The Regret Histories: Poems
()
About this ebook
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.
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.
Related to The Regret Histories
Related ebooks
Sixfold Poetry Winter 2015 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOnly the Dead Know Burbank: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hotel Getaway and Other Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNever Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Again: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fort Necessity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLights Out in the Reptile House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When will wilts: A dark poetic story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Cat In The Ghetto, Four Novelettes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnderland Arcana 1: Underland Arcana, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFobbit: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dinosaurs on the Roof: A Novel Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Disappearing Act: A Host of Other Characters in 16 Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSentences Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Static #38 Horror Magazine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHallowed Ground Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHorror Bulletin Monthly March 2022: Horror Bulletin Monthly Issues, #6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShowgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies: A Film Critic's Year-Long Quest to Find the Worst Movie Ever Made Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Echoes: An Anthology of Short Fiction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCoward. A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTerrible Cherubs: Tales of Sinners, Mistakes, and Regrets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cabin in the Woods: Campfire Horror Stories to Keep You Up All Night Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShort Stories of E. F. Benson (Fantasy and Horror Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Auguries of Innocence: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Notes from Underground (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings75 Secrets. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Legend Of Krampus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTelevision, a memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrains: A Zombie Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/53 books to know Post-apocalyptic fiction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Waste Land and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Regret Histories
0 ratings0 reviews
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,