Whitman woven into it

Haha I was so hooked by the opening!

&

“Me exploding at my mother who / explodes at me / because the explosion / of some dark star all the way back / struck hard / at mother's mother's mother.” ❤️‍🩹

For me, this poem resonates more with my experiences of grief than my periods of depression. But I could see how it could be comforting in a number of situations.

I especially love the line break after “it’s okay if you can’t imagine” (Emily was right: pain has an element of blank) & that amazing turn at the end

Since there’s been discussion of Andrea Gibson here recently around the 1 year anniversary of their death, I wanted to share a few of their longer poems.

This is from their book You Better Be Lightning.

I read different poets for different reasons; Andrea I read for heart. There are places in this poem that always make me tear up.

I really like the inventiveness of this form; I’ve seen a few other multiple choice poems & they tend to work well. The imagined participation of the reader, the opening of multiple possible paths. It might work especially well for political poems, as this feels open and interrogative rather than closed and prescriptive, even with the poem’s clear message

Published in semiautomatic

If / I cannot be a mother I still want no / life but this one

I’m currently collecting poems about infertility & mother ache, and this one keeps coming to mind