The New Verse News presents politically progressive poetry on current events and topical issues.
Guidelines
Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.
Of the night sky Never expiring Catalyzing Fanning
Consciousness (and hopefully passion) Quality we call star
Joanne De Simone Reynolds has published her work in The New Verse News, Salamander, The Ekphrastic Review, Ibbetson Street, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Lyrical Somerville, among other journals. Her collection of ekphrastic poems for 2020 Art Ramble can be viewed at theumbrellaarts.org. In 2023 she was poetry judge for Art on the Trails in Southborough, Ma.after placing first for poetry in 2022.
Joni Mitchell Performs Surprise Show at Newport Folk Festival: The 78-year-old artist performed a full set, her first in about two decades, at the renowned festival in Rhode Island on Sunday. —The New York Times, July 25, 2022
Joni at the Newport Folk Fest sings "Both
Sides Now." Anyone else remember that one?
Is that the first time you saw her face? The
album with her face on it? Was that the song
you first heard by her? Your first impression?
How a voice splits and changes over years,
through all kinds of stages, shaped by time
and keeping time. It can be a long long way
to go to recognize a lilt that’s aged in
a paint box of mellow feelings and thoughtful
remonstrances, lilts, dances. So like a book
that opens, one each side, beginning to end,
making her way, flitting along, hearing
her turn the words one chapter at a time.
Tom Bauer's an old coot who lives in Montreal and plays a lot of board games.
Lies and lies are everywhere,
and racist slogans fill the air
and hatred oozing everywhere.
We didn't know this way.
And now these folks they block the sun,
they ruin love for everyone.
So many things he could have done.
His base got in the way.
He looks at hate from both sides now. The KKK's okay somehow. His father marched, you will recall. He really doesn't care about us at all.
His id rides on a Ferris wheel,
spins dizzy, hurtful tweets he feels
as all delusional goes real.
We didn't know this way.
So every day another show.
We cringe wherever he doth go.
And what will happen, we don't know
until the lies give way.
He looks at hate from both sides now and white supremacists somehow are good, he said, you will recall. And Sheriff Joe isn't really bad at all.
Our tears and fears, not feeling proud
to say our country right out loud
is led by hacks and circus crowds.
We didn't vote this way.
Our senators are acting strange.
They shake their heads, but what will change?
Transgender troops may lose what's gained
in fighting every day.
He looks at hate from both sides now. His nemesis is love somehow. Dark clouds will reign, you will recall, when Fascists really aren't that bad at all.
Judith Terzi's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as BorderSenses, Caesura, Columbia Journal, Good Works Review (FutureCycle Press), Raintown Review, Unsplendid, You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. Casbah and If You Spot Your Brother Floating By are her most recent chapbooks from Kattywompus Press.
Mar 31, 2015: UPDATE 9:57pm PDT Joni was found unconscious in her home this afternoon. She regained consciousness on the ambulance ride to an L.A. area hospital. She is currently in intensive care undergoing tests and is awake and in good spirits. More updates to come as we hear them. Light a candle and sing a song, let's all send good wishes her way. --jonimitchell.com
I love the way she winged it on Hejira.
Crow, not seagulls, sounded right to me.
She got away with Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter,
Don Alias on the date, and spoke
of Mingus where she used to sing. And Jaco.
It was kinda Blue-to-Kind of Blue.
A kind of transformation of the blue
horizon on a field of that high era
shot in black and white, a season chock-a-
block with ice on lipstick black. To me
she seemed the more divine. She spoke
to me from someplace new, the daughter
of a snowbound country, not the daughter
Woodstock might have wished for. But what blew
me out was anecdotal, the bespoke
position of her fingers, the Hejira
of the coffee house and Do Re Me
tautology. The maundering with Jaco
on the frozen tide, a sliding ride with Jaco
holding down the line. Abandoned daughter
of the Blues, insurgent, blond and white like me,
she bartered for the flatted fifth, a blue
note on the top. Eponymous “Hejira”
spread harmonics, spinning hub and spoke
along the endless highway Dylan spoke
of on the stage at Newport. Him, the jack of
anything he got his hands on. Oh, Hejira
to the new Medina. But Mohammad’s daughter
left behind the radio of blue
oblivion and came across to me
on carbon leather skates. She came to me
exhaling lacy signals where she spoke
into the weather and the grayscale blue.
I caught a glimpse of something like a Jack-o-
Lantern smiling in the clouds, a daughter
lost and laughing on the moon’s Hejira,
longing for Hejira, calling me,
a daughter dancing on the ice. She spoke
of Miles and swung for Jaco in the blue.
Rick Mullin's poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies. His most recent book, Sonnets from the Voyage of the Beagle, was published in December by Dos Madres Press, Loveland, Ohio.
