Call for Poetry Submissions 

In celebration of our fifteenth anniversary in 2026, the dVerse Poets Pub invites poets from around the globe to contribute to our upcoming anthology, Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads. Rooted in the Greek word krisis, meaning a pivotal decision point, we seek poems that explore moments of transformation, choice, and change. 

Submission period: April 1 – June 30, 2025. Click here to learn more.

Now,
In June
When the night is a vast softness,
Filled with blue stars,
And broken shafts of moon-glimmer
Fall upon the earth,
Am I too old to see the fairies dance?
I cannot find them anymore.

Langston Hughes, “After Many Springs” (1926)

Welcome to the dVerse Poet’s Pub! I’m Dora of Dreams from a Pilgrimage hosting our poetics challenge this week, my last until the fall as I ease back from blogging for a while.

But right now, it’s June and it’s almost summer for us in the Northern Hemisphere. That may mean vacations to look forward to, lots of travel and sightseeing, or enjoying leisurely days at home.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2nd century A.D.

Many times our vacations accompany an ambition, not simply of discovery or relaxation, but of accomplishment, one that perhaps crystallizes in a particularly memorable view or an unexpectedly pleasurable sight, familiar or not, whether sublime or revelatory. This view once experienced then becomes intensely personal, even liberating, to us. It can function as an aperture or mirror, congruent or incongruent with what is happening within us, emotionally or spiritually.

I walked on, still delighted with the rude beauties of the scene; for the sublime often gave place imperceptibly to the beautiful, dilating the emotions which were painfully concentrated.” —

Mary Wollstonecraft, “Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark” (1796)

For Wordsworth, coming upon a view of daffodils proved to be transformative, and an “emotion recollected in tranquility” (Lyrical Ballads, 1798) in “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” as did the landscape in his “Lines Written (or Composed) a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798.”

Wordsworth, excerpt from “Tintern Abbey”

Thomas Hardy, taking in the sight of the Roman ruins on Palatine Hill, is overcome with a sense of timelessness in “Rome: On the Palatine” (1887).

My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, excerpt from “Mont Blanc” (1816)

T. S. Eliot begins “Preludes” (1920) with an exterior view of an urban landscape shaded by the persona’s interior milieu as the poem’s opening stanza illustrates:

Landscapes enter our innermost being, they leave traces not just on our retinas but on the deepest strata of our personalities. Those moments when the sky’s blue-gray suddenly stands revealed after a downpour stay with us, as do moments of quiet snowfall.

Adam Zagajewski, Another Beauty (memoir), translated Clare Cavanaugh, 2000.

Summer means many will be at the beach this summer. Haiku master Kobayashi Issa took in the view of an ocean and recognized the maternal.

(The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa by Robert Hass, published by Ecco, 1995)

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, 1837-1846, 1850-Nov. 3, 1861.

That nature bursts at the seams with views that stir our emotions, no poet communicates in the same way as Mary Oliver in “When I Am Among Trees” (Thirst, 2006).

In “Spring” (The Dream of Reason, 2018), under poet Jenny George’s gaze, a simple nest evokes a sublime emotion.

Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

Kandinsky

If trips to famous museums are on your vacation itinerary, Polish poet Adam Zagajewski shows how our surveil of the treasures of these “celestial palaces” can resonate within us on the deepest human level.

Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021), True Life: Poems, translated by Clare Cavanagh, 2023.

Not all views are felicitous. In “Meditations in an Emergency,”(2019) Cameron Awkward-Rich finds his view of his daily landscape wrenching.

Frederico Garcia Lorca’s farewell request involves the sight from his balcony in “Farewell (Despedida)” (Canciones, 1921-24).

Before his death and that of his family by an Israeli air strike in the occupied Gaza Strip in 2023, Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer wrote his own farewell request in “If I Must Die,” bequeathing to Palestinian children a view with hope.

If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze–
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself–
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale

For Allan Ginsberg in “A Supermarket in California” and Minnie Bruce Pratt in “Temporary Job,” and “The Sound of One Fork,” their views of the ordinary (a supermarket, an office, a house) are colored by desire and memory, with the latter poem, transformatively so. The following is the first stanza from Ginsberg’s poem.

Allan Ginsberg, excerpt from “A Supermarket in California,” Howl and Other Poems, 1956.

Poetics challenge: What I’d like us to do is to write a poem that conjures a view (whether from our travels or everyday life, whether from desire or experience) that is colored by the emotion of the moment. As always, if you’re stuck for inspiration, use one of the images or quotations above to inspire you.

New to dVerse? Here’s how to join in:
* Write a poem in response to the challenge.
* Post your poem on your blog and link back to this post.
* Enter your name and the link to your post by clicking Mr. Linky below (remember to check the little box to accept the use/privacy policy).
* Read and comment on your fellow poets’ work –- there’s so much to derive from reading each other’s writing: new inspiration, new ideas, new friends. Enjoy!
* Mr. Linky will remain open until 3pm EST on Thursday, June 12th.