Breaking Into Blossom

Poems with Extraordinary Endings
Breaking into Blossom gathers modern and contemporary poems that use a wide array of techniques and approaches to ending the poem: endings that crescendo and exhort, double back or taper down, those that reverse expectation, embody paradox, or enact their logic in their formal DNA. In their introductory craft essay, co-editors Luke Hankins and Nomi Stone grapple with questions of closure, wholeness, pleasure, power, universalism, subjectivity, discord, exclusion, resistance, surprise, and bewilderment. Finding fracturing points in their own conversation while considering the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of different kinds of endings, the editors consider such questions as the value of epiphany, what kinds of endings might be likelier to be commodified, how the poem and the mind keep going beyond the page, and more. Hankins and Stone also offer a taxonomy of ending types to think with. This groundbreaking anthology includes poems about mystery, love, dread, cruelty, violence and war; poems of motherhood; of disability; of masculinity; of queerness; of baldness. Poems of transforming bodies and Black joy and failure and hope. The poems sometimes break into blossom; other times, they just break. Or they leave us in wonderment with their quiet buds unfolding into the world.

Contributor: Luke Hankins (Edited by), Nomi Stone (Edited by), Kaveh Akbar (Contributions by), Agha Shahid Ali (Contributions by), Sarah Ghazal Ali (Contributions by), Rae Armantrout (Contributions by), Cam Awkward-Rich (Contributions by), Ellen Bass (Contributions by), Jericho Brown (Contributions by), Anne Carson (Contributions by), Tiana Clark (Contributions by), Lucille Clifton (Contributions by), Leonard Cohen (Contributions by), Wendy Cope (Contributions by), Morri Creech (Contributions by), Robert Creeley (Contributions by), Natalie Diaz (Contributions by), James Dickey (Contributions by), Rita Dove (Contributions by), B. H. Fairchild (Contributions by), Keith Flynn (Contributions by), Carrie Fountain (Contributions by), Vievee Francis (Contributions by), Ross Gay (Contributions by), Jack Gilbert (Contributions by), Aracelis Girmay (Contributions by), Louise Glück (Contributions by), Jorie Graham (Contributions by), Linda Gregg (Contributions by), Paul Guest (Contributions by), francine j. harris (Contributions by), Robert Hass (Contributions by), Robert Hayden (Contributions by), Terrance Hayes (Contributions by), Jane Hirshfield (Contributions by), Sarah Holland-Batt (Contributions by), Jay Hopler (Contributions by), Marie Howe (Contributions by), Thomas James (Contributions by), Denis Johnson (Contributions by), Ilya Kaminsky (Contributions by), Brigit Pegeen Kelly (Contributions by), David Kirby (Contributions by), Yusef Komunyakaa (Contributions by), Stanley Kunitz (Contributions by), Danusha Laméris (Contributions by), Li-Young Lee (Contributions by), Larry Levis (Contributions by), Paige Lewis (Contributions by), Osip Mandelstam (Contributions by), Cleopatra Mathis (Contributions by), William Matthews (Contributions by), Nathan McClain (Contributions by), W. S. Merwin (Contributions by), Philip Metres (Contributions by), Czeslaw Milosz (Contributions by), Harryette Mullen (Contributions by), John Murillo (Contributions by), Yehoshua November (Contributions by), Sharon Olds (Contributions by), Matthew Olzmann (Contributions by), Frank Paino (Contributions by), Morgan Parker (Contributions by), Linda Pastan (Contributions by), Carl Phillips (Contributions by), Spencer Reese (Contributions by), Jordan Rice (Contributions by), Jose Antonio Rodriguez (Contributions by), Natalie Scenters-Zapico (Contributions by), Nicole Sealey (Contributions by), Diane Seuss (Contributions by), Charif Shanahan (Contributions by), Richard Siken (Contributions by), Danez Smith (Contributions by), Maggie Smith (Contributions by), Tracy K. Smith (Contributions by), William Stafford (Contributions by), Ruth Stone (Contributions by), Cole Swensen (Contributions by), Wislawa Szymborska (Contributions by), R. S. Thomas (Contributions by), Mosab Abu Toha (Contributions by), Natasha Trethewey (Contributions by), Jean Valentine (Contributions by), Ocean Vuong (Contributions by), Christian Wiman (Contributions by), Ross White (Contributions by), C. D. Wright (Contributions by), Charles Wright (Contributions by), Franz Wright (Contributions by), James Wright (Contributions by), Monica Youn (Contributions by), Adam Zagajewski (Contributions by)

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