Today's poem of the day is "End of Side A" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/244210 by TMR Language Lessons contributor Adrian Matejka.
Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and grew up in California and Indiana. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His first collection of poems, The Devil’s Garden, won the 2002 New York/New England Award from Alice James Books. His second collection, Mixology, was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series and was published by Penguin Books in 2009. Mixology was subsequently nominated for an NAACP Image Award. His newest book, The Big Smoke, was published by Penguin in May 2013 and was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Lannan Foundation. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2010, Gulf Coast, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner among other journals and anthologies. He teaches creative writing at Indiana University in Bloomington.
An interview with Adrian: http://thefanzine.com/an-interview-with-adrian-matejka/
Just caught wind of these “Poem(s) of the Day.” Good way to present the new venture, fellas. And great poem, this one. I was there for RSD and picked up Language Lessons. I’ve yet to dive into it, but damn anxious to do so.
More prose than poem
Sounds like a good time to me.
the voiceless shapes hang in the air… drifting
in an infinite void defined only by their color
they pronounce the distance in terms of culture… exstatic
congratulations we say to you
as we slumbered on a dim lit page… waiting
for punctuation … and presence
illluminated
Better by far than yesterdays poem of the day…
I’ve just been left speechless.
[like a man pawing around for broken
spectacles after he wakes in the world’s rubble.]
Today my father would have turned 82.