Poetry | Page 58 | The Common

Graffito Beholds a Sculpted Dionysus Head

November 1, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

Archeological Museum, Napoli

Beard-barnacled, chokingly-fixed, almost somehow stupid, yes,
almost like will itself pushed to the extreme of its own
absence, almost like presence perpetuated so as to obliterate

personhood’s merest increments—ah, but don’t
listen to even the soundest advice you are given, never, never, no,
Graffito is sure he hears the inert face telling him, yeah,

forget pondering your person in light of pure practicalities,
and fuck letting any of the standard measures of modern
existence—money or fame, say, or so-called community, or (gasp

gasp) success—clutter the local, the cosmic
clatter of the single soul clanging the skin and organs

An Education

November 1, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

By LAWRENCE RAAB
“Isn’t that just another way to feel compromised?”
Professor Heninger asked. Being freshmen
and mostly women as well, I was sure
we weren’t being invited to disagree.

Kul

October 31, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

By FATIMAH ASGHAR

Allah, you gave us a language
where yesterday & tomorrow
are the same word. Kul.

A spell cast with the entire
mouth. Back of the throat
to teeth. What day am I promised?

Swallowtail

October 30, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

By DANIEL TOBIN

For Bella Bond

Slowly as soundlessly in its unknowing,

what the driven thing must hunger for

is love’s white noise—a latent faring

This Morning I Miss Such Devotion

October 30, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

By VIEVEE FRANCIS

There is a sister whose voice is gentle as a lullaby. A lulling. Even when angered she won’t yell. A particular upbringing that eschews the loud, though such a woman can be found embracing those whose voices swell in the streets. Perhaps less saintliness than a vicarious expression of her own rage? Frustrations? Drawing the brawler, the harsh and violent close. The softness

October 2017 Poetry Feature

October 27, 2017 Poetry

This October, we’re celebrating fall with new work from four of our contributors.

LINDA ASHOK

Becoming A Rice Pot

She held the rice pot too
close to her bosom each time
she had to take a cup of it.
Once she would take as
much, she would keep back
a fistful. She never wanted
the rice pot to be empty.

Poetry Feature: Festival of American Poets, Part Two

October 9, 2017 Poetry

The Common brings you a special two-part series to celebrate the Pioneer Valley Poetry Productions Festival of Major American Poets, which was held at Amherst College’s Fayerweather Hall on October 13 and 14.

Part Two – featuring poems by Michael Heller and Cole Swensen.

Poetry Feature: Festival of American Poets, Part One

October 6, 2017 Poetry

September 2017 Poetry Feature

September 29, 2017 Poetry, Translation

This month The Common brings you a selection from the anthology WORDS FOR WAR, NEW POEMS FROM UKRAINE, edited by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky, forthcoming next month from Academic Studies Press.

The armed conflict in the east of Ukraine brought about an emergence of a distinctive trend in contemporary Ukrainian poetry: the poetry of war. Directly and indirectly, the poems collected in this volume engage with the events and experiences of war, reflecting on the themes of alienation, loss, dislocation, and disability; as well as justice, heroism, courage, resilience, generosity, and forgiveness. In addressing these themes, the poems also raise questions about art, politics, citizenship, and moral responsibility. The anthology brings together some of the most compelling poetic voices from different regions of Ukraine. Young and old, female and male, somber and ironic, tragic and playful, filled with extraordinary terror and ordinary human delights, the voices recreate the human sounds of war in its tragic complexity.

ANASTASIA AFANASIEVA | “Can there be poetry after:”

BORYS HUMENYUK | “Our platoon commander is a strange fellow”

ALEKSANDR KABANOV | “He came first wearing a t-shirt inscribed ‘Je suis Christ,’”

KATERYNA KALYTKO | “April 6”

LYUDMYLA KHERSONSKA | “When a country of — overall — nice people”

SERHIY ZHADAN | “Third Year into the War”

August 2017 Poetry Feature

August 25, 2017 Poetry

This month we welcome back long-time contributor to The Common, John Matthias. His poems previously published by the magazine can be found here.

John Matthias has published some thirty-five books of poetry, translation, scholarship, criticism, and collaboration. He taught for many years at the University of Notre Dame and is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. Until 2012 he was poetry editor of Notre Dame Review, and is now Editor at Large. Shearsman published his Collected Poems in three volumes in 2011, 2012, and 2013. More recently, they have published a new volume of poems, Complayntes for Doctor Neuro, and a collection of memoirs and literary essays, At Large (both 2016). His most recent book is a collaboration with printmaker Jean Dibble and critic Robert Archambeau, Revolutions (Dos Madres, 2017). Two collections of critical essays have been published on Matthias’s work, Word Play Place, edited by Robert Archambeau, and The Salt Companion to John Matthias, edited by Joe Francis Doerr. “Prynne and a Petoskey Stone” is part of a new book now taking shape, which will be called Acoustic Shadows.