PUBLIC POETRY PROJECT
A celebration of poems to the people
Santo Domingo Feast Day
By Robin Becker
Robin Becker’s “Santo Domingo Feast Day” is
poetry as incantation, chanting the reader to an experience both
highly particular and viscerally familiar.
Ants
By Gary Fincke
Gary Fincke’s poem “Ants” tells a truth about
being a young man: You don’t want to look stupid, but on
the other hand, you think you’re being attacked by ants.
You are prey to the seductive horrors of science fiction and family
lore, while trying to figure out the world around you.
Tornadoes Up Your Windpipe
By Marjorie Maddox
The level of observation in Marjorie Maddox’s “Tornadoes
Up Your Windpipe” is striking in its originality. The fascination
with another is the topic of many love poems, and with playfulness
and oddity it works here as well.
Landscape with Desire
By Julia Kasdorf
Julia Kasdorf’s “Landscape with Desire” has
deep associations with the landscape and our emotional responses
and ties to it and within it. The poem reminds us of the project’s
ties to place.
Vessel
By Robert Pinsky
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If a Simple Meditation Works, Trust It
By John Haag
John Haag’s “If a Simple Meditation Works, Trust
It” elicits admiration for the way the tumult of images
at the beginning resolves itself in wonder, and in an appealing
notion about poetry—that the moments with which poets are
often concerned are “worth more than ordinary attention.”
Song
By Ashley Bryan
Showing a Friend My Town
By Harry Humes
Kim Fisher, the first person behind the idea of the Public Poetry
Project, liked that the speaker in “Showing a Friend My
Town” walked around pointing things out while telling a
story the items collectively implied. The empty chair at the end
holds the most, implying all the loss that the bounty of the poem
seems determined to mask.