R/poetry on Reddit has been on fire the past couple weeks with interesting poems and discussions. Some of these I’m holding back to refer to in a more focused post on very short poems, but here’s an assortment of others:
“alternate names for black boys” by Danez Smith – poem | discussion
(If you’re on a computer and want to see both, just go to the discussion. On mobile you can’t view the two together.)
“Kingdom Animalia” by Aracelis Girmay – Just the poem; there were no comments.
“Bloody Men” by Wendy Cope – poem | discussion
I’m not a huge fan of Cope. No insult intended: my poetic interests just lie elsewhere (“The Orange” does make me smile). But I thought this was a great example of a contemporary love poem in rhyme and meter executed well.
“Making It in Poetry” by Bob Hicock – Given that we just finished The Poet’s Guide to Submitting to Literary Journals, and our instructor Ana had mentioned Bob Hicock in her interview, this was timely.
Also timely was this discussion of literary magazines with a “fresh, edgy vibe – relevant to newer generations, but still high quality.”
A thread with Funny Poet Recommendations – Frank O’Hara and Russell Edson are some of my personal favorites from this list. Edson may be more strange than funny, but I do think he can make you giggle.
Finally, this is a wonderful review of a new collection of Emily Dickinson‘s letters, which reveals that many of the popular stories about her are myths. Rather than being a recluse undiscovered until her death, she was actually “a poet firmly embedded in the political and literary currents of her time.” Get a glimpse of Dickinson the gardener (how the townsfolk of Amherst might have guessed she would be remembered, I recall reading elsewhere) and Dickinson the doting (if gender-bending) aunt.
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