This month, we’re pleased to bring you poems by contributors NATALIE BAVAR, PETER COOLEY, GARY J. WHITEHEAD, ANNA LENA PHILLIPS BELL, and JEFFREY HARRISON.
Before we close out another busy year of publishing, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the unique, resonant, and transporting pieces that made 2024 memorable. The Common published over 175 stories, essays, poems, interviews, and features online and in print in 2024. Below, you can browse a list of the ten most-read pieces of 2024 to get a taste of what left an impact on readers.
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January 2024 Poetry Feature: Part I, with work by Adrienne Su, Eleanor Stanford, Kwame Opoku-Duku, and William Fargason
“I wrote this poem on Holy Saturday, which historically is the day after Jesus was crucified, and the day before he was resurrected. That Spring, I was barely out of a nervous breakdown in which I had intense suicidal ideation … The moments of quiet during a time like that take on more meaning somehow, reminders I was still alive. And that day, that Saturday, I saw a bee.”
—William Fargason on “Holy Saturday”
At first I thought the pileated woodpecker
that lifted up from the yard as we came home
from a walk in the woods, flapping
away on long black wings that curved
up at the tips and flashed white
underneath, might be a visitation
As our new year of publishing and programming picks up speed, we at The Common wanted to reflect on the pieces that made last year such a great one! We published over 200 pieces online and in print in 2023. Below, you can browse a list of the six most-read pieces of 2023 to see which stories, essays, and poems left an impact on readers.
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Two Poems from The Spring of Plagues by Ana Carolina Assis, translated by Heath Wing
“i wish I could / prevent your death / and bury your body alive / in the puny damp / earth
we tended / so that it kept on living / mandioca corn banana / would not sprout forth /
but instead / acerola cherry blackberry pitanga hog plum.”
January 2023 Poetry Feature, with work by Tina Cane, Myronn Hardy, and Marc Vincenz
“Sheila had IHOP delivered to her apartment in El Alto, NY / on January 6th
so she could kick back self-proclaimed terrorist / that she is and eat pancakes
while watching white supremacists / storm the Capital.”
PARTIAL VIEW OF RESTORED HARRISON BOÎTE. MARCEL DUCHAMP (AMERICAN 1887-1968), BOX IN A VALISE (BOÎTE-EN-VALISE) FROM OR BY MARCEL DUCHAMP OR RROSE SÉLAVY, 1963 (SERIES E ). CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM: GIFT OF ANNE W. HARRISON AND FAMILY IN MEMORY OF AGNES SATTLER HARRISON AND ALEXINA “TEENY” SATTLER DUCHAMP, 2016.305 © ASSOCIATION MARCEL DUCHAMP / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NY / ADAGP, PARIS 2023. IMAGE COURTESY OF CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM, PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROB DESLONGCHAMPS
“Everything important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase.”
—Marcel Duchamp, Life magazine, 1952
For many years I hardly told anyone that my grandmother’s sister Teeny was married to Marcel Duchamp, and before that to Pierre Matisse, the art dealer son of Henri. Friends I’ve known all my life have stopped me in disbelief when these facts have come up in passing—a disbelief arising not from the facts themselves but from my never having shared them. The first time I ever mentioned the connection to anyone outside the family, I was in college, sitting in the Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam Avenue with my professor, the poet David Shapiro. “Wait,” he said, “Teeny Duchamp is your great aunt?!” I was surprised he knew exactly who she was.
Poems by REBECCA MORGAN FRANK, JEFFREY HARRISON, CALEB NOLEN, and ALEXANDRA WATSON.
Contents:
Poems by DENISE DUHAMEL and JEFFREY HARRISON
This month we welcome back longtime contributors Denise Duhamel and Jeffrey Harrison to our pages.
Table of Contents:
Denise Duhamel
– 2020
– American Sestina, 2019
Jeffrey Harrison
– The Mount
“Portrait of a Man,” ca. 1470. Hans Memling (ca. 1430-1494). The Frick Collection.
Hans Memling, ca. 1470 (Frick Collection)
I know this man,
or feel I do,
or think I could—
as though his face
effaced the centuries
between us,
When my nineteen-year-old son turns on the kitchen tap
and leans down over the sink and turns his head sideways
to drink directly from the stream of cool water,
I think of my older brother, now almost ten years gone,
who used to do the same thing at that age;
It’s come to this: I’m helping flowers have sex,
crouching down on one knee to insert
a Q-tip into one freckled foxglove bell
after another, without any clue
as to what I’m doing—which, come to think of it,
is always true the first time with sex.
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