Derek Graf

Good poetry stops you as you read--you halt, startled, and read the lines again. And then again. Then you realize how exceptional it is. It is about feeling, first and foremost, not about constructions or commentaries or modern nonsense. It arrests you, and not because of shock tactics, inappropriateness or anything else. You stop because it's so well-done you want to read that line again.

A great example of this is Derek Graf's poem "Be Still When the Stars are at Your Door" in Dialogist no. 1, issue 3. It's both nature poetry and gothic as well, a really great take on a type of modern Poe-esque style.

Here's an excerpt:

[...]  You beg of the lake

            until your ankles shake. In your hands,
wet leaves. [...]

[...] You would look for the wind

            when the trees start undressing, but you only trust
the company of dead starlings, their feathers frozen

            to the ground. In the ground, they still hear you shudder—
listen: answer the door wearing nothing but night.