Poetry Foundation Magazine, September 2025

by Adrian Matejka (Editor)

Featuring Linda Hogan, Aase Berg tr. by Johannes Göransson, Rajiv Mohabir, Susan Howe, Alexis Pauline Gumbs on Cheryl Clarke (essay). Plus the folio, "Freed Verse: A Reckoning of Black British Poets," featuring: Nick Makoha, Raymond Antrobus, Malika Booker

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2025

About the author

Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany but grew up in California and Indiana. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His first collection of poems, The Devils Garden, won the 2002 Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books. His second collection, Mixology, was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series and was published by Penguin Books in 2009. Mixology was subsequently nominated for an NAACP Image Award. He is a Cave Canem fellow and is the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2010, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and Prairie Schooner among other journals and anthologies. He teaches at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville where he serves as Poetry Editor for Souwester."

Reviews

[Samuel Smith]

Favorites: none

Second-favorites: "The Poem with No End," "Intersection," "Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature," "Off on Holiday," "Dynamic Disks, 1933," "Things I Mean to Write About"

[Zachary Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Kind of Goodness
By Marianne Chan

At the playground, my mother hid from me, I couldn’t find her, and I called her name a thousand times.

And when she reappeared, I ran to her, and she ran to me, and I clenched her neck, and I put my hands on her face, and I said, Where were you? Where were you? and she said, I’m so glad you found me. And we hugged, and she smiled as she cradled me, and I howled, like a gibbon, at her shoulder.

She did this all the time. She’d take me to a park in a far-off neighborhood where I knew no one, and after minutes of playing together, she’d disappear behind a bush or a tree and watch me, as I searched for her and begged for her return and called her name a thousand times in a private language, a language no one else understood.

Once a stranger said, Are you looking for your mom? And I nodded yes. And she pointed to a bush, but when I ran to the bush, I still couldn’t find her. She must’ve known I was coming and slipped away.

Later, my mother reappeared as if from behind a cloud and we ran to each other like two people reuniting after a lifetime apart and I wailed, a scream of both joy and terror.

Aren’t you glad you found your mother? she said.

And I nodded and made her long black hair wet with my tears.

When I was older, I decided to stop looking for her when she disappeared. I’d gotten used to it. After an hour of me playing alone, happily alone, we reunited, and she was angry, her brow pushed low above her nose, like a tumor.

Why didn’t you look for me?

I knew you were here, I said.

But I wasn’t here. I was far away.

One day she took me to a river and left me there and never returned. I survived for years, like a bear, eating only fish I caught with my hands. In my aloneness, I grew religious and counted my prayers on a fistful of pebbles I found along the stream.

I wondered the whole time if I was bad, and I still wonder. Did she no longer love me because I’d lost my need? Because I’d lost that look of desperation I’d get when I couldn’t find her? Was that desperation a kind of goodness?

I practice that look of desperation now. I raise the middle part of my brows so that they arch down at the sides, I call for her, twirling around and flailing my arms, and I imagine she is there, my mother, watching me, her face hidden behind a leaf on a tree.

Most of the poems here fell flat for me which sucked, but I did discover a few new poets whose work I want to dive into later so that fulfills my original purpose of picking up this magazine... soooo success?

Favorite poems:
-Things I Mean to Write About by Thembe Mvula
-"My heart and my flesh sing by Sean Singer
-Detroit by Kira Alexis Tucker

[claire r]

Looking back at my annotations from this one I liked
A Victory over the Self Is No Victory at All and The Room of the Elder.
I was so sick of poetry foundation by the end of this issue. 97% of the poems are social commentaries, and I find almost none beautiful but most pretentious and confusing. I think this style of poetry is VERY important, but when I have a book of poems from up and coming poets I want a variety, not to feel like something is being shoved down my throat every issue. I imagine most of their readers would hate me for this review, it’s just obvious they’re catering.
Let it be known: I love social commentary poems, but not 50,000 in a row. Idk maybe it’s what most poets are writing about nowadays and not necessarily what PF is selectively picking. If so, real.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite month of poetry this year so far! Wonderful poems, a great folio, and a really intriguing essay at the end! Also, points for the cover designer! The sticker on the green CD keeps tricking me!

Fav Poems:
A Story by Linda Hogan
A Kind of Goodness by Marianne Chan
"My heart and my flesh sing" by Sean Singer
No Answer & Brink by Lia Purpura
Dynamic Disks, 1993 by Raymond Antrobus
In the Absence of a Name Noah's Wife Sings Her Own Praise Song by Malika Booker

[Jackie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Y'all... the people who laugh at modern poetry for being nonsensical and stupid are WINNING right now!

Shoutout to Jim Whiteside for writing the only poem in this collection that I actually enjoyed: Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature

[Alan Zhu · Rating 3 out of 5]

feel like I haven't read anything life-changing in any of these of late

favorites: Linda Hogan's "We Lived"; Marianne Chan's "A Kind of Goodness"; Aase Berg's "From 'Aase's Death"; Rajiv Mohabir's "Great Blue Heron at Burnett Bridge"; Raymond Antrobus' "Dynamic Disks"; Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa's "The Legend of the Flying Weave"

[Timothy]

this issue probably should have been broken up into 2 issues. The beginning was interesting and the poets were decent and they were of the same I'll. Same could be said of the second half, I think it brought my score down because I couldn't see the connection between the two halves of this issue

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3&3/4 stars— mixed bag edition; some amazing poems and commentary, some that just didn’t reach me. The majority grabbed my attention.