Anything But Still
An open call on AI plus new poetry by Summer Brenner, Emily Schulten, Catherine Esposito-Prescott, Dick Westheimer, Christine Rhein and more.
Dear Readers,
First things first: I am very excited to share our open call on the Poetics of Artificial Intelligence! Submit your poetry by August 30. Our general submissions will open in September.
It is my joy to introduce our new Associate Poetry Editor cohort: Susan. J. Wurtzburg, Guillermo Rebollo Gil, Susana Praver Perez, Jasmine Marshall-Armstrong, Christine Lias, Anangsha Haldar, Christine Deakers, Kate Burnham, and Laura Booth. Head over to our Instagram to read each editor’s bio.
“I am a dizzy man trapped in a tilt-a-whirl, a compass in an iron mine.” So begins a moving poem by Dick Westheimer from our latest front page.
This summer has been anything but still - here at Poets Reading the News with a talented new cohort diving into the inbox, or in the wider world where a blaze of headlines is burning by faster than we can read them. In a few short weeks, we’ve seen a close-call assassination attempt at a Republican rally, Biden withdrawing from the race following a mass media blitz, escalating wars in the Middle East and Europe, the overnight ascendance of Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket, and the public dissection of Project 2025 which plans to, among many other things, outlaw IVF and jail librarians over banned books. And in the midst of all this, we had the hottest days ever recorded on earth.
Focus so quickly feels like a luxury we can’t afford, particularly when each day is mired in crisis. But focus is not a luxury at all. It’s how we stay grounded and respond with purpose to our world’s limitless supply of disarray. So how do we keep sight of what matters? That question is where our latest poetry steps in. As Gary Margolis writes below, everything in history comes down to “breathing in one breath at a time.” In this dispatch, writers look at what’s getting lost in the spin, from our oceans to our legislation, from our social media to our mythologies.
Christine Rhein pens an open letter to the six Supreme Court justices who have made miscarriage deadlier than ever before. Summer Brenner turns to a mother’s loss in Gaza. Catherine Esposito Prescott looks to the allies sorely missing in our conversations on gun violence against women. Megan Merchant shows there’s nothing abstract about the viral TikTok query of man versus bear. And poet Emily Schulten delivers an ecological report from the Florida Keys, where it’s more and more unimaginable “to make the world outside of us stay outside.”
In poetry,
Elle Newton
Editor-in-Chief, Poets Reading the News
Calling for Community Support
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Visit the Poets Reading the News front page for our full poetry coverage.
Miscarriage
Christine Rhein
"I want to talk to you—Alito,
Barrett, Gorsuch,
Kavanaugh, Roberts, Thomas—
tell you how
I woke that day to vanished
morning sickness…”
An American Jew Speaks with a Ceaseless Witness
Dick Westheimer
“I am a dizzy man trapped in a tilt-a-whirl,
a compass in an iron mine.
The North Star offers help. It says
it never sets on Gaza. Or here...”
Blue Innocents
Summer Brenner
“How beautiful you are, my daughter
more beautiful than at birth, my son
blue as an angel or star
before you fell to Earth...”
The Thrashing
Emily Schulten
”Only the broad sky was there
to see. It happened like this:
One endangered shark, then
another. One fisherman saw,
then another. On land,
we got word from the water...”
My Body Resigns
Catherine Esposito Prescott
“The marksman laces a target
into his vision like my mother threads
her quilting needle; he points his bow,
unsilences his gun. I am in the center;
no, my body is centered, though erring…”
Bear
Megan Merchant
“I refrain from responding when the man yells
'you’re all jelly, no toast’ and we can’t
decide if it’s criticism or compliment…”
And …
Collapse of the Key Stone Bridge by Alejandro Escudé
Commencement by Gary Margolis
Open Carry by Rémy Dambron