Each of the poets featured in this issue were invited to share a link to a poem they love and to offer why they think the work is special. 

“Night” by Louise Bogan

“Night” has long been a favorite poem, but it’s especially apt during these dark times. I hope it revives those revisiting it, as well as those reading it for the first time.—Suzanne Frischkorn

 

“From the Distance“ by Wendell Berry

This poem has brought me solace lately, as I find myself wondering about and inhabiting cyclical time, deep time, this time in great need of togetherness. —Sarah Heady

 

“A Postcard from the Volcano“ by Wallace Stevens

A poem I love, especially during this turn of the seasons, is “A Postcard From the Volcano.” I always think of Stevens as a “reformed Imagiste” who never lost his knack for the affecting visual: many in this one. The language is so precise, but metaphysical — almost resisting the mind’s ability to apprehend. It is opulent. —Anthony Robinson

 

“Self-Portrait as Self-Care Mantra“ by Elizabeth Theriot

I have never read a prose poem that so deeply embodies what lyric strives toward.—Bellee Jones-Pierce

 

“The Outing“ and “Just Past This Road Lives a Figure Imprisoned In A Tower“ by Malinda Markham

I’m enthralled by the unflinching precision in which Malinda Markham depicts the minutiae of the terrifying and ordinary. She passed away in 2012 when she was forty-four years old. These poems were published in her second and final poetry collection Having Cut the Sparrow’s Heart. The small body of work she has left behind should be savored. —Martine Bellen

 

“The Strange People“ by Louise Erdrich

The entire spirit animal world this poem evokes, with its power exchange of need, eroticism, danger, death, and truth, astonishes me every time I read it. —DL Newton

 

“Darwin“ by Lorine Niedecker

This is a poem I love for the specificity, history, quotations, movement, and humor. Niedecker is a poet I return to for inspiration and grounding.—Sarah Mangold

 

“won’t you celebrate with me“ by Lucille Clifton

This is one of my favorite poems from Lucille Clifton because she encapsulates so much about self-love and self-celebration in a short poem that is significant for me as a Black femme person myself who has to survive in a world that endangers me constantly. It is such a helpful reminder to celebrate my life, especially with the current events we are facing. —Sherese Francis 

 

“Migraine,” “Flowering Water,” and “Stray Cat“ by Huang Fan

The poems “Migraine,” “Flowing Water,” and “Stray Cat,” by Huang Fan and translated by Wang Ping, are to my mind, perfect poems. They are comprised of precise, exquisitely crafted lines. I have Bill Lessard to thank for introducing me to Huang Fan’s work. —Adam Stutz

 

“The Sun Got All Over Everything“ by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

I love this poem because it feels loose and rambling and sensual, but also gets to something about grief, how the brashness and beauty of the living world clashes against loss. And how part of the grief is that you keep on living anyway. —Marina Hope Wilson