You Should Read This: Poetry Magazine, May 2010

ou know, I really should mention the fact that Poetry Magazine is the bee’s fucking knees more often on this site.  Every month it reminds me why I love to read poetry, and makes me feel guilty for not spending more of my time writing it.

This month’s issue is particularly good, featuring the work of D.H. Tracy–his poem “You can tell by the way he slices the cantaloupe” is hilarious and hauntingly truthful–Hester Knibbe, and this year’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner Eleanor Ross Taylor.  I hadn’t read her work before poring through this issue, and it is quite, quite good.  It’s like Wallace Stevens mixed with Kay Ryan–moving, focused on the undercurrents of living, precise.  Free of excess.

The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, if you’re curious, is awarded annually to an American poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.  That extraordinary recognition comes with a $100,000 cash prize.  I told my boyfriend this prize amount and he responded “well why don’t you win it, then?”  My response: “Oh yeah.  I’ll get right on that.”