Poem of the Week | August 11, 2012
Christopher Bakken: "Confession"
This week, with Leo roaring, we offer up this new poem by Christopher Bakken. Bakken is the author of After Greece (2001) and Goat Funeral (2006), as well as a forthcoming culinary action/adventure memoir called Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table (University of California Press, 2013). He teaches at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania.
Photo by Kelly Gorney
Author’s Statement:
“Confession,” along with six other poems like it, arrived during a strange and unusually fertile two weeks of writing last fall. In each of these poems, two figures are falling apart in an imagined, somewhat allegorical landscape: the sea is almost always close; the mind is coming undone; and even the simplest objects seem estranged from certainty. I think of these poems as dream songs and have scattered them throughout my new collection of poems, Impressions of a Drowning Man, which deals with the problem—or maybe the idea—of suicide.
Confession
SEE THE ISSUE
SUGGESTED CONTENT

Poem of the Week
Jan 23 2023
“Stone Fruit” by Rebecca Foust
This week’s Poem of the Week is “Stone Fruit” by Rebecca Foust. Rebecca Foust’s fourth full-length book ONLY (Four Way Books 2022) received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Recognitions… read more

Poem of the Week
Jan 16 2023
“Of the Country I Left” by Kyoko Uchida
This week’s Poem of the Week is “Of the Country I Left” by Kyoko Uchida. Kyoko Uchida was born in Hiroshima, Japan and raised there and in the United States… read more

Poem of the Week
Jan 09 2023
“Pastoral” by D.S. Waldman
D.S. Waldman is a 2022-2024 Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University. His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, LitHub, Narrative, and other publications. Waldman has received additional fellowships, support and… read more