Peggy Shumaker

One excellent poem we just spotted was Peggy Shumaker's "Calls of Birds We Cannot See" in Ascent, Oct. 2009. It's just a lovely as Ted Hughes's work, with a great Imagist, early Modernist sense to it--as if the work of Hilda Doolittle or Amy Lowell up and moved to South America or Mexico.

Here's an excerpt:

[...]

                                                             Corrugated hailstorms–

                                                             metal roof, earthquake

                                                            of ten-pound iguanas.

Shy thicket bird, ancient

tinamu steps out

among newcomers.

Honor flows both ways.

                                                           Three agouti bow

                                                           to the rushing stream. [...]