Poems for Feb. 3

 I love Groundhog's day where here in the North, the shifting to days with more light is still teetering in  balance-- will he or won't he see his shadow?  Last week's poems were the sort that do not deliver a "terminal pleasure", a term Marvin Bell jokingly uses for those poems ending up in a distinct bus station.

I thank everyone for embracing the diversity poetry offers.  What poems "push the envelope" for you? and how do you respond?  What is it you seek in a poem? 

The world was dazzled by Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem -- another one, written for Tracy K. Smith on her inauguration as National Poet Laureate is  In This Place (An American Lyric). (5 min. video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWrsEtqPFNw)

I was tempted to use the poems of Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí — Featured Poet in Mud Review December issue: https://mudseasonreview.com/2020/12/poetry-issue-53/.

Good questions such as: what isn’t propelled by hunger,/the mouth of the beast unhinged inside us/like a broken door, always wanting & wanting? and in his Ode to Grief: orisha ta o le ba binu, what ritual do you require?

compelling sharings such as :I am learning: nothing ruins a man/more than the dirty receipts of all that he tried to be/ but failed at, a life imagined but never birthed.

The line up starts with the 3rd place runner-up youth in the competition for the inaugural poem, a 7th grader from Virginia, Gabrielle Marshall. 1st place runner up: Hallie Knight, 17, a HS senior from Jacksonville, FL;  (To Rebuild) 2nd place: Mina King, 17, from Shreveport, LA; (In Pursuit of Dawn)    

In honor of Black History month, a selection from poets recommended by Dante Micheaux, visiting poet at Writers and Books.  

The Power of Hope Today  by Gabrielle Marshall

As from a Quiver of Arrows by Carl Phillips

MMDCCXIII ½ by Lorenzo Thomas

The Dictionary of the Wolf  by Melvin B. Tolson

The Cradle Logic of Autumn  by Jay Wright

Menace to  by Taylor Johnson

see Nutshell for discussion.