2020 Poetry Selections

I love C. D. Wrights work. I studied her while getting my MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts. My thesis advisor Santee Frazier had her as a mentor. In this way I too feel a connection to her poetry. I continue to study her work and read her poems.

Angie Trudell Vasquez (Mexican-American 2nd & 3rd generation Iowan) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has been published in Taos Journal of Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, Cloudthroat, and the South Florida Poetry Journal. She has poems on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and was a Ruth Lilly fellow as an undergraduate at Drake University. Her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, was released by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. She co-guest edited the Spring 2019 edition of the Yellow Medicine Review. She serves on the Wisconsin State Poet Laureate Commission, and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. On January 20, 2020 she became Madison’s newest Poet Laureate.

Layli Long Soldier’s book, Whereas, lived in my back pack daily for six months. It rode with me from Madison to Milwaukee when I was still working for the ACLU of Wisconsin, and was more often than not my lunch companion. I really love this book. I studied and tried to absorb the craft, the lines, the placement of the words on the page. I have recommended it to many people. My copy is well worn and annotated. I hope to get it signed someday post pandemic.

Angie Trudell Vasquez (Mexican-American 2nd & 3rd generation Iowan) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has been published in Taos Journal of Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, Cloudthroat, and the South Florida Poetry Journal. She has poems on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and was a Ruth Lilly fellow as an undergraduate at Drake University. Her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, was released by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. She co-guest edited the Spring 2019 edition of the Yellow Medicine Review. She serves on the Wisconsin State Poet Laureate Commission, and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. On January 20, 2020 she became Madison’s newest Poet Laureate.

Arthur Sze taught at IAIA. He taught many of my poetry mentors at IAIA while they were undergraduates. In this way I too have been influenced by Arthur Sze. His poetry, his poetry, wow, what can I say. Read it. Live it. Breathe it. I have lines of his poems on my refrigerator and as I make my morning tea or coffee I gaze at them. I had the opportunity to hear him read at AWP in Portland in 2019. I asked him to sign my book and thanked him for his poetry, and for teaching my mentors who in turn shared his gifts with me.

Angie Trudell Vasquez (Mexican-American 2nd & 3rd generation Iowan) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has been published in Taos Journal of Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, Cloudthroat, and the South Florida Poetry Journal. She has poems on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and was a Ruth Lilly fellow as an undergraduate at Drake University. Her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, was released by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. She co-guest edited the Spring 2019 edition of the Yellow Medicine Review. She serves on the Wisconsin State Poet Laureate Commission, and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. On January 20, 2020 she became Madison’s newest Poet Laureate.

Santee Frazier was one of my first teachers at IAIA when I was getting my MFA, and the last person I studied while finishing my thesis. In my second to last semester, I sent him a poem every morning before going to work. Just like now I would wake up early to edit my poems, having done so the previous night as well. I would go to sleep with lines in my head and wake up to lines in my head. Santee is now the director for the MFA program at IAIA following Jon Davis. I saw him recently at AWP and he has a fabulous new book out entitled, Aurum: Poems. This poem I chose for today is from his first book, Dark Thirty. I woke to a poem by him this AM, selected by Joy Harjo for poetry month. Santee is such a generous teacher, has such good instincts, and really cares about the students. I am so fortunate to have had him as a mentor.

Angie Trudell Vasquez (Mexican-American 2nd & 3rd generation Iowan) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has been published in Taos Journal of Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, Cloudthroat, and the South Florida Poetry Journal. She has poems on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and was a Ruth Lilly fellow as an undergraduate at Drake University. Her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, was released by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. She co-guest edited the Spring 2019 edition of the Yellow Medicine Review. She serves on the Wisconsin State Poet Laureate Commission, and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. On January 20, 2020 she became Madison’s newest Poet Laureate.

This is an excerpt from the book, Dissolve. I studied with Sherwin Bitsui at IAIA. I learned so much from him about the craft of poetry, and how to become a careful reader and editor of my own work. I also studied his work as a MFA student, and when you really examine what it is he is doing on the page you can become lost for hours. I greatly admire his work. His voice is in my head when I edit and sculpt poems on the page. Sherwin was one of the first people I told about my Madison Poet Laureateship. I owe much to him.

Sherwin Bitsui, a Diné (Navajo) from the Navajo Reservation in White Cone, Arizona, received an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program. He is the author of the poetry collections Shapeshift (2003) and Flood Song (2009).
Steeped in Native American culture, mythology, and history, Bitsui’s poems reveal the tensions in the intersection of Native American and contemporary urban culture. His poems are imagistic, surreal, and rich with details of the landscape of the Southwest. Flood Song is a book-length lyric sequence that explores the traditions of Native American writing through postmodern fragment and stream of consciousness.

Jean Valentine’s poem, “Door in the Mountain.” I walk around my house reciting this poem. There is so much here in this short poem. So many directions you can go and interpretations. I feel this poem strongly in my bones. I was first introduced to it during a craft talk Joan Naviyuk Kane gave at IAIA in Santa Fe, NM during my MFA.

Angie Trudell Vasquez (Mexican-American 2nd & 3rd generation Iowan) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has been published in Taos Journal of Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, Cloudthroat, and the South Florida Poetry Journal. She has poems on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and was a Ruth Lilly fellow as an undergraduate at Drake University. Her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, was released by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. She co-guest edited the Spring 2019 edition of the Yellow Medicine Review. She serves on the Wisconsin State Poet Laureate Commission, and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. On January 20, 2020 she became Madison’s newest Poet Laureate.

I perceive the speaker in the poem as grieving and experiencing loss, which I think is a universal feeling we can all relate to at some point and especially during these unprecedented COVID-19 times.  Then this is juxtaposed with the efforts of the young boy to maintain and encourage life which gives me a feeling of hope for the future.   Unrelated to the poem itself, a complimentary musical piece is also bringing me similar hope to what I feel from this poem.  Enjoy, if you wish, "Truly Brave" performed in social isolation by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. (via YouTube)

I was introduced to Carolyn Forche’ as an undergraduate at Drake University. This poem was the first poem of hers I read and it changed me as a writer, poet and spoke to me. It blew my mind and I felt it deep in my bones. It gave me a window into another realm of poetry. I was already a writer when I read this and an activist. Carolyn was a young poet when she wrote this and I was a young poet when I came upon her work at Drake – I had very good teachers. I have spent my whole career with her as the shining example of what a writer can do on the page melting heart and body and breath on the page. I LOVE all her work and follow her. When I had the chance to meet her in Milwaukee I felt like my whole life had pointed me in this direction, and we know some of the same poets from IAIA where I went to graduate school. I feel so blessed to have been hugged by her. I gave her my books and told her how I modeled by first book, The Force Your Face Carries, after her book, The Country Between Us. I teach this poem often and come back to it again and again. I know our lives are hard right now. We can get through this though our brothers and sisters across the globe have dealt with much more. Our ancestors have endured. We can too.

Angie Trudell Vasquez (Mexican-American 2nd & 3rd generation Iowan) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has been published in Taos Journal of Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, Cloudthroat, and the South Florida Poetry Journal. She has poems on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and was a Ruth Lilly fellow as an undergraduate at Drake University. Her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, was released by Finishing Line Press in May 2019. She co-guest edited the Spring 2019 edition of the Yellow Medicine Review. She serves on the Wisconsin State Poet Laureate Commission, and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. On January 20, 2020 she became Madison’s newest Poet Laureate.

It's my favorite: This poem reminds me of King's Dream speech. It's a very influential poem.

A 2018 Pushcart nominee, Vida Cross is a blues poet.  Her book of poetry, Bronzeville at Night: 1949, references her ancestry as a third generation Chicagoan, a Bronzeville resident, and the artwork of Archibald J. Motley Jr..  She received an MFA in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a Cave Canem Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Creativity and Constraint Anthology for Wising Up Press, A Civil Rights Retrospective with the Black Earth Institute, Tabula Poetica with Chapman University, Transitions Magazine at the Hutchinson Institute, the Cave Canem Anthology XII: Poems 2008-2009, The Literary Review with Fairleigh Dickinson University, Reed Magazine at Reed College, and The Journal of Film and Video from The University of Illinois, Chicago.

I became an insta fan of Carrie Fountain’s poetry when I stumbled upon the poem “The Jungle” last month in the American Poetry Review (Vol 49, No2). I almost picked “The Jungle” for Poem-a-Day, but “Want,” written in 2010, seems apropos this April, as we are suspended together “floating in and out” of uncertainty like Fountain’s sad, busy wasps. We can brace for the unknown suffering coming our way, yet work from our bald headed nests, start seeds indoors, cook big meals for families reunited by COVID19, watch Tiger King on Netflix, go through with weddings or postpone them until next year. We skeptically conjure futures based on the imaginary ones we envisioned in the obsolete past. We do not know how to tweak our own fantasies so that we can believe them fully, but we keep going. “Want” offers an aspirational strategy for navigating life’s unpredictability.  “Learning” as fountain writes, “how to hold hopelessness and hope together.”

 

Every time I teach this in class, students always find something new to latch onto.  Sometimes it's the animals, sometimes its the people, sometimes it's the place, sometimes it's the feeling associated with the swirl of it all.  I love hearing how every student finds something here to love and hope for.

B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, most recently Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians and the Weird in Flyover Country, The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders, among others. Hollars is the recipient of the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Nonfiction, the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize, the Council of Wisconsin Writers' Blei-Derleth Award, and the Society of Midland Authors Award.  He is the founder and executive director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He lives a simple existence with his wife, their children, and their dog.

I read this poem when I was in high school in New York City and loved it right away. I always come back to it.

Ronnie Hess is a Madison-based poet, the author of five chapbooks, and past-Chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission.

I don't have a favorite poem, though I have many that I dearly love.  This is one of them.  And it's short.  Which might encourage people to actually read it.  In my home office, the amazing artist Dee Hutch tagged one of the walls with lines of poems I love in graffiti text, including the last sentence in this poem.  Hayden is one of only two poets with more than one line on the wall, because there's a line from his "Ballad of Nat Turner" included on the wall, too (the other poet with two lines on the wall is John Donne).  Reading much of Hayden's work is like looking at the Grand Canyon, to me.  It's just unfathomable how normal people can create such powerful little things sometimes.

Nick Demske lives in Racine Wisconsin and works as a children's librarian at the Racine Public Library. In his community, he's very involved in local politics, racial justice work and criminal justice reform. He is also an elected official (County Supervisor, Racine County Dist 1). Nick is author of a self-titled collection of poems which was chosen for the Fence Modern Poets Series prize by Joyelle McSweeney and published by Fence Books in 2010.

The sense of this poem suggests our belonging to something larger than the "I" of ego, an understanding I try to nurture in myself and, through my own poetry, nurture in others. We have all had those transformational or ecstatic experiences when the "me"  has disappeared, when for a moment we are lifted out of ordinary realms like time. Although Li Po's poem alludes to zazen meditation, it also shows a speaker centered in and connecting with nature.  In our "social isolation" we might find good company in the beings of the natural world.

Kimberly Blaeser, writer, photographer, and scholar, served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2015-16. She is a Professor of English and Indigenous Studies at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee and an MFA faculty member for the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. The author of four collections of poetry, most recently Copper Yearning and Apprenticed to Justice, Blaeser is Anishinaabe, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, and grew up on White Earth Reservation. A bi-lingual French/English collection of her poetry, Résister en dansee/Dancing Resistance will be published by Éditions des Lisières in 2020.