The newest issue of Third Wednesday is out. Once again, I am dazzled by so many poems in its pages and proud to have one of my own included. In this issue, too, I have been especially impressed with the photography.
In the Spring 2019 (Vol. XII, No. 2) issue, I find it harder than ever to cite favorites — but I will anyway. Take a look at Steven Deutsch’s poem “Sam and Saul” about twin musical prodigies; or the frozen lake shore landscape of Scott Lowery’s meditative “Vacancy;” or Jeanie Mortensen’s look at the discrepancies between literature and life in “Dick and Jane;” or Ted Kooser’s consideration of time in “Red Stilts;”or Kathryn Jacobs’s startling perspective in “Calling All Lemmings.”
Like the poetry, the photography in this issue kept surprising and delighting me. My favorites range from the lyrical juxtaposition of a flower and an open book called “Birth” (by Fabrice Poussin) and a study of dunes and sky called “California Dreaming (also by Fabrice Poussin) to the subtle view of exhortatory texts plastered on a gated driveway and house called “Signs” (by Gary Wadley), to — maybe my favorite of all — a head and shoulders portrait called simply “Robert” (by David Jibson.) This one is arresting because it is at once utterly contemporary and positively classical, as though a Roman philosopher visits and observes contemporary complications with earned detachment.
My own poem, titled “Poem in Which I Try, Very Hard, to Do My Own Bidding,” was inspired by a poem by William Butler Yeats called “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Perhaps, like me, you have memorized this gem? My own poem doesn’t echo so much the form of the poem as the way in which the heart can be split in its desire to live in two different places or modes at the same time, while recognizing the need to somehow integrate both rather than to choose.
Thank you for allowing me to share these thoughts with you! Leslie
