This issue features poetry by Jane Wong, Noor Hindi, Pippa Little, Marcus Wicker, Talvikki Ansel, Darius Simpson, Lance Larsen, Maggie Millner, William Fuller, Alec Finlay, Jon Davis, Jordan Keller-Martinez, Ashley M. Jones, Anna Leahy, Jayy Dodd, A.D. Lauren-Abunassar, Austin Smith, Brayan Salinas, John Lennox, Kemi Alabi, Isabella Borgeson, Philip Gross, Ange Mlinko, Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, Imani Cezanne, Leila Chatti, Luther Hughes, and T.J. Clark. See more contributors at the Mag Stand.
Poetry Magazine
A Speaker to Root For
During the first few months of the pandemic, I couldn’t read anything. My attention span was gone and anything I did manage to read left my mind immediately. But that ended when I sat in the park and read Dorothy Chan’s Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions, 2019) from cover to cover. My locked-away ability to read had found its key. Already a fan of Chan’s work, this just helped solidify my love for her poetry even more, and I’m always more than happy to check out any of her newly published poems. The October 2020 issue of Poetry gives the gift of her poem, “Ode to Chinese Superstitions, Haircuts, and Being a Girl.”
The poem flows in a rush, like a held breath finally exhaled. Chan begins with the Chinese superstition “it’s bad luck / to get a haircut when I’m sick” and leads into the role the speaker fulfills as a daughter, as a girl, as someone who “always bring[s] / the party, cause[s] the trouble . . . .” While there are specifics tied to her own self, culture, and family—her brother’s fate, her mother’s thoughts on her future, her father’s opinion on how “good Chinese girls” wear their hair—Chan leaves the reader plenty of room to relate to her words. If we don’t feel like her, we can still root for her and her “short skirt,” her “forehead forever exposed.”
NewPages Mag Stand: Poetry
The October 2020 issue of Poetry is at this week’s Mag Stand. Work by Maya C. Popa, Ed Roberson, Dorothy Chan, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Chester Wilson III, Oli Rodriguez, Tianru Wang, Nathan Sppon, heidi andrea restrepo Rhodes, Cathy Song, Orlando Ricardo Menes, Martin Dyar, Ingrid Wendt, John Lee Clark, Jennifer Jean, Adrienne Su, Tom Pickard, Katie Hartsock, and more.
NewPages Mag Stand: Poetry
The latest issue of Poetry is at the NewPages Mag Stand, featuring work by Michael Hofmann, Martha Sprackland, Harmony Holiday, Pascale Petit, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Gertrude Stein & Bianca Stone, Tishani Doshi, Madeline Gins, Joy Ladin, Emily Jungmin Yoon,Sumita Chakraborty, Katie Pyontek, Sun Yung Shin, Torrin A. Greathouse, Sally Wen Mao, Lucy Ives, Shane Neilson, Nelly Sachs, Ocean Vuong, and more. Plus, an essay by Joy Ladin.
Poetry Offers April 2020 Issue Free During NaPoMo
April is here, ringing in National Poetry Month. To celebrate the occasion, Poetry Magazine is currently offering a free download of the April 2020.
You can find the free issue in the Poetry Magazine App, available through the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon.
Poets in this issue include Ocean Vuong, Emily Jungmin Yoon, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Gertrude Stein and Bianca Stone, Michael Hoffman, and plenty more. Go snag your free copy and spend the month celebrating the poems and poets you love.