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August 1998

Paul Klee, "What Makes Him Run?," 1932.

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

This issue is sold out.
  • Robert Bly
  • W. Bolton
  • Katharine Coles
  • Billy Collins
  • Brad Davis
Image of Poetry magazine cover August 1998
From this Issue
    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Drizzle

      By William Matthews
      Baudelaire: "The dead, the poor dead, have their bad hours."
      But the dead have no watches, no grief and no hours.

      At first not smoking took all my time: I did it
      a little by little and hour by...

    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Madmen

      By Billy Collins
      They say you can jinx a poem
      if you talk about it before it is done.
      If you let it out too early, they warn,
      your poem will fly away,
      and this time they are absolutely right.

      Take the night I mentioned to you
      I wanted...

    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine The Double Leash

      By Katharine Coles
      Blizzard to lilac. Dandelion
      to leaf. Endless
      variation of seasons I note

      in passing, smells
      I cannot smell: rotting
      gardens, feces, musk of cat.
      These two

      run in front of me, golden
      shoulder to patchwork, heads
      lifted or lowered into

      scent, tongues lolling. Ears
      damp with their own
      spittle and each other's

      tell...

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