POETRY CRITICISM FEATURED ARTIST CONTRIBUTORS GUIDELINES ABOUT TIMELINE
Kathryn Jacobs


Pausing Briefly

A real vacation would imply desire.
That trip to France perhaps, or summer in
Chicago with the kids. You might retire
to pastel bungalows where turtles churn
their noisy way through sea-grapes, and small
birds possess the beach each morning: long black legs
on quick white bodies, scurrying in herds--
a minor panic when the ocean tugs

the sand from under them: a white foam surge,
and wings rise everywhere. But this was more
an easing of sore muscles: a massage,
a chance to pause. To wonder what it's for,
the trigger-dance of neurons too obsessed
for sleep or sanity. A chance to rest.



Hungry

So now you're "rested." All of which means, what?
You still don't feel like grading those exams.
You do like teaching, but sometimes. . . just "but."
It costs so much--the constant song and dance.

And yet, without it--you could simply write,
but it's addictive: it will swallow you
until you can't escape, or make it right,
or let it rest awhile, or make it new.

And you want something harder than the birds,
or France, or children. Something nibbling
at the edges of your brain: corrosive words
that churn through brain cells the way turtles fling
their bodies through the tangles--like the foam
pulling at egret legs: a perfect poem.

































AUTHOR BIO

Kathryn Jacobs is a poet and medievalist at Texas A&M University--Commerce with a doctorate from Harvard University and a chapbook called Advice Column forthcoming with Finishing Line Press. She has published roughly four dozen poems in poetry journals here and in the U.K in journals like The New Formalist, Measure, Acumen, Eclectic Muse, Barefoot Muse, Slant, and Poetry Midwest. She also has a scholarly book and sixteen articles in journals like Chaucer Review and Mediaevalia.

POETRY CONTRIBUTORS

Tiel Aisha Ansari
B. J. Buckley
Terese Coe
Carol Dorf
Jehanne Dubrow
Nicole Caruso Garcia
Ona Gritz
Kathryn Jacobs
Allison Joseph
Susan McLean
Marilyn Nelson
Janice D. Soderling
Shanna Powlus Wheeler
Marly Youmans

FEATURED ARTIST
Jane Sutherland: I choose subjects that I cherish, or that spring from deep rooted feelings, or that come to me intuitively--dogs, roses, cranes, an iconic work of sculpture; and I concentrate on the details and slightest disparities in color, tone and textures in order to show how extraordinary are things we think we know and take for granted. The process of painting for me is connected to the physical properties of the subject as well as to its meanings, associations, and memories.
ARCHIVES
LINKS
POETRY
32 Poems
The Academy of American Poets
The Atlantic
The Christian Science Monitor
The Cortland Review
Favorite Poem Project
The Frost Place
The Iowa Review
Light Quarterly
Modern American Poetry
Measure
The Poem Tree
Poetry
Poetry Daily
Poetry Society of America
Poets House
Raintown Review
Slate
String Poet
Valparaiso Poetry Review
Verse Daily
Women's Poetry Listserv
The Yale Review

CONFERENCES
AWP
Bread Loaf
Poetry by the Sea
Sewanee


PUBLISHERS

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BOOKS
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OTHER RESOURCES
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