Why I Wrote This Poem

William Walsh, the author of eight books, is the director of the Reinhardt University undergraduate creative writing program and the MFA program. He has been published in such journals as Five Points, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review and Literary Matters. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments

Introduction

Kim Addonizio

delete“Cigar Box Banjo”

deleteCigar Box Banjo Reflection

David Baker

delete“Nineteen Spikes”

deleteWriting in Peril

Aliki Barnstone

delete“Scripture for Coronavirus”

deleteOn Writing “Scripture for Coronavirus”: E Pluribus Unum

Erin Belieu

delete“With Birds”

deleteNotes on “With Birds”

Richard Blanco

delete“Looking for The Gulf Motel”

deleteMemory as Homeland

David Bottoms

delete“Under the ­Vulture-Tree"

deleteUnder the Vulture-Tree on the Wakulla River

Earl Sherman Braggs

delete“Sandy Columbine Hook Parkland”

deleteWhat We Come to Know, What Comes to Know

Fred Chappell

delete“The Departures”

deleteThey

Chen Chen

delete“The School of Night & Hyphens”

deleteTelling the Truth About Love

Marilyn Chin

delete“Bamboo, the Dance”

deletePoetry of Necessity

Ama Codjoe

delete“Burying Seeds”

deleteOn Composing “Burying Seeds”

Stephen Corey

delete“History of My Present”

deleteThe History of “History of My Present”

Chad Davidson

delete“Putting In”

deleteThe Tricky Business of Elegies

Denise Duhamel

delete“Recession Commandments”

deleteLies I Told Myself

Camille Dungy

delete“One Night in 1888, as the French steamboat ­Abd-el-Kader”

deleteOne Night in 1888

Stephen Dunn

delete“Elementary”

deleteResuscitating the “Elementary” Poem

Cornelius Eady

delete“Baldwin”

deleteWriting “Baldwin”

Martín Espada

delete“Letter to My Father”

deleteNotes on “Letter to My Father”

Beth Ann Fennelly

delete“What I Think About When Someone Uses ‘Pussy’ as a Synonym for ‘Weak’”

deleteOut of the Quarrel with Others

Annie Finch

delete“A Root”

deleteThe Roots of “A Root”

Greg Fraser

delete“The Good News”

deleteDelivering “The Good News”

Alice Friman

delete“Under a Blind Eye”

deleteConfession: On “Under a Blind Eye”

Ángel García

delete“Barely”

deleteThe Man Inside the Poem

Margaret Gibson

delete“Exchange”

deleteOn Writing “Exchange”

Nikki Giovanni

delete“Knoxville, Tennessee”

deleteIt’s Your Decision When You Want to Share

Beth Gylys

delete“My Father’s Nightmare”

deleteMy Father’s Daughter: Sex, Lies, and Telling It Slant

Janice N. Harrington

delete“Layered Pigments”

deleteThe Layered Pigments of Elegy and Racial History

Terrance Hayes

delete“A POEM BY YOU” delete

Edward Hirsch

delete“For the Sleepwalkers”

deleteSomething Wonderful

Jane Hirshfield

delete“Today, When I Could Do Nothing”

deleteOn Writing “Today, When I Could Do Nothing”

Christine Kitano

delete“Dumb Luck”

deleteWhat is the Ethnicity of the Speaker?

Yusef Komunyakaa

delete“My Good Hand Plays God”

deleteThe Hands

Ted Kooser

delete“An Entrance”

deletePoems of Gesture

Dorianne Laux

delete“Facts About the Moon”

deleteLove in Spite of the Facts

Sandra Lim

delete“A Tab of Iron on the Tongue”

deleteThe Lunacy of Lyric Poetry

Adrian Matejka

delete“Gymnopédies No. 2”

deleteWhat Really Happened

Airea D. Matthews

delete“If my late grandmother were Gertrude Stein”

deleteIf Ain’t

Campbell McGrath

delete“The Ladder”

deleteIn the Castle of the Stranger

Dunya Mikhail

delete“The Stranger in Her Feminine Sign”

deleteFemale Slave Market

Robert Morgan

delete“Sigodlin”

deleteThe World Made Plumb

David Mura

delete“South Carolina Sea Island”

deleteWalking with Ghosts

Marilyn Nelson

delete“The Tulsa Convulsion”

deleteFamily Trip to Oklahoma, 2018

Laura Newbern

delete“Novella”

deleteOn “Novella” 

Annemarie Ní Churreáin

delete“Six Ways to Wash Your Hands (Ayliffe 1978)”

deleteIn the Shadow of Men Who Wanted to Conquer Wildness

Alicia Ostriker

delete“Listen”

delete“Listen”: A Mother-Daughter Poem and How It Grew

Frank Paino

delete“Swallow”

deleteWriting My Obsessions

Sara Pirkle

delete“What Hurts”

deleteListing and Listening

John Poch

delete“Denzel Sestina”

deleteDenzel &

Paisley Rekdal

delete“Wild Horses”

deleteOn Wild Horses

Alberto Ríos

delete“Refugio’s Hair”

deleteThe Story Is Relative

Tim Seibles

delete“Movie”

deleteThe Making of “Movie”

Vijay Seshadri

delete“Trailing Clouds of Glory”

deleteSenate Bill 1070 and “Trailing Clouds of Glory”

Patricia Smith

delete“Coo Coo Cachoo”

deleteA Badass Woman Revises, Never Compromises

Virgil Suárez

delete“The Cotton Ball Queen”

deleteNursing People Back to Health

Mai Der Vang

delete“Prayer to the Redwood”

deleteEver More Poems: A Poetics of Creation and Abundance

William Walsh

delete“Why Otters Hold Hands”

deleteWhen a Young Woman Must

Afaa M. Weaver

delete“Thelonius”

deleteLiner Notes for “Thelonius”

Artress Bethany White

delete“Vibrio Cholerae”

deleteDocumenting Freedom at the Intersection of History

and Disease in “Vibrio Cholerae”

Carey Scott Wilkerson

delete“Summer’s End”

deletePoetry and Paradox and the Oracles of the Neighborhood

William Wright

delete“To a Minor Chinese Poet of the Kunlun Mountains”

deletePersonal Grief as Empathetic Imagination

Jenny Xie

delete“Melancholia”

deleteProbing Opacity

Monica Youn

delete“A Guide to Usage: Mine”

deleteMining the Word

Contributor Notes

Credits and Permissions

Index