New United States Poet Laureate

We are so pleased that M.S. Merwin has been selected for this honor. He has long been one of our favorite poets. We have posted his poem The River of Bees on our blog site.

Our Peculiar Honor

It has come to our attention that our book On Reviving a Lost Revolution is the most stolen book at a local bookstore. We suspect the torch and pitchfork crowd.

Moon Pie Press

Our good friend Alice Persons, publisher of Moon Pie Press, is a true hero within the field of poetry publishing. She has just published her 55th book. These include chapbooks, soft cover volumes and anthologies. In doing this monumental amount of work Alice publishes many good poets who would have had no other opportunity. Her poets are frequently read on Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion radio show. For Alice this is an avocation, all done at her own expense and effort. It must also be said that Alice is an excellent poet in her own right.

And we acknowledge that Alice edits Duane Robert Pierson’s work, always demonstrating that what one thinks perfect is not necessarily so. www.moonpiepress.com

From “Education by Poetry” Robert Frost 1930

I do not think anybody ever knows the discreet use of metaphor, his own and other people’s, the discreet handling of metaphor, unless he has been properly educated in poetry.

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections—whether from diffidence or some other instinct.