Donald Platt
Donald Platt’s fifth book of poems, Tornadoesque, is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press. His sixth, Man Praying, will appear in 2017. . His fourth book, Dirt Angels, was published in 2009 by New Issues Press. In 2011 he was awarded a second fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a third Pushcart Prize. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Salmagundi, Prairie Schooner, Notre Dame Review, Crazyhorse, Ecotone, Black Warrior Review, Seneca Review, Southern Review and Best American Poetry, 2015. He is a professor of English and teaches in the MFA program at Purdue University.
Reading List
Wisteria
My mother comes back as the mock orange’s white blossoms with yellow anthers, their faint sweet scent that the scant breeze blows to me. It’s flowering for the first time. I sink my hands into the dirt, get closer to …
Smoke Tree
It’s raining again, and Lucy, my daughter home from college for the summer, is wearing her dead grandmother’s powder blue raincoat. I use the yellow-handled screwdriver from the tackle box of tools my dead father-in-law gave me as a wedding …
The Davydov
An audio recording of Donald Platt reading “The Davydov“ The sadness one millimeter under my psychotherapist’s voice seems always about to break through like the first strident notes of Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor. Dave had to cancel our …
Autumn’s Silent Auction
It is written in the folios of foliage starting to catch fire, burn, turn to yellow, red, …
Chartres in the Dark
Chartres in the Dark It was almost sunset when the cathedral rose out of the rolling December farmland, …
Zephyr
“Young and Tender Zephyr Summer Squash Only $1.25 Per Lb.!” says the …