Poetry forever grants us leaps and blurs. Sometimes it’s not enough to be where we are. Sometimes we need to be everywhere: present with the lost, held by transient blossoms. Jan Beatty’s new poems in “The Body Wars” shimmer with luminous connection, travel a big life and grand map of encounters. Deeper breath feels present in the poem’s original uses of punctuation — stanzas, even a last one, ending with a colon. More to come? Always more. Most important, “he’s not gone” floats by itself, the truth a daughter tunes to. Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye
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