Poemelon has a fresh issue out featuring "persona poems." Among others are poems by friends and email list friends David Graham and Pat Fargnoli, plus one of my regular favorites, Bob Hicok.

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"Seneca on Banishment"
Somewhere I missed where it said not to do the emperor’s sister, and at last I get what the khans will be about: outside, nothing is more inviting than a wall visible from space. So I say to myself, O Greatest Etcetera of your generation, [...]

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"Idylle"
In today’s mail I found the chain letter you’ve been sending for years. I know your handwriting, your desperation, the peculiar way in which you fold the paper. This plea, you tell me, has been around the world three, maybe four times. This plea is sacred. This plea is our last hope for anything. In [...]

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"High Windows"
When I see a couple of kids And guess he’s fucking her and she’s Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives– Bonds and gestures pushed to one side [...]

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[photo by Greg Gladman]
"Four From the Forest Floor"
A Rhinoceros Beetle
Not dead, but dwindled, The dinosaurs: he rears his Snout and almost roars.
Overnight Mushrooms
These neighborhood shrines, White as snow, show the clean hands Of stolen labor.
A Millipede
It’s [...]

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[photo by debaird]
"Icarus"
I cannot count the strange animals Falling through my eyes. One is not one.
A different one, Just this morning at sunrise, Had escaped. He wore the bright orange of a convict still.
In [...]

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There is a fair bit of conflicting information out there defining the bref double. All definitions agree that there are fourteen lines composed of three quatrains and a closing couplet. All agree that line length is meant to be approximately the same throughout the poem, though not necessarily syllabically exact.
At question is the rhyme scheme. [...]

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[photo by SuLeS]
"The Illiterate"
Touching your goodness, I am like a man Who turns a letter over in his hand And you might think that this was because the hand Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man [...]

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"Embers"
Poor summer, it doesn’t know it’s dying.
A few days are all it has. Still, the lake
is with me, its strokes of blue-violet
and the fiery sun replacing loneliness.
This is my burrow, my nest, my attempt
to say, I exist. A rose can’t shut itself
and be a bud again. It’s a malady, [...]

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[photo by EJP Photo] 
One last bit of Hopkins… another too appropriate not to share.
"Carrion Comfort"
NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I [...]

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[RIP]
"If We Had Known"
If we had known all that we know We never would have let him go.
He never would have reached the river If we had guessed his going. Never.
We had the stronger argument Had we but dreamed his dark intent.
Or if our [...]

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[photo by photographer padawan]
This is one of the first "adult" poems I memorized and one of the few I’ve never forgotten. Recent events reinforce what I’ve often said before… this poem has depth and complexity far beyond what is usually accorded to it in its frequent appearance in various anthologies. [...]

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[photo of Keats' Tombstone by Carlo Tancredi]
A comment at lunch today that made me realize I don’t talk much about formal or classic poetry. Reading this blog gives the impression that my poetic interests lie with a relatively narrow band of contemporary and free verse. It’s actually quite the opposite!
The [...]

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"Home Movies"
Coupled, link and manacle, forged from heat and stone, House teetering on a bed of crumbling sand stone.
Intertwined, sweating in the hammock, smelling grass… For years now that lawn a lot, paved with scree and stone.
Nesting in the Christmas wrap, last bits of credit, The [...]

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Just heard via email that poet, novelist, and short story author Rebecca Kavaler has passed away. Here’s a poem of hers that I’ve seen shared in a few places.
"The Animal Within"
     Homage to Sir Thomas Browne
We, who supposedly contain all Africa and her prodigies, are revealed for what we are [...]

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[photo by Todd Ehlers]
"Atomic Pantoum"
In a chain reaction the neutrons released split other nuclei which release more neutrons
The neutrons released blow open some others which release more neutrons [...]

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Love him or hate him, Pinsky has created a good model to keep in mind when considering questions of poetry, poets, and poetics. Answer the questions with poems. It’s at least as exact as the philosophical meandering I’m likely to subject others to at the drop of a hat.
It also gives me an excuse to [...]

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I don’t know why I didn’t think of “The Waking”– one of my favorite Roethke poems– when I was thinking so much about villanelles last weekend. However, in one of those serendipitous exchanges that make participating in these social networks so worthwhile, David Weinstock (while you’re there, check out “I am the Eggman”) turned me [...]

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  [photo by J. Star]
"Another Look at the Garden"
The window has glass in it the garden has not. There’s a path between grass but the grass is not a path. Fairies are not paying attention at what you see outside [...]

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[photo by tochis]
"November 23"
A long train is standing at the station and the platform      is empty. Winter, night, the frozen sky is flooded with red. Only a woman’s weeping is heard. She’s pleading      for something [...]

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