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Public Poetry Project
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.
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.”
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.
Robin Becker’s “Santo Domingo Feast Day” is poetry as incantation, chanting the reader to an experience both highly particular and viscerally familiar.
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.
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.