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The Regret Histories: Poems
The Regret Histories: Poems
The Regret Histories: Poems
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The Regret Histories: Poems

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This powerful and provocative new installment of poetry is a recipient of the 2014 National Poetry Series Prize, as chosen by Campbell McGrath.

The National Poetry Series’s long tradition of promoting exceptional poetry from lesser-known poets delivers another outstanding collection of poetry by Joshua Poteat.

Through an investigation of the haunted spaces where history collides with the modern southern American landscape, The Regret Histories explores themes of ruin and nostalgia, our relationship to a collective past, and the extraordinary indifference of time to memory.

For thirty years, the National Poetry Series has discovered many new and emerging voices and has been instrumental in launching the careers of poets and writers such as Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Denis Johnson, Marie Howe, and Sherod Santos.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateSep 8, 2015
ISBN9780062412249
The Regret Histories: Poems
Author

Joshua Poteat

Joshua Poteat is the author of two full-length collections, Illustrating the Machine That Makes the World, published in the VQR Poetry Series, and Ornithologies, winner of the Anhinga Prize for Poetry, as well as three chapbooks, Meditations, which received the National Chapbook Award from the Poetry Society of America, For the Animal from Diagram/New Michigan Press, and The Scenery of Farewell from Diode. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.

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    Book preview

    The Regret Histories - Joshua Poteat

    The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded annually by the Lannan Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, Barnes & Noble, The Poetry Foundation, The PG Family Foundation and The Betsy Community Fund, Joan Bingham, Mariana Cook, Stephen Graham, Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds, William Kistler, Jeffrey Ravetch, Laura Baudo Sillerman, and Margaret Thornton. For a complete listing of generous contributors to The National Poetry Series, please visit www.nationalpoetryseries.org.

    2014 COMPETITION WINNERS

    Monograph

    by Simeon Berry of Somerville, MA

    Chosen by Denise Duhamel for University of Georgia Press

    The Regret Histories

    by Joshua Poteat of Richmond, VA

    Chosen by Campbell McGrath for HarperCollins

    Let’s Let That Are Not Yet : Inferno

    by Ed Pavlic of Athens, GA

    Chosen by John Keene for Fence Books

    Double Jinx

    by Nancy Reddy of Madison, WI

    Chosen by Alex Lemon for Milkweed Editions

    Viability

    by Sarah Vap of Venice, CA

    Chosen by Mary Jo Bang for Penguin Books

    DEDICATION

    For Jake Adam York

    EPIGRAPH

    I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.

    — VIRGINIA WOOLF

    The dead, the dead, the dead—our dead . . . all, all, all, finally dear to me.

    — WALT WHITMAN

    CONTENTS

    Dedication

    Epigraph

    Tintype

    ONE

    Drug Department

    Department of Purchase & Disease

    Tintype

    Lighting Department

    Department of Hymnals

    Tintype

    Department of Telescopes

    Tintype

    Veterinary Department

    Death of the Death of Youth

    Tintype

    Department of Names (Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature)

    (City, there’s a prayer for you)

    Department of Acoustic Appliances

    Tintype

    TWO

    Tintype

    The Night Names Each Building

    Tintype

    Department of (Aerial) Photography

    Tintype

    THREE

    For the Animal

    Department of Taxidermy

    FOUR

    Memorial Department

    Letter to Gabriel Written in the Margins of Murder Ballads

    Notes

    Acknowledgments

    About the Author

    Also by Joshua Poteat

    Credits

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    TINTYPE

    Whole forests went to sea

    disguised as ships.

    Whole seas went to forest

    disguised as time.

    ONE

    DRUG DEPARTMENT

    I’m looking for a story that will light

    my way out, a star in the sycamore’s grass,

    taken from night and nothing and limbs cut

    back from the wires. It is not summer,

    there is no mist on the streets.

    The yard, vacant with ivy and nest, wears brown,

    and the streetlights. The sycamore is the loudest tree,

    its bark lifting the hard wind like the saint

    who prayed to the east and failed, parchment

    spread on the monastery roof. Help me

    spelled out in supplicant ink, roaring through

    clots of frost. Look at us, late winter, pulling dead

    branches from the fence at night to avoid the neighbors,

    poison pushed under the shed for the rats.

    Let’s surrender all illusions of spirit, because it deceives us.

    The spirit is not air, even in its highest

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