This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Like the Japanese cherry blossoms wedded to the soil’s palm’ by Luther Hughes. He says of this poem, “I wanted to write a different type of love poem than the ones I have in A Shiver in the Leaves. This poem is one of the few I have attempted and written since finishing the book. I was eager to address different types of danger—the endangerment of one’s relationship, yes, but also the endangerment of the Northern spotted owl. Who knows where I’ll go from here?” I have matched mobile art by @ja_graham, entitled “ Sunlight, moonlight, Twilight, starlight — Gloaming…

This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled The Piano by Stephen Gibson. Gibson is the author of several poetry collections, including Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror (University of Arkansas Press, 2017), selected by Billy Collins as the winner of the 2017 Miller Williams Poetry Prize; Rorschach Art Too (Story Line Press, 2014), winner of the Donald Justice Prize; and Rorschach Art (Red Hen Press, 2001). Of his work, the poet R. T. Smith writes, “A master of surprising and unforgettable juxtaposition, Gibson invokes myth, history and the crises of the moment to reveal both ‘the anonymous connection to all damage’ and the necessity of empathy.” Gibson, who…

This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘True Kindness Is A Pure Divine Affinity’ by Henry David Thoreau. Although he thought of himself as a poet, Henry David Thoreau’s most defining work was his book, Walden. “True Kindness Is A Pure Divine Affinity” appeared in The Collected Poems of Henry Thoreau (Hendricks House, Inc, 1943).  I have matched mobile art by @amandathomsonscotland, entitled ‘keys that jangle in your pocket…’ To view her Instagram feed, please go here. If you would like to be featured in our Saturday Poetry section, please ensure you include the hashtag #theappwhisperer to any images posted to Instagram. This will mean we will be able to consider…

This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Night at the Roller Palace by January Gill O’Neil. She is the author of Misery Islands (CavanKerry Press, 2014), winner of a 2015 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence, and Underlife (CavanKerry Press, 2009). She lives in Beverly, Massachusetts. I have matched mobile art by @ilemusi – Ileana Montaño. To view her Instagram feed, please go here. If you would like to be featured in our Saturday Poetry section, please ensure you include the hashtag #theappwhisperer to any images posted to Instagram. This will mean we will be able to consider it. To view the others we have published in this section, go here. via Poets.org

This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘For the Bird Singing before Dawn’ by Kim Stafford. Kim Stafford is the author of Singer Come from Afar (Red Hen Press, 2021). From 2018 to 2020, he served as poet laureate of Oregon, where he currently resides. He explained the meaning of this poem, “many times in my life I’ve been told by serious people that I must be very naïve to be happy, to have hope, to celebrate this little life I’ve been given when, actually, they say, everything is pretty dire. There’s war, poverty, crushing injustice all over—what right do I have to talk back to all that…

This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled The Flame Tree by Evelyn Flores.  She is an Indigenous CHamoru poet and the co-editor of Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2019). “As it had been for the rest of the world, it had been a year of death and dying for us in the wake of the virus. On an island like Guåhan where families are connected in many different ways, we walked about in a state of shock that this could be happening. Then it was that my neighbor leaning across the fence talked about poisoning the flame tree. Although it made sense, something inside…

This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled Coherence in Consequence by Claudia Rankine. Born in Jamaica in 1963, Claudia Rankine earned her BA in English from Williams College and her MFA in poetry from Columbia University. She is the author of several collections, including Just Us: An American Conversation(Graywolf Press, 2020); Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2014), which received the 2016 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Book Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Forward Prize for Poetry, and the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry; and Nothing in Nature is Private (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1995), which received the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. Rankine has edited numerous anthologies, including The Racial…

This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Scaffolding’ by Seamus Heaney. Born in Ireland in 1939, Seamus Heaney was the author of numerous poetry collections, including Human Chain (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). He split his time between Dublin, Ireland, and Boston, where he taught at Harvard University for many years. In 1995, Heaney received the Nobel Prize in Literature. I have matched mobile art by withflowersinherphone – Nicole Bradbery with this image entitled ‘Fading Cosmos’. If you would like to be featured in our Saturday Poetry section, please ensure you include the hashtag #theappwhisperer to any images posted to Instagram. This will mean we will be able to consider…