The Best American Poetry 2014 (22 page)

“One day I was looking through an old edition of
World Book Encyclopedia
and came across an entry on the mirror. The contributor's style was so similar to Faraday's, so clear and unassuming, that I could easily imagine Faraday repeating his words—and the poem was born. The pantoum form, with its mirroring lines, seemed a natural choice.”

T
RACI
B
RIMHALL
was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, in 1982. She is the author of
Our Lady of the Ruins
(W. W. Norton, 2012) and
Rookery
(Southern Illinois University Press, 2010). Her work has received
fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the King/Chávez/Parks Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Of “To Survive the Revolution,” Brimhall writes: “Even as a child I was interested in the question of survival. I loved books in which young people had to learn wilderness skills in hopes of lasting long enough to be rescued. To my adult mind, the question has become a moral one—would I harm someone who was attacking me to ensure my own survival? Could I kill that person? Would I harm or kill someone who wasn't trying to do me harm if it meant I would live? This is the idea I engaged with in ‘To Survive the Revolution.' The poem takes place during the Brazilian coup d'etat in the 1960s. I've tried to imagine my way into a life and set of circumstances that would force me to make that choice—whether to hurt someone else or die.”

L
UCIE
B
ROCK-
B
ROIDO
was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1956. She attended Johns Hopkins University where she earned her BA and MA in 1979. In 1982, she received her MFA in poetry from the School of the Arts at Columbia University. She has published four volumes of poetry, all with Alfred A. Knopf:
A Hunger
(1988),
The Master Letters
(1995), and
Trouble in Mind
(2004); her most recent collection,
Stay, Illusion
(Knopf, 2013), was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the editor of
Letters to a Stranger
, the collected poems of Thomas James (Graywolf Press, 2008). In 2010, Carcanet brought out her selected poems,
Soul Keeping Company
, in the United Kingdom. She has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Awards, the Witter-Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Massachusetts Book Award. She is director of poetry in the School of the Arts at Columbia and lives in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Brock-Broido writes: “ ‘Bird, Singing' is an elegy for the poet Jason Shinder. In real life, he was often known as ‘Jay.' Many of his intimates called him Jay Bird. Over the years, I began to call him, simply: Bird. He was in flight all the time.

“One of the many gifts he left me: inside a tiny red & yellow box, there is an even smaller wicker cage, an architecture of elegance. Inside the cage, on a little wicker bar, there is a miniature song bird with a feathered tail. There's a key to wind up the creature, which—when wound—begins to sing until, in a few moments, his time runs out. Its song is so beautiful that, to this day, I can barely stand to listen to it. But I do.

“I've kept the box it came in, too. On the front, in gold letters, it says:
Songing Bird.
I have a hunch it was first written in Japanese, translated into French, through Yiddish, to Polish, through Russian, and, finally, into American.

“The gold bees in the poem came by way of Mandelstam. The term ‘onion snow' refers to the last snowfall at the end of winter. You can know it was the last, of course, only in hindsight—once it is really spring. In the poem, somehow Bird & I wound up in April, and in Prague (where I have never been); I don't know how.”

J
ERICHO
B
ROWN
was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1976. He once worked as a speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans (Marc Morial from 1998 to 2002 and Ray Nagin in 2002). Brown is an assistant professor at Emory University. His poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including
The American Poetry Review
,
jubilat
,
Oxford American
,
The New Republic
,
The New Yorker
,
Ploughshares
, and
100 Best African American Poems
. His first book,
Please
(New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2008), won the American Book Award, and Copper Canyon Press published his second book,
The New Testament
, in September 2014.

Brown writes: “I am ever fascinated by all the people who like ‘Host' but have never met a man via jack'd, grindr, or
adam4adam.com
. I'm hoping this poem's appearance here lends power to my conviction that there is very little universal about poetry other than the marvelous music it makes in the mind and the mouth. And I trust this poem speaks for itself in its attempts to investigate desire, sexuality, and masculinity.”

K
URT
B
ROWN
(1944–2013) was the founding director of the Aspen Writers' Conference and founding director of Writers' Conferences & Centers. He served on the board of Poets House in New York for six years. He was the editor of
Drive, They Said: Poems about Americans and Their Cars
(1994),
Verse & Universe: Poems about Science and Mathematics
(1998), and coeditor with his wife, poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar, of
Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants and Bars
(1997). In addition, he was the editor of
The Measured Word: On Poetry and Science
(2001), and a coeditor of the tribute anthology for the late William Matthews,
Blues for Bill
(2005). He was also coeditor, with Harold Schechter, of
Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems
(2007) and
Killer Verse: Poems of Murder & Mayhem
(2011). His first two full-length collections,
Return of the Prodigals
and
More Things in Heaven and Earth
, were
published by Four Way Books.
Fables from the Ark
(WordTech) won the 2003 Custom Words Prize. His most recent collections,
Time-Bound
(2012) and
I've Come This Far to Say Hello: Poems Selected and New
(2014), were published by Tiger Bark Press. His memoir,
Lost Sheep: Aspen's Counterculture in the 1970s: A Memoir
, came out from Conundrum Press; and
Eating Our Words: Poets Share Their Favorite Recipes
is due out from Tupelo Press in 2014. With Laure-Anne Bosselaar he translated the Flemish poet Herman de Coninck's
The Plural of Happiness
(2006). He taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Georgia Tech, and Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. He died in Santa Barbara, California, in June, 2013.

CAC
ONRAD
was born on January 1, 1966. He is the author of six books, including
ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness
(Wave Books, 2014),
A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon
(Wave, 2012), and
The Book of Frank
(Wave, 2010). A 2014 Lannan Fellow, a 2013 MacDowell Fellow, a 2012 UCROSS Fellow, and a 2011 Pew Fellow, he conducts workshops on (Soma)tic poetry and Ecopoetics.

Of “wondering about our demise while driving to Disneyland with abandon,” Conrad writes: “This poem is from a series I call
TRANSLUCENT SALAMANDER
, forthcoming in
ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness
(Wave Books, 2014). It was written at UCROSS Ranch in Wyoming, a magnificent artist residency where I constructed eighteen of my own constellations at night, later combing my constellation notes to locate the language for eighteen poems. I used crystals given to me by poets Elizabeth Willis and Bhanu Kapil when taking the initial notes, and for the editing process I would begin by eating fruit infused with music from Missy Mazzoli's now famous
Cathedral City
CD. I would infuse the fruit by placing my laptop on the floor with the fruit, then play a track of Mazzoli's music as loud as I could, covering fruit and laptop with a basket, then pillows, blankets, towels, and a large comforter. Then I would quickly eat the fruit and begin editing my constellation notes for the poems. We are all collaborators with one another in many ways, deliberate or not, and my poems are always a thank-you to everyone around me.”

A
NNE
C
ARSON
was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living. Her recent publications include
Red Doc
(Alfred A. Knopf) and
Nay Rather
(Sylph Editions).

Carson writes: “ ‘A Fragment of Ibykos Translated 6 Ways' was an
exercise in translation undertaken just to see where it would go. It was certainly the hardest thing I did all year.”

J
OSEPH
C
ERAVOLO
(1934–1988) was born in Astoria, Queens, and lived in New Jersey. He studied with Kenneth Koch at The New School. He was the author of six books of poetry and won the first Frank O'Hara Award. He earned his living as a civil engineer. The
Collected Poems
of Joseph Ceravolo, edited by Rosemary Ceravolo and Parker Smathers, was published in 2013 by Wesleyan University Press. “This haunting tome is a masterpiece, a complex concerto of poems moving on a visionary trajectory” (Anne Waldman).

H
ENRI
C
OLE
was born in Fukuoka, Japan, in 1956. He has published eight collections of poetry and received the Jackson Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, and the Lenore Marshall Award. A new collection,
Nothing to Declare
, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Boston.

Of “City Horse,” Cole writes: “I was trying to write a poem (about a dead horse) that was many things: vocal, autobiographical (but mythic-seeming), dramatic (within the framework of a single sentence), and with a headlong galloping full of romantic ambition, sadness, and white heat. I don't think I succeeded, but the striving was enough.”

M
ICHAEL
E
ARL
C
RAIG
was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1970. He earned degrees from the University of Montana and the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of
Talkativeness
(Wave Books, 2014),
Thin Kimono
(Wave, 2010),
Yes, Master
(Fence Books, 2006),
Can You Relax in My House
(Fence, 2002), and the chapbook
Jombang Jet
(Factory Hollow Press, 2011). He is a certified journeyman farrier and shoes horses for a living near Livingston, Montana.

Of “The Helmet,” Craig writes: “As I understand it the female emu lays her eggs and leaves. The male then sits on them for two months, not eating this whole time, just sitting and losing weight. He keeps getting up to fuss over the eggs, rotating a bit before sitting back down in order to distribute the warmth more evenly, and if you try messing with the eggs this male emu might try to kill you. I'm telling you this because some poems are like eggs I have to sit on. Sometimes I sit on them too long maybe—revision after revision, nit-picking, obsessing. But this poem came quickly and I bet it had something to do with whatever I'd been writing right before it. This sometimes happens to me—a poem
is a reaction to its immediate predecessor. A friend suggested I describe the helmet: what kind of helmet is this? But I think that's for the reader to decide. The word helmet is a powerful one. The whole concept, really. A shell to protect the head.”

P
HILIP
D
ACEY
is the author of twelve books of poetry, most recently
Gimme Five
, which won the 2012 Blue Light Press Book Award;
Mosquito Operas: New and Selected Short Poems
(Rain Mountain Press, 2010); and
Vertebrae Rosaries: 50 Sonnets
(Red Dragonfly Press, 2009). Born in 1939 in St. Louis, Dacey has written collections about Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Eakins, and New York City. He has received a Discovery Award from the New York YM-YWHA's Poetry Center and various fellowships (a Fulbright to Yugoslavia, a Woodrow Wilson to Stanford, and two in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts). With David Jauss, he coedited
Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms
(Harper & Row, 1986). After an eight-year postretirement adventure in New York City, he returned in 2012 to Minnesota—where he taught for thirty-five years at Southwest Minnesota State University—to live in the Lake District of Minneapolis with his partner, Alixa Doom.

Dacey writes: “When I moved in 2004 from Minnesota to Manhattan's Upper West Side, I did not know the Juilliard School was in my neighborhood. I soon became a Juilliard junkie, attending recitals and concerts almost daily, sometimes more than once a day. Juilliard is one elite school where admission depends solely on the student's dedication and ability and not on parental status or influence; a president's son would not get in if he botched the audition piece. In summers, when Juilliard closed, I went into Juilliard-withdrawal. ‘Juilliard Cento Sonnet' is meant to provide an inside look at music performance, at all the work and fine-tuning that goes on behind what may look effortless. I find that the technical, professional talk of musicians can be richly resonant, arguably itself a kind of poetry.”

O
LENA
K
ALYTIAK
D
AVIS
was born in 1963, in Detroit. As a child she was enlisted to recite poems, by heart and in Ukrainian, to small patriotic crowds, and she has had divided feelings about poetry and its practice since. Her latest collection,
The Poem She Didn't Write and Other Poems
, is out in 2014 from Copper Canyon Press. Her work has appeared in five earlier volumes of
The Best American Poetry
(1995, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2011), sometimes under D for Davis and sometimes under K for
Kalytiak. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska, practices some law, and raises her kids.