Brenda Shaughnessy

Modern poetry has a tendency to flow along unencumbered by old devices, like narrative or lyricism. The best poets combine their newfound freedoms with old skill. Brenda Shaughnessy's poem "This Person-sized Sky with Bruise" in TheAwl, Sept. 2012 is a great example of this. It's emotive and serious while retaining beauty and an edge of the gothic.

Here's an excerpt:

simultaneously orange and violet,
(though my eyes are closed) is

either my inner color (that covered mirror)
or simply dusk.

An opaline sheet
pulled because the night is ashamed

[...]

It was so much
itself—bloody flesh,

wild purple skin. A fistful
so lush it was almost imaginary,

smelling of love, it didn’t matter whose.

[...]