The Best American Poetry 2014 (29 page)

“The purpose of ‘My Father's Soul Departing' is that of almost all elegies—to mourn and to dignify the departed. It's a capsule biography, and the poem is interwoven with passages from my translation of Hadrian's poem. My father was neither an emperor nor an Empire Builder, but one of my projects as a poet has been to do for my father—in a small way—what
potentates have so often done for themselves: that is, to fashion a fitting and lasting memorial.”

G
REG
W
RENN
was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1979. He is the author of
Centaur
(University of Wisconsin Press, 2013) and
Off the Fire Road
(GreenTower Press, 2008). He has received the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and a Stegner Fellowship, as well as awards from the Poetry Society of America and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He is at work on a second full-length collection,
Homeworld
, and a series of essays on coral reefs, climate change, artistic vision, and the impermanence of beauty. A graduate of Harvard University and Washington University in St. Louis, he teaches at Stanford University.

Of “Detainment,” Wrenn writes: “Unlike my first book's title poem, in which a man travels to Brazil to be surgically transformed into a centaur, the speaker of ‘Detainment'—a suspected terrorist-poet—is kidnapped and brutalized. My aspirations for this poem are wide-ranging: that it express my ambivalence about language's transformative possibilities; ironize the notion that good poems must arise from suffering; and critique the inhumanity of our criminal justice system and the War on Terror, including the practice of extraordinary rendition. An attempt to convey personal as well as national desolation and fragmentation, each of the scattered prose blocks is a kind of cell in which this dispirited, abused voice speaks to itself while in lockdown. For now, his abusers, his torturers, are gone.”

R
OBERT
W
RIGLEY
was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1951. He is a professor of English at the University of Idaho and lives in the woods, near Moscow, with his wife, the writer Kim Barnes. His most recent books are
Anatomy of Melancholy and Other Poems
(Penguin Books, 2013), and in the United Kingdom,
The Church of Omnivorous Light: Selected Poems
(Bloodaxe Books, 2013).

Of “Blessed Are,” Wrigley writes: “On the mountain where I live, wild animals outnumber humans by a considerable margin. I see them a lot, and I write about them a lot, too. I published a book just over a decade ago called
Lives of the Animals
, which ought to have been called, according to a few of my witty friends, ‘Deaths of the Animals,' given how many of the poems in that volume looked at, examined, meditated on, and, it seems, endlessly described dead beasts as their subjects. But a subject is not a poem, only the doorway through which the poet enters in search of the poem. Practically speaking, dead animals are
easier to examine than living ones. They do not flee; they lie still to be studied. Winter is hard here, too, and among the wild populations are also predators. And they all die, even, I imagine, the ravens, although in all my years of walking through these woods, I have come across every sort of carcass but that of a raven. How can that be? They are highly intelligent birds. They can imitate other birds; they can even imitate human speech. Listening to them, I find it impossible to believe that they communicate less effectively than we do. As for the title and the last word, the less said by me the better.”

J
AKE
A
DAM
Y
ORK
was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1972, and grew up in Gadsden, Alabama. He received a BA in English from Auburn University, and an MFA and PhD in creative writing and English literature from Cornell University. His collections of poetry include
Abide
, published posthumously (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014);
Persons Unknown
(Southern Illinois, 2010);
A Murmuration of Starlings
(Southern Illinois, 2008), which won the Colorado Book Award; and
Murder Ballads
(Elixir Press, 2005), which won the Elixir Prize. He was an associate professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, where he founded the university's creative writing program, as well as the university's national literary journal,
Copper Nickel
. Jake Adam York died suddenly on December 16, 2012, at the age of forty.

D
EAN
Y
OUNG
was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania, in 1955. He is currently teaching at the University of Texas, Austin. His most recent books are
Fall Higher
(2011) and
Bender
(2012), both by Copper Canyon Press.
The Art of Recklessness
(2010), a book of prose, was published by Graywolf.

Of “Emerald Spider Between Rose Thorns,” Young writes: “Like many of my poems, and most poems in general I think, this one is something of a list, a list of phenomena and reaction that may or may not lead to a conclusion. It's not a story, it's an arrangement. I hope to resist narrative and its numbing conventions that depend upon domineering logic, which to my mind is usually insufficient to the full welter of life. We don't live narratives. We hop. I hope this poem conveys a series of amazements in each landing and takeoff. I hope it comes to a sense of an ending that isn't necessarily completion but more like how a song ends, with a sense of sumptuousness achieved.”

R
ACHEL
Z
UCKER
was born during a blizzard in New York City in 1971. She attended Yale and the Iowa Writers' Workshop and then returned to New York. Her nine books include a memoir,
MOTHERs
(Counterpath Press, 2014), and
The Pedestrians
(Wave Books, 2014), a double collection of poetry and prose.
Museum of Accidents
appeared from Wave Books in 2009. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and currently teaches poetry at New York University. She has also worked as a labor support doula and a childbirth educator.

Zucker writes: “In ‘Mindful,' I write explicitly about my relationship to New York City, where (except for college and graduate school) I've lived for more than forty years. I wanted the poem's form, speed, and diction to mimic New York rather than refer to New York and to pursue a high-population density poetics.

“When I wrote ‘Mindful' I'd been listening to podcasts and audio books while traveling alone around the city. I was also using an app that announced my time, distance, and pace when I ran in Central Park. I thought pulling a bubble of sound round me would insulate me from the noise and chaos of the city. I thought RunKeeper would push me to go farther and faster. But rushing around in a moving cloud of narrative, filling all the waking silences, created a mental or emotional implosion. The experience was a more extreme version of my usual daily life in which I am interrupted by my children, my reading, my listening to the swirl of language all around me. I am lucky to have a full life and an active mind, but such fullness is also crazy-making.

“ ‘Mindful' plays with the recently ubiquitous word ‘mindful' as it is used in yoga, parenting, health, and politics. Who doesn't want to be more ‘mindful'? If we were all ‘mindful,' we'd be slim, compassionate, spiritually centered, environmentally aware Buddhas. One reason I write poetry is that it helps me pay attention to where I am even when I want to escape. I believe in the importance of being present and attentive. I believe in the importance of being present, attentive, ‘mindful.' But the catchword doesn't acknowledge the problems of a full mind or the complex ways in which I try to pay more and less attention to the vividness of the world.”

ABZ
, ed. John McKernan. PO Box 2746, Huntington, WV 25727.

The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, ed. Alex Dimitrov.
www.poets.org

AGNI
, poetry ed. Lynne Potts.
bu.edu/agni

The American Poetry Review
, eds. Stephen Berg, David Bonanno, and Elizabeth Scanlon. 320 S. Broad St., Hamilton #313, Philadelphia, PA 19102.
www.aprweb.org

The Atlantic
, poetry ed. David Barber.
www.theatlantic.com

The Awl
, poetry ed. Mark Bibbins.
www.theawl.com

The Baffler
, literary ed. Anna Summers.
www.thebaffler.com

Barrow Street
, eds. Melissa Hotchkiss, Patricia Carlin, Lorna Blake, and Peter Covino.
www.barrowstreet.org/journal

The Believer
, poetry ed. Dominic Luxford.
www.believermag.com

Birmingham Poetry Review
, featured poet editor Gregory Fraser. 1720 2nd Avenue South, HB 203, Birmingham, AL 35294-1260.

Blackbird
, eds. Gregory Donovan, Mary Flinn, William Tester.
www.blackbird.vcu.edu

Boston Review
, poetry eds. Timothy Donnelly and Barbara Fischer. PO Box 425786, Cambridge, MA 02142.
www.bostonreview.net

Brilliant Corners
, ed. Sascha Feinstein. Lycoming College, 700 College Place, Williamsport, PA 17701.

The Carolina Quarterly
, poetry ed. Lee Norton. CB # 3520 Greenlaw Hall, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520.

The Cincinnati Review
, poetry ed. Don Bogen. PO Box 210069, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0069.

Court Green
, eds. CM Borroughs, Tony Triglio, and David Trinidad. Department of Creative Writing, Columbia College, 600 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60605.

Crazyhorse
, poetry ed. Emily Rosko.
crazyhorse.cofc.edu

Cream City Review
, poetry eds. Kara van de Graaf and C. McAllister Willams.
www.creamcityreview.org

Denver Quarterly
, ed. Laird Hunt. University of Denver, Department of English, 2000 E. Asbury, Denver, CO 80208.

FIELD
, eds. David Young and David Walker.
www.oberlin.edu/ocpress/field

Green Mountains Review
, poetry ed. Elizabeth Powell. greenmountains
review.com

Gris-Gris
, eds. Jay Udall and Scott Banville.
www.nicholls.edu/gris-gris

Gulf Coast
, poetry eds Patrick Clement James, Michelle Oakes, and Justine Post.
gulfcoastmag.org/

The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review
, ed. Nathaniel Perry. Box 66, Hampden-Sydney, VA 23943

Hanging Loose
, eds. Robert Hershon, Dick Lourie, and Mark Pawlak. 231 Wyckoff St., Brooklyn, NY 11217.

Harvard Review
, poetry ed. Major Jackson. Lamont Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Hayden's Ferry Review
, poetry eds. Dexter Booth and Hugh Martin.
haydensferryreview.blogspot.com/

The Iowa Review
, poetry ed. Nikki-Lee Birdsey. 308 EPB, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242.

jubilat
, eds. Kevin González and Caryl Pagel.
www.jubilat.org

The Kenyon Review
, poetry ed. David Baker.
www.kenyonreview.org

The Literary Review
, poetry eds. Renée Ashley and Craig Morgan Teicher.
www.theliteraryreview.org

Little Patuxent Review
, poetry ed. Laura Shovan.
littlepatuxentreview.org

London Review of Books
, ed. Mary-Kay Wilmers. 28 Little Russell Street, London WC1A 2HN, England.

MAKE Literary Magazine
, poetry ed. Joel Craig.
makemag.com

MiPOesias
, poetry eds. Sarah Blake, Emma Trelles, and Didi Menendez.
mipoesias.com

The Missouri Review
, poetry ed. Chun Ye. 357 McReynolds Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211.

The Nation
, poetry ed. Ange Mlinko. 33 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003.

New Letters
, editor-in-chief Robert Stewart. University House, University of Missouri–Kansas City, 5101 Rockhill Road, Kansas City, MO 64110.

The New Yorker
, poetry ed. Paul Muldoon. 4 Times Square, New York, NY 10036.

The Normal School
, poetry ed. Stacey Balkun. 5245 North Backer Avenue, M/S PB 98, California State University, Fresno, CA 93740-8001.

Painted Bride Quarterly
, eds. Kathleen Volk Miller and Marion Wrenn.
pbq.drexel.edu

The Paris Review
, poetry ed. Robyn Creswell. 544 West 27th St., New York, NY 10001.

Pleiades
, poetry eds. Wayne Miller and Kathryn Nuernberger. Department of English, Martin 336, University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO 64093.

Ploughshares
, poetry ed. John Skoyles. Emerson College, 120 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02116-4624.

Poet Lore
, eds. Jody Bolz and E. Ethelbert Miller. c/o The Writer's Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda, MD 20815.

Poetry
, ed. Don Share.
poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine

Poetry Daily
, eds. Don Selby and Diane Boller.
www.poems.com

Prairie Schooner
, ed. Kwame Dawes. University of Nebraska, 123 Andrews Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0334.

A Public Space
, poetry ed. Brett Fletcher Lauer. 323 Dean Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217.

Rattle
, ed. Timothy Green. 12411 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, CA 91604.

Southern Indiana Review
, poetry ed. Marcus Wicker. Orr Center #2009, University of Southern Indiana, 8600 University Blvd., Evansville, IN 47712.

The Southern Review
, poetry ed. Jessica Faust. 3rd Floor, Johnston Hall, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803.