Juan Felipe Herrera Named US Laureate

In 2014, I had the pleasure of interviewing Juan Felipe Herrera, who at that time was California's poet laureate. Now, just a year later, he has been named the new US poet laureate.

For more information about Juan's new appointment, check out the Poetry Foundation's website.

And you can revisit our 2014 interview here, as well.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc Welcomed as New Laureate

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, a featured interview subject on The New Poet back in 2013, was recently selected to serve as Portland, Maine's next poet laureate.

For more about Fay-LeBlanc's selection, visit Maine Poetry Central.

To read the TNP interview, click here.

A Look Back: Stats

I've been on a break from TNP for some time now, but a recent email has jumpstarted my thoughts about this site. Logging back in, checking on a few things, clearing some cobwebs.

Having used Submittable to handle submissions has been a great tool—a free tool, nonetheless. It's also been tracking my history, and I thought I'd share a few numbers with you.

URL Update

Later this year, the URL for The New Poet (www.thenewpoet.com) will revert to its original address via Blogger: www.thenewpoet.blogspot.com.

Jonathan Litten

---

Ayahuasca

As the men left for the morning fishing,
Sky yawned first glow upon their faces
And the winds bid them abundant catch.

They walked and turned back to the boy
Who stared idly upon the mountain. Speak
Then of the brujo, if you must, they commanded.

The boy answered that he took the journey
There, that he saw the sun and moon
Rise and fall many times, that the days
Went by in blinks with the sky blazing
Then dying red pink into twilight.

These things he had seen. But the men,
Who were a fishing people, mocked him,
And branded him with disbelief.

Much later, after the ceremony and deep
Into manhood, the boy descended into
The cycle of his visions, this tenuous life.

One day, he emerged from a long absence.
He was of an age to take wife now and asked:
Mother, speak to me of women.

She looked to her boy who was now a man
And replied: for women with art,
They are either going into it or coming out of it.
But you son, are in art and that will be
Hard with women. It will be hard with Men too.

---

Jonathan Litten’s work has appeared in The Sentinel and Share. He is the recent recipient of awards in both fiction and poetry in Kennesaw State’s 6th Annual Undergraduate Creative Writing Contest. Jonathan currently lives in Marietta, Georgia, where he pursues both his academic and artistic ambitions.

John E. Simonds

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Zombies in Waiting
Honolulu 2012

The papers are full of talk about zombies.
You can see us riding the city bus—
human looking, staring into short-end space
vacant eyes, leasehold mouths,
little new in the underused living
off shrinking nutrients of others
getting by in the retrograde work force
of day-to-day milling, hauling, retail clerking,
filing, cleaning, scraping, bowing, serving.
Who knew the Centers for Disease Control
and our own state health folks had seized
on the dreaded deadly undead
as comic metaphors
for disaster readiness,
to take the scream out of help?
If there’s a part for us
to play in this, we’re ready to be cast.
Once the shiny piece of a city crown,
now geared to a less-than-super structure,
The Bus collects each hour
the waiting from the streetside kiosks
and rolls its mannequin cargo elsewhere
to dislodge us from its padded shelves,
gaunted with indentured cheeks,
outlooks dimmed by horizons of bills,
and second jobs to pay them,
unconcerned with game-store
creatures and their chain saws.
The paper’s alive with news of zombies,
how fitting to its own hungry draining,trading spirit of life for disaster survival.

---

John E. Simonds, 78, a retired Honolulu daily newspaper editor, has lived with family in Hawai’i for 38 years and previously was a reporter for newspapers from Washington, D.C., and other mainland cities. A Bowdoin College graduate, he has been writing verse since the 1970s, is the author of Waves from a Time-Zoned Brain (AuthorHouse 2009) and recently has had poems published in Bamboo Ridge Press, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and New Millennium Writings.

Tiffany Gibert

---

To feel full again

For luck, sip deeply dyed soft drinks and count
your taste buds in a circle. Write the number
on your mother’s sleeping eyelids.
For comfort, seek the occult,
lie down in a clutter of newspapers
and snip out a week of horoscopes.
Reassemble them.
          A favorable system of black conscience wiggles so
          Let your co-worker go Spill black facts Turn the rock on Tuesday
For balance, buy matching watches
for your wrists. For passion, burn toast
in your bedroom. Stockpile aloe vera
and scorch your arms with the orange-torched hot bits
of metal you find on the street.
For companionship, bribe someone. Beg for relief.
For sanctity, pick the pills off your dog’s winter sweaters.
For humor, go digging into the past
with a sharply serrated grapefruit spoon.
Drink whatever juice you find.

---

Tiffany Gibert is a writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn. She serves on the Brooklyn Poets Board and has written essays and reviews for The Millions, The Lit Pub, and Kirkus; her poetry has appeared in The Mackinac and is forthcoming in VECTOR.