The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.
Donald Justice has died twice: once in Miami, in the sun, on a Sunday, and once in Iowa City, on a Friday in August, which was not without its own sun—if not bright spot.
When someone dies, the clothes are so sad. They have outlived their usefulness and cannot get warm and full. You talk to the clothes and explain that he is not coming back
as when he showed up immaculately dressed in slacks and plaid jacket and had that beautiful smile on and you’d
She’s in the desert releasing the ashes of her father, the ashes of her child, or the ashes of the world. She is not
what she observes. The rare spinystar. It does not belong to her. Bright needle threading a cloud through the sky. There’s sun enough, there’s afterlife. Her own
Quietly now a mouse in the garden that has come to mourn with me or bite at every insect twisting in this heat as you lie close & uncaring in the army of the common housefly. Let it be known that in death you harrowed in love & in so doing traded your ears for blackened
Soon she will be no more than a passing thought, a pang, a timpani of wind in the chimes, bent spoons hung from the eaves on a first night in a new house on a street where no dog sings, no cat visits a neighbor cat in the middle of the street, winding and rubbing fur against fur, throwing
as if opening a crepe sail on a raft of linden downriver with no glacial cut swerve down soft like bourbon if I could ask the waters then to chop to shake an apology when you cry I feel a wet bank in me ring dry here I’ll wrap you in the piano shawl from the upright
Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning Names in heat, in elements classical Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer. Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will Of the sun, which news reports claimed
