Poetry in Evergreen
Just realized that I had not been blogging about the poetry I published as poetry editor in the spring/summer issue of the Evergreen Review. I had been introducing the poets and their poems on Facebook, so I will copy and paste those introductions here. * How to write political poems? Try comedy. Paul Stinson does it so variously and well in the group of five poems that I'm proud to publish in The Evergreen Review. He understands that laughter is never pure, but is always tinged with bitterness, regret, longing, self-criticism, and self-satisfaction. Laughter is always destabilizing. From "Americana": "If I’ve learned anything since then, it’s that empires love to die. Look, they’re not doing this for their health. And then we can jingle them in our pockets like coins, like a pile of palm-smoothed metal, with a laughing flood of memory, and not a single thought of wealth." The poems are accompanied by the terrific art of Barbara Weissberger. Images an...