• About
  • Blog
  • Submissions
  • Prizes
  • Purchase
  • University of Tampa Press

Tampa Review

Celebrating 60 Years of Literary Publishing

poetry

William Greenway

May 1, 2014 by utpress Leave a Comment

IN HEAVEN IT IS ALWAYS AUTUMN

by William Greenway

              after John Donne

It all seemed to happen that same year
we lived in England, every hill golden
with the turning beeches, crimson apples
in the orchard by our cottage
muted pink by the mist rising
off the river reflecting
the upside down
palette of it all.

In Italy, the vineyards
wore the yellow, plaited hair
of harvest, every barn breathing out
the warm crush and gush of grapes
like the winey kisses of a long
luncheon tryst.

Time
had stopped.
The change
we couldn’t see coming
stalled for a while,
an Indian summer before the stroke.

Had it happened while we were hiking
the paths of fallen leaves, miles
from help, we’d have thought, though
not said, we hoped for any afterlife
to rival this heaven—color box
of plum, ochre, cinnamon, lemon—
and the blood-red beauty of the dead
gone on before us.

============================================================================
William Greenway author photoWilliam Greenway’s tenth collection, Everywhere at Once, won the Poetry Book of the Year Award from the Ohio Library Association, as did his eighth collection, Ascending Order. Both are from the University of Akron Press Poetry Series. His newest book, The Accidental Garden, is forthcoming from Word Press, and Selected Poems is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press, both in 2014. Greenway’s critical work, The Poetry of Personality: The Poetic Diction of Dylan Thomas, is forthcoming from Rowan and Littlefield in 2014. His publication credits include Poetry, American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, and Shenandoah. He is the recipient of the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award, the Larry Levis Editors’ Prize from Missouri Review, the Open Voice Poetry Award from The Writer’s Voice, the State Street Press Chapbook Competition, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Greenway was named Georgia Author of the Year. He is Distinguished Professor of English at Youngstown State University.

Posted in: Poetry Tagged: poetry, william greenway

Sebastian H. Paramo

April 1, 2014 by utpress Leave a Comment

BEGINNER’S ENGLISH FOR REFUGEES

by Sebastian H. Paramo

I walk around the makeshift classroom
where the heat has us sweating for words.

The adults repeat phrases like a chorus,
Each word is said
as if it could change their lives.

They get out their notebooks & sharpened
pencils while the fan overhead twirls
a phrase or two that says, show me

the way. Multicolored hands capture
each letter in perfect script
like a child hunger.

They nibble at all the words.
Their eyes are on me—they don't stare,
they're intent at becoming American

like me. I string out a couple more words
& hammer phrases into their brains.
I want to give them that hammer,

holding a marker in my hand,
I want to test the refugees. I call on
a Nepalese woman to answer what is this?

But she doesn’t understand this—that word this.
Not yet. She turns to her neighbor from Iraq
saying No idea. Repeating her phrase. No Idea.

I turn myself around; writing the word again—they repeat.

============================================================================
Sebastian H. ParamoSebastian H. Paramo’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The North American Review, The McNeese Review, Canary, Lunch Ticket, The Oklahoma Review, and others. He is an editor for the online journal, The Boiler, and was recently awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. He lives in Dallas.

Posted in: Poetry Tagged: contemporary poetry, immigrant poetry, new writing, poetry

Katharine Johnsen

March 1, 2014 by utpress Leave a Comment

BIRTHDAY

by Katharine Johnsen

                     Boca Raton, March 1995

Clasping my hand around my grandfather's, I pulled him from a 
doze
to rehearse; he was my Daddy Warbucks and I was turning seven,
obsessed with Annie. When he wanted to know how we should 
celebrate,

I said, a party with my friends. I hear her voice now, my grandmother
asking, What friends do you have down here? and my answer: Leah and 
Harry, Shirley and Jules, Arleen and Harold. So my grandparents' 
closest friends

came to my birthday party, couldn't eat the cake because of their 
diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure. In a drawer is a photograph 
my grandmother took that night: Shirley leaning against the door, 
the others sitting, watching

as my grandfather and I dance and sing to a cassette tape
of the cast recording. I am only the floating hem of a navy
polka-dotted skirt as if it twirls out of the frame on its own.

============================================================================
Katharine JohnsenKatharine Johnsen studies and teaches at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she is the recipient of the Bernice Kert Fellowship. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Birmingham Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She was recently awarded a scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and earned her BA from Emory University.

Posted in: Poetry Tagged: boca raton, katharine johnsen, poetry

Katharine Johnsen

March 1, 2014 by utpress Leave a Comment

MY OBITUARIES

by Katharine Johnsen

I started reading the obituaries
after he came home from the hospital,

checked them like he checked his stocks,
like they mattered as much as his test results.

I was preparing to navigate
my own goodbye. I read about the fresh

deaths; I read the archives posted
as part of a This Day in History series.

For three months I surrounded myself
with death—steeped and immersed myself.

I followed each reported surgery
and hospitalization of Ted Kennedy,

grieved for Gerald Schoenfeld,
Sydney Chaplin, Bea Arthur, Horton Foote—

those theater giants he taught me to admire.
Every day I lost a new, meaningful someone,

each a dry run for the one I never wanted
to prepare myself to lose.

============================================================================
Katharine JohnsenKatharine Johnsen studies and teaches at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she is the recipient of the Bernice Kert Fellowship. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Birmingham Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She was recently awarded a scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and earned her BA from Emory University.

Posted in: Poetry Tagged: katharine johnsen, poetry

Jeff Schiff

February 1, 2014 by utpress Leave a Comment

TASTING GARLIC IN SPANISH

by Jeff Schiff

Head
        the vendor replies
            for the sheathed whole

where its dangling beard
        once studied mud
                cabeza de ajo

Cabeza
        so you will begin to suspect
            its vegetal wisdom

And in that papery head
        teeth
            For though she demurs

your lover demands them
        or one day will
                dientes

teeth teasing her nape
        teeth raking a lilting throat
            And if the season is truly moist

lengua verde
        a green tongue
            slithering from the tight betwixt

============================================================================
Jeff Schiff photoIn addition to Mixed Diction (Mammoth books, 2009), Jeff Schiff is the author of Anywhere in this Country (Mammoth Press), The Homily of Infinitude (Pennsylvania Review Press), The Rats of Patzcuaro (Poetry Link), Resources for Writing About Literature (HarperCollins), and Burro Heart (Mammoth books). His work has appeared internationally in more than eighty periodicals, including The Alembic, Grand Street, The Ohio Review, Poet & Critic, The Louisville Review, Tendril, Pembroke Magazine, Carolina Review, Chicago Review, Hawaii Review, Southern Humanities Review, River City, Indiana Review, Willow Springs, and The Southwest Review. He has been a member of the English faculty at Columbia College Chicago since 1987.

Posted in: Poetry Tagged: jeff schiff, poetry
« Previous 1 2 3 … 5 Next »

New & Noteworthy

  • Kirk Schlueter Wins the 2025 Richard Mathews Prize for Poetry
  • Jay McKenzie Wins 2024 Danahy Prize
  • Flower Conroy Wins 2024 Richard Mathews Prize for Poetry
  • Tampa Review 68 Cover Reveal
  • Louise Marburg Wins Danahy Fiction Prize

Categories

  • Conversations
  • Cross-genre
  • Essay
  • Fiction
  • Interview
  • News
  • Nonfiction
  • Poetry
  • Review
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Art

Social Media

Instagram

Copyright © 2025 Tampa Review.

Omega WordPress Theme by ThemeHall