Once again, Jeopardy has inspired me. One contestant (and the eventual champion!) Jen Jabaily-Blackburn is a poet, with an MFA from the University of Arkansas. We have something in common, at least where Jeopardy is concerned: "True to her wordsmith nature, Blackburn excelled especially when the questions were word-related, like those in a category where the correct response was a word or phrase with three Bs, or when a question had to do with etymology." That might be pitching myself a little too highly, but I do tend to do the best at the word-categories.
She made the "Best New Poets of 2014" list from Best New Poets project for her poem For Gene Kell, and works in the Poetry center at Smith. Here are two of Jen's poems that were featured in the journal Unsplendid, which specializes in "received and nonce forms", which are on the metered and formal-ish side of the spectrum.
Ars Poetica: Oxford
A pleasure boat's corroded bones
submerged within the Thames
rust beside a bluish thought
fettered by its limbs.
Some houses rot from floor to eave,
some fires waste unfed.
All vistas viewed from passing cars
first clear, then blur, then fade.
A falcon gliding overhead
hauls up its kicking quarry:
unsettling as an unbound book,
as difficult to carry.
Love and the Lover's Heart
(after Dante)
If you've found yourself awake at 3 AM
trying to drink whiskey, but missing your mouth,
surfing the tube, crying God Damn, then you've been
in love, and you will know what I'm talking about—
the hours spent watching shills pitch state-of-the-art
carving knives (and, bless you, you'll probably buy ‘em)
when sleep should come, but won't. A broken heart
can make a person hear things: her Honda's tires
sneaking up your drive, her harelike foot-
falls bounding up your house's buckling porch,
the pulsing tick of her favorite antique watch
…or Love himself might blow into the room
and pluck your lovely girl from out his pocket
to feed her your racing, bloody heart—
and she'll like it.
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