North of Oxford
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North of Oxford was founded in July 2016 as a review/commentary/essay journal. The journal expanded to publish poetry in May of 2017. Our editors are open to diverse voices and attempt to publish an eclectic range of reviews and poetry.
North of Oxford
4d ago
Two Poems by Stephen Page
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2024/01/09/two-poems-by-stephen-page/ .
State of Treasures by Amy Barone
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2024/02/12/state-of-treasures-by-amy-barone/
Two Poems by Ben Goodman
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2024/03/06/two-poems-by-ben-goodman/
Everybody Knows by Bartholomew Barker
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2024/01/09/everybody-knows-by-bartholomew-barker/
Two Poems by Michael Todd Steffen
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2024/01/09/two-poems-by-michael-todd-steffen/
Two Poems by Michael T. Young
https://northof ..read more
North of Oxford
4d ago
Necessary Deeds by Mark Wish
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2024/02/01/necessary-deeds-by-mark-wish/
Watershed by Rae Spencer
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2024/02/01/watershed-by-rae-spencer/
Given by Liza Katz Duncan
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/given-by-liza-katz-duncan/
See What I Mean? By Charles Rammelkamp
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2024/02/01/see-what-i-mean-by-charles-rammelkamp/
Powèt Nan Pò A (Poet of the Port) by Indran Amirthanayagam
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2024/03/01/powet-nan-po-a-poet-of-the-port-by-indran-amirthanayagam/
Trondh ..read more
North of Oxford
3w ago
Truth tellers
.
And yet the hands are still
not capable of telling the whole tale,
healing like they do, hiding like
they can. Had I not been there
myself, I never would have known
about dairy barns in winter, how
frozen concrete edges can spill
blood, how years of mornings
spent milking turn smooth little
fingers into something like
sausages. You filled your life
with salves, creams, lotions,
oils. You put those hands
through all kinds of hell –
tractor engines, a drill press,
a bandsaw that took a fingertip.
You gave up the piano, never
really started the guitar. Your
mother wouldn’t even r ..read more
North of Oxford
3w ago
Walk
.
In this scrubland, even the flowers’ thoughts
are lighter. The bells pour like pitchers:
the forms of ideas, with no ideas
inside them. The blue face. The violet mind.
A bramble catches, tears a mouth into
my white shirt. To say nothing of the blood.
To never be known from the dawn. The weeds
that break through stone like real life through
the imagination. The black phoebes
that call like an alarm from the other world.
For now, we’ve nothing but the sun for
instruction. Forgive me, I lose focus so.
I just want to be able to tell, and to tell you.
Imagine patience longer than my own lif ..read more
North of Oxford
3w ago
The Time I was a Linguist
.
I was your teacher & you were more than soft bones.
We struggled with throat sounds & making sense
of chaotic patterns that took forever to diagnose.
There were no pills or elixirs, just work that no one
wanted to do.
.
You separated yourself from “rathers” and ate
cake made of stone. The icing was like storm front
gray with a constant threat of fear. Torrential rain,
spot flooding, afraid to wade barefoot into silent
streets.
.
You made words in your stomach, forced them up
through the machinery in your esophagus. I modeled
quivering/shivering as a hybrid ..read more
North of Oxford
3w ago
Discernment
.
Amid the darkness place the sun,
That veteran god, from deepest night
Evoking brightest day. Make plain
Imagination’s gestures are
But acts of faith, and loss of faith
An absence of imagination.
Merely perceiving misperceives:
We must invite what our eye bears —
Sunflower, catbird, passing cloud —
Into the tabernacle of the heart,
There where the lamp of vision flares.
.
Frank Wilson is a retired Inquirer book editor. Visit his blog Books, Inq. — The Epilogue Email him at PresterFrank@gmail.com ..read more
North of Oxford
3w ago
By Greg Bem
Here
it is, a poem for the port, through the door,
entry without passport, free exchange,
In a free society, the great gift of a space
in a newspaper for this voice denied often
on the grand avenues where news spreads.
(from “Poet of the Port,” page 1)
Newly arrived from multilingual, Sri Lankan-American poet Indran Amirthanayagam, the bilingual collection Powèt Nan Pò A (or Poet of the Port) centers poems at once personal and idealistic. Written in both Haitian Creole and English, many of these poems feel connected to Haiti, but they also explore the poet’s wider values of connec ..read more
North of Oxford
3w ago
.
By Charles Rammelkamp
.
The Red Queen Hypothesis, from which Ann E. Michael’s prize-winning collection takes its name, proposes that species must constantly adapt in order to survive, pitted against other, also-evolving species: a theoretical process that’s part of evolutionary biology. Like all of evolution – slow as chess! – it’s an unhurried, gradual, drawn-out development that’s only detected in the long-view. In the title poem, a villanelle, Michael writes that:
.
change occurs only at the bitterest of margins, low
and mean; beneath that rapid-paced awareness
where you move twice as fa ..read more
North of Oxford
3w ago
By Lynette G. Esposito
Good Housekeeping by Bruce E. Whitacre published by Poets Wear Prada, Hoboken, New Jersey explores domestic bliss with an eye for detail and conversations about what is really important. He explores free verse and narrative voice in a variety of long and short poems in thirty- nine pages of poetry.
Two of his Haikus, one on page six and one on page thirty-two, use the title to set the time while the poem stanzas set the place. On page six, he sets the time in the title 02/20/2022 and puts the narrator in the laundry room doing a needed common task.
&nb ..read more
North of Oxford
3w ago
By John Zheng
.
Theodore Haddin is a fine poet and professor emeritus living in Alabama. Although he has been in retirement for decades, this 91-year-old poet has kept poetry as his close company or an inseparable part of his life. To him, there is no time to lose in finding a way to express himself through poetry. The happy new year of 2024 brings to us Haddin’s new poetry book, The Pendulum Moves Off, published by Madville Publishing in January. This poetry book, the third by Haddin, shows that poetry is the most artistic way to maintain a joyful heartbeat and that poetry writing is a ..read more