Romantic Poet
You would not have loved him,my friend the scholardecried. He brushed his teeth,if at all, with salt. He lied,and rarely washedhis hair. Wiped his asswith leaves or with his hand.The top of his head would have barelyreached your tits. His pitsreeked, as did his deathbed.But the nightingale, I said.
Feature Date
- November 2, 2022
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Copyright © 2022 by Diane Seuss.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Diane Seuss was born in Indiana and raised in Michigan. Seuss is the author of the poetry collections Frank: Sonnets (2021), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (2018); Four-Legged Girl (2015), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (2010), winner of the 2009 Juniper Prize for Poetry; and It Blows You Hollow (1998). Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Georgia Review, Brevity, Able Muse, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and the Missouri Review, as well as The Best American Poetry 2014. She was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Colorado College in 2012, and she has taught at Kalamazoo College since 1988. Seuss earned a BA from Kalamazoo College and an MSW from Western Michigan University.
October 2022
Chicago, Illinois
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Adrian Matejka
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Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Harriet Monroe’s “Open Door” policy, set forth in Volume I of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry’s mission: to print the best poetry written today, in whatever style, genre, or approach.
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