Poem of the Week: “Midwest: Georgics” by David Baker

The VPR Poem of the Week is David Baker’s “Midwest: Georgics,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2002 issue (Volume III, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. “Midwest Georgics” also was published in Poetry from Paradise Valley (Pecan Grove Press, 2010), an anthology of poems from the first decade of VPR recently selected as a finalist in poetry for the Best Books of Indiana competition sponsored by the Indiana Center for the Book, supported by the Indiana State Library.

David Baker is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Never-Ending Birds (W.W. Norton, 2009), for which he was named the winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, a triennial award offered for a superior poetry volume published within the previous three years. Baker’s other awards include fellowships and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, Society of Midland Authors, Poetry Society of America, and the Pushcart Foundation. He has also published two books of literary criticism. His poems and essays appear in such magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Nation, New Republic, New Yorker, Paris Review, Poetry, and many others. Baker teaches at Denison University, and he is the poetry editor of Kenyon Review.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers visit it.