The Best American Poetry 2015 (23 page)

Of “It Was the Animals,” Diaz writes: “Sometimes a god sends a storm or flood and it is a type of love. We gather up all the beasts, including ourselves, including our brothers, because we were built like other animals, with an instinct to
survive
. Maybe it is more than an instinct, maybe it is
surviving
that we do as a rule, and
living
is what is a luckiness when we manage to do it well enough to call it a celebration, to call it
life
. My love for my brother is both the flood and the ark. It is what makes me want to teach him the error of his ways but also what makes me want to hold him as we ride out whatever storm is battering us. He has his animals and I have mine. They hollow us. They make us dark inside.
They split us open on the rocks. At the end of it all everything has changed—the land, the sky, the rivers, the sea—but what doesn't change is that we are brother and sister. What never changes is love.”

D
ENISE
D
UHAMEL
was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1961.
Blowout
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), her most recent book of poems, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of a 2014 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her other books include
Ka-Ching!
(Pittsburgh, 2009),
Two and Two
(Pittsburgh, 2005),
Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems
(Pittsburgh, 2001),
The Star-Spangled Banner
(winner of the Crab Orchard Award; Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), and
Kinky
(Orchises Press, 1997). She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The guest editor of
The Best American Poetry 2013
, she is a professor at Florida International University in Miami.

Of “Fornicating,” Duhamel writes: “In July 2012 I had the good fortune to be in Lisbon with the Disquiet Program. I went to hear a lecture by Richard Zenith about the history of Portuguese verse. He ended with a few poems by contemporary poet Adília Lopes, and I was immediately hooked. I sensed in her work urgency and hilarity and have since sought out her poems that are translated into English. The lines I quote are from Lopes's ‘Weather Report.' You can read some of her work at
www.poetryinternationalweb.net
.”

T
HOMAS
S
AYERS
E
LLIS
was born on October 5, 1963, and attended Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. He earned his MFA at Brown University under the sharp, tough, and eye-opening tutelage of poet Michael S. Harper. He cofounded the Dark Room Collective in 1988. He is a photographer, poet, and professor, and his poems have appeared in
Callaloo
,
Poetry
,
The Paris Review
,
Pluck!
,
The Nation
,
Tin House
, and
Transition
. His photographs have appeared on numerous book covers. He has recently been a visiting writer at the University of San Francisco, Wesleyan University, Howard University, and the University of Montana. He is the author of
The Maverick Room
(2005) and
Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems
(2010). In 2014, he cofounded (with saxophonist James Brandon Lewis) Heroes Are Gang Leaders, an Amiri Baraka tribute band of poets and musicians.

Ellis writes: “ ‘Vernacular Owl' was written, mostly, in bed in San Francisco and edited while crossing America numerous times on the California Zephyr (Amtrak). I was paid $2,230 for the publication of it in
Poetry
magazine, $250
for the recording of the poem for the Poetry Foundation's podcast; and $500 more, by the Poetry Foundation, when the poem received the Salmon O. Levinson Prize. The appearance of ‘Vernacular Owl' in this anthology will add $100, bringing the total to $3,080, all of which was used to fund the three recording sessions, engineering and mixing fees for the project Heroes Are Gang Leaders/The Amiri Baraka Sessions. ‘Vernacular Owl' is not an elegy. The poem attempts to express the transformation of nonmaterial flight.”

E
MILY
K
ENDAL
F
REY
was born in McLean, Virginia, in 1976. She is the author of several chapbooks and chapbook collaborations, including
Frances
,
Airport
,
Baguette
, and
The New Planet
.
The Grief Performance
, her first full-length collection, won the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America in 2012.
Sorrow Arrow
, her second collection, was published by Octopus Books in 2014.

J
AMES
G
ALVIN
was born in Chicago in 1951 and raised in Northern Colorado. His first four books are collected in
Resurrection Update
, published by Copper Canyon Press. Also published by Copper Canyon are
X
and
As Is
. He is the author of two prose works,
The Meadow
and
Fencing the Sky
, published by Henry Holt. He teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Of “On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses,” Galvin writes: “W. B. Yeats wrote, ‘How but in custom and in ceremony / Are innocence and beauty born?' Good question. I saw a wedding dress on display at Goodwill and it got me thinking. As a poet, I could identify with that dress, and also with all the dresses that, after so much care and deliberation, are worn once, then trapped in darkness, alone. My poem is a tracery of my thinking and feeling about the situation of wedding dresses.”

M
ADELYN
G
ARNER
was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1937. A graduate of the University of Denver (BA) and Mills College (MEd), she is a retired public school administrator and instructor of English. She has received the Colorado Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities for encouraging incorporation of the arts into school programs. Named a Leo Love Merit Scholar at the Taos Summer Writers' Conference, she was awarded an Aspen Writers' Foundation's Annual Writing Retreat scholarship. In 2010, she won the Jackson Hole Writers Conference Poetry Prize. With coeditor Andrea L. Watson, she published the anthology
Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined
(3: A Taos Press, 2013).

Garner writes: “ ‘The Garden in August' began with the powerful image of an older neighbor in her garden and then developed into a semibiographical account of my sister's fatal battle with Alzheimer's. As the poem progressed, I grew interested in what my neighbor might have done the day after I saw her, and in the process I found myself viewing her as a representative figure for those who choose to live life with dogged persistence and admirable willpower no matter how challenging. I often write about them: the elderly world adventurer planning yet another trip (next year, maybe Cuba?); the survivor of a near-death experience now healthy enough to walk her beloved Airedale several miles daily; my sister.

“Soon it will be spring in the Rocky Mountains, and once more I will breakfast on the back patio in my own well-worn robe so I might enjoy the exuberance of parrot tulips planted in late October. Under hand there will be a growing nursery list of annuals to be purchased for this year's garden,
Ageratum houstonianum
through
Zinnia elegans
, and a folder with multiple drafts of the poem I am working on at the moment. Later in the day, I will probably search for my favorite floppy-brimmed hat and check the garden hoses for weathering, perhaps even clean up the yard. I will do this, as the poem reminds me, because I am alive.”

A
MY
G
ERSTLER
was born in San Diego, California, in 1956. She teaches at the University of California at Irvine. Her books of poems include
Dearest Creature
(Penguin, 2009),
Ghost Girl
(Penguin, 2004), and
Medicine
(Penguin, 2000). A new book of poems entitled
Scattered at Sea
came out from Penguin in June 2015. She was the guest editor of
The Best American Poetry 2010
.

Of “Rhinencephalon,” Gerstler writes: “This poem came about due to a confluence of reading about refugees (some of whom get separated from their loved ones and families in the process of fleeing conflict zones and trying to emigrate to safety), thinking about various other types of displacement and homelessness that people suffer, and an urge to write a kind of love poem. Somewhere in the mix is also the influence of reading and thinking about the role of smell in love and attraction. The rhinencephalon is a part of an animal's brain—not terribly well developed in humans, apparently—that contains structures having to do with the sense of smell. I was thinking with envy of the fact that certain other animals with more sophisticated olfactory capabilities can recognize each other by smell.”

L
OUISE
G
LÜCK
was born in New York City in 1943. Her most recent books of poetry, both from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, are
Faithful and Virtuous Night
, which received a 2014 National Book Award, and
Poems 1962–2012
. A former United States Poet Laureate, she has won a National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She teaches at Yale University and Boston University, and was the 2014–2015 Mohr Writer in Residence at Stanford University. She was the guest editor of
The Best American Poetry 1993
.

R. S. (S
AM
) G
WYNN
was born in Leaksville (now Eden), North Carolina, in 1948. After attending Davidson College, he entered the graduate program at the University of Arkansas, where he earned his MFA. Since 1976, he has taught at Lamar University, where he is poet-in-residence and University Professor of English. His first two collections were chapbooks,
Bearing & Distance
(1977) and
The Narcissiad
(1980). These were followed by
The Drive-In
(1986) and
No Word of Farewell: New and Selected Poems 1970–2000
. His new collection is
Dogwatch
(2014) from Measure Press. His criticism appears regularly in
The Hudson Review
, and he is editor of the Pocket Anthology Series from Pearson-Longman. He lives in Beaumont, Texas, with his wife, Donna. They have three sons and seven grandchildren.

Gwynn writes: “The origin of ‘Looney Tunes' is a little unusual. Several years ago, a friend, an English poet, sent me a page that reprinted the winner and finalists of a
TLS
poetry competition, mentioning that both the winner and the first runner-up were friends of hers. I liked both poems, but ‘The Examiners' by John Whitworth (it's easy enough to find the poem online) struck me as superior to the winner. I asked her to put me in touch with John, and after a few emails we both, I think, realized a match made in poets' heaven (Limbo?). We were both of an age and, though separated by the pond, enjoyed doing the same sorts of things with verse. Quickly after this, I wrote ‘Looney Tunes' (originally titled ‘Dirge') as an homage to John, to whom it is dedicated. Knowing John's poems freed me up to write verse in dipodic meters (beloved by Kipling and Gilbert) and to use rhyme as audaciously as I dared. I hope that those who enjoy this bit of metrical madness will look up and read Whitworth's poems; he is little known in the United States for the usual reasons. I was proud to host him at Lamar University for his first U.S. visit (even if it was only to southeast Texas), to take him to an Astros game (he is a cricket fanatic), and to let him give my students and many others unforgettable classroom performances and a public reading. A
very good reading of ‘Looney Tunes' (with appropriate visuals) can be found on YouTube at the archive of the great ‘Tom O'Bedlam,' who has given a remarkable public voice to so many poems by me and others. For his readings, see
htps://www.youtube.com/user/SpokenVerse
.”

M
EREDITH
H
ASEMANN
lives in East Hampton, New York. When she's not teaching eighth-grade English, you might find her searching for beach glass, carving and burning driftwood, or playing guitar and bass for the North Branch All Stars. Although right now she lives full-time in the Hamptons, her heart is in the Green Mountains of Vermont, where she will return one day. She is seeking a publisher for her first book of poetry. Her young adult novels are represented by the Nancy Gallt Literary Agency.

Of “Thumbs,” Hasemann writes: “This poem began to write itself on a shared hike in Vermont. Although the conversation centered upon hydroponic tomatoes, my background brain was buzzing with the chaos of my unnecessarily dramatic and drawn-out divorce and a host of other facts, concerns, and scraps of brain matter. A stacked stone wall near the apple orchard on North Branch Road led me to marvel at how each of these stones added precariously together to create a new whole, and how they just happened to fit. I tried to write ‘Thumbs' like that stone wall, stacking my concerns one on top of the next to see if I could climb onto the construction and actually see anything beyond. For me, ‘Thumbs' represents freedom. It's about allowing a poem to exist on many planes and to be free to go where it wants.

“I often wonder about how past and present fit together and how memory and thought work. We have so many layers crammed inside our brain, how is it at all possible to express anything at all? This poem was my attempt to allow the competing voices and experiences in my head to inform each other, instead of stifling them. It's about accepting a number of story lines and how they converge.”

T
ERRANCE
H
AYES
was born in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1971. He is the author of
How to Be Drawn
(Penguin, 2015). His other books are
Lighthead
(Penguin, 2010),
Wind in a Box
(Penguin, 2006),
Hip Logic
(Penguin, 2002), and
Muscular Music
(Tia Chucha Press, 1999). He has won a 2010 National Book Award and a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship. He teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. He was the guest editor of
The Best American Poetry 2014
.