- Anthology, Poetry, Reading, Writing

Happy World Poetry Day 2022!

 

Every day is World Poetry Day! Happy World Poetry Day!

And there is no world without poetry, at least not a world worth living in. No, Wallace Stevens, it is everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem, but I’m not sure Stevens said this because most of my books are in boxes, and the internet isn’t helping, of courseit might even be making things worse, if that were possiblebut anyway, it, that is, the Stevens quote I’m paraphrasing, or rather, arguing against is probably in his Adagiaa luminous collection of aphorisms, in my recollectionbut maybe the quote is a misremembering, dismembering interpolation of a moment in Stevens’s “Certain Phenomena of Sound,” where he recalls the “sound of that slick sonata,” which makes “music seem to be a nature, a place in which itself // Is that which produces everything else…”; and isn’t that one of the things poetry is, that is, does, that is, produce everything else, what’s there and what isn’t, which is to say, there’s poetry to the neuroscientist’s claim that reality is a hallucination, his work suggesting “[w]e are all…trapped in our self-created universes, internal worlds that are all we can ever know, and that will vanish in an instant,” moreover that “one day science might bridge the gulf between our own minds and those of others, so that we can see each other more clearly.” Not new ideas, of course (“life is but a dream,” “I do not know whether I am a person dreaming I am a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a person,” etc.), but it makes me also think of simulation hypothesis, which posits that all of existence is an artificial simulation, even a computer simulation; and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which posits that there are many worlds existing in parallel at the same space and time as our own; all of which is to say, I can’t help thinking how these ideas might not only help us reconsider our perception of reality but how they might expand our imaginations and subsequently vitally alter the art we imagine and create; and I hope they do that for you, too.

In other words, I’m all over the place, which is to say I’m in the world, as it is, as it can be imagined, transformed, renewed.

Anyway, in celebration of World Poetry Day, which is every day, here’s a collection of poetry I’ve published in Big Other.

 

Will Alexander

From On Solar Physiology
Poetry: Power That Seeps From Invisible Wattage

 

T. J. Anderson III

Six Poems

 

Rae Armantrout

Three Poems
Four Poems
Four Poems

 

Charles Bernstein and Ted Greenwald

Two Poems from The Course

 

Charles Bernstein and Norman Fischer

From Where Here Were We

 

Erika Bojnowski

Five Poems

 

Jaswinder Bolina

Four Poems

 

Daniel Borzutzky

Poem #1022
Day #1101

 

Laynie Browne

Poems

 

Ewa Chrusciel

Selections from Mental Aviary
Five Poems

 

Laura Cronk

Three Poems

 

Gillian Cummings

Four Poems
Seven Poems

 

Raymond de Borja

The True Picture of the Past Whizzes By

 

Nik De Dominic

Five Poems

 

Shira Dentz

Six Poems

 

Elaine Equi

Four Poems
Four Poems

 

Jennifer Firestone

From Story

 

Forrest Gander

Two Poetry-Films

 

Tse Hao Guang

Five Poems

 

Jefferson Hansen

Three Poems

 

Jessie Janeshek

Five Poems
Four Poems

 

Andrew Joron

Two Poems

 

Michael Joyce

The History of Television

 

Tom La Farge

Ode from a Mockingbird

 

Michael Leong

From “Disorientations”

 

William Lessard

Two Poems

 

Brendan Lorber

Ten Poems
How a Poem Happens to Happen
Five Poems

 

Miranda Mellis

No Doubt Perhaps

 

Joe Milazzo

Two Poems
Glenn Shadix

 

Albert Mobilio

Five Poems

 

Urayoán Noel

Coral

 

Danielle Pafunda

Three Poems

 

D. A. Powell

Kissing Rimbaud

 

Victoria Redel

Seven Poems

 

John Reed

Three Poems

 

Elizabeth Robinson

Soft Eclipse
Two Poems

 

Martha Ronk

Five Poems

 

John Schertzer

Four Poems

 

Gary Sloboda

Seven Poems

 

Lisa Russ Spaar

Five Poems

 

Ken Sparling

Three Poems

 

Stephanie Strickland

Two Poems

 

Terese Svoboda

Five Poems

 

Cole Swensen

Two Poems

 

Arthur Sze

Blackcap
Scintillant

 

Kailey Tedesco

Five Poems

 

Edwin Torres

Five Poems
Four Poems

 

Tony Trigilio

Eight Poems
Nine Poems
Writing What You Don’t Know: Poetry and the Arcane

 

Joanna C. Valente

Five Poems

 

G. C. Waldrep

Three Poems

 

Marjorie Welish

Bird Watching

 

Joshua Marie Wilkinson

The Night Was Curiously Mild

 

John Yau

Four Poems

 

Micah Zevin

Five Poems

 

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