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August 1989

The oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world.

This issue is sold out.
  • David Baker
  • Peter Balakian
  • Thomas Carper
  • G. Chandra
  • Robin Chapman
See Table of Contents
Cover for Poetry Magazine, August 1989
From this Issue
    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Nabokov’s Blues

      By William Matthews
      The wallful of quoted passages from his work,
      with the requisite specimens pinned next
      to their literary cameo appearances, was too good

      a temptation to resist, and if the curator couldn’t,
      why should we? The prose dipped and shimmered
      and the “flies,” as I heard...

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    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Arroyo: Flash Flood

      By John Unterecker
      The canyon walls close in again,
      slant light a silver glare in brown water.
      The water is only knee deep, but when the boy reaches the
         boulders—
      purple dark, silvered by the smash of brute water—
      water will tear at his chest and arms.
      The...

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    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Summer at North Farm

      By Stephen Kuusisto
      Fires, always fires after midnight,
      the sun depending in the purple birches

      and gleaming like a copper kettle.
      By the solstice they’d burned everything,

      the bad-luck sleigh, a twisted rocker,
      things “possessed” and not-quite-right.

      The bonfire coils and lurches,
      big as a house, and then it settles.

      The...

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Table of Contents

Walking
Short Reviews
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