Web Poetry Wednesday #2

It's Wednesday again, and that means it's time for another Web Poetry Wednesday post. Last week's kickoff went fantastic, and I want to thank everyone who spread the link through Twitter, Facebook, and their blogs.

Every Wednesday, I feature a list of 10 poems that I've found across the web: on blogs, in literary journals, etc. The only real criteria is that the poems must be publicly accessible, meaning that readers don't have to pay any sort of fee to access them, and the writer in question ought to be alive and still writing today. If you're a poet and you'd like to see your work featured in a future Web Poetry Wednesday post, send me a link to ONE (1) poem for consideration: you can submit your links through the site's Contact page, or you can tweet me a link through Twitter.

This week's poems:

• Sunken Dreams by Pete Marshall
  I really love the imagery that persists throughout Pete Marshall's "Sunken Dreams." It's one of those poems that can be read very literally, or you can dig into it to try to find its deeper meanings. Definitely worth reading more than once.
• Late Summer by Nancy Rosback
  I hestitated about including Nancy Rosback's poem. I'm not even certain that Rosback is the author, since I couldn't find anywhere on her site that lists her name – no about page, no contact page, nothing (bad poet, bad!). I got the name Rosback from someone who linked to her site, so I'm trusting that. That said, I really love this little poem, so I wanted to include it.
• Watching The Towers Go Down by Peter Balakian
  Peter Balakian is probably the most well-known poet on this week's list. I really wanted to include this poem because it's the only page in this week's list that features streaming audio -- you can read the poem along with Balakian's recitation. It's that sort of multimedia approach that really makes poetry mesh well with the Internet.
• All We Can See by Carrie Burt
  I don't have anything to say about Carrie Burt's "All We Can See" but this: I adore this poem.
• Wholeness by Justinian
  I included Justinian's "Wholeness" because it's simply a fun poem to read -- the words flow pleasantly across the tongue, and the poet uses word choices that I haven't come across much in poetry.
• Stinking Fish & Bullets by Brian Miller
  Stinking Fish & Bullets is a powerful, maybe even disturbing, poem, depending on how you read it. Read literally, one might think the speaker is calling for murder. I also really love the sense of voice that Miller uses in the poem: "i got no tv / or they woulda turned / to shoe leather in my mouth."
• Embarrassed by Smiles by Frank Sprinkle
  "Embarrassed by Smiles" speaks to something that poetry has often been criticized for -- that it focuses too much on serious, raw topics or dwells too much on atrocities and miseries, and not enough on the joys of life. Frank Sprinkle nails it.
• I Find Solace by Sandra Heska King
  Sandra Heska King's "I Find Solace" is a simple poem, but I think it's one of my favorites in this week's list, because it two very human emotions -- grief, and the comfort found in a loved one's embrace.
• Things Between Us by Two-Bit Jeremiah
  The imagery in "Things Between Us" is fascinating -- at once beautiful and alarming, a sort of bait-and-switch that begins innocently enough, but reveals its horror at the last moment. This link doesn't lead to Jeremiah's site. You can find his site here.
• Three Miles Out by Kenneth P. Gurney
  Kenneth P. Gurney's "Three Miles Out" evokes the vivid image of a woman sitting naked in her kitchen, in the dark, eating an orange; an image that easily captures the disorienting shock of sudden loss. Gurney's official website can be found here.

Wednesdays are turning out to be a great day for finding new poetry on the web, thanks in part to One Stop Poetry. Every week, the site hosts an event called One Shot Wednesdays where poets can share a link to one of their recent poems. There's no editorial or selective process to the event, but it seems to be a great way to spread a sense of community among web-publishing poets. Many of the poets that have been mentioned on this site, including Gay Reiser Cannon, Sandra Heska King, and Joshua Gray are regular participants.