Read By: The 2020 Discovery Poetry Contest Winners

<p><em>Asa Drake on her selections:</em></p> <p>I read two poems by Ai, <a href= "https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42543/cuba-1962">"Cuba, 1962"</a> and <a href= "https://poets.org/poem/guadalajara-cemetery">"Guadalajara Cemetery."</a> I found her book <em>Vice</em> when I started working for the public library. I don't know how this book found its way into Central Florida, but her poems made me feel at home again in the South, where everything outside of me is beautiful and violent, and somehow means more work.</p> <p><em>Luther Hughes on his selections:</em></p> <p>For the last several years, I have suffered from depression. It kind of hit me out of nowhere. I've attempted suicide and contemplated it more than several times. <a href= "https://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/poetry/ice-storm">"Ice Storm"</a> by Robert Hayden is a poem I love because it exemplifies moments in my life where anything, even nature, will make you question not only beauty, but a higher power--God, really. "The Worst Thing" by Sharon Olds, even though this poem is about her divorce, reminds me of this, too, but it also pushes me to say "the worst thing." To face it with my whole heart. <a href= "https://poets.org/poem/wont-you-celebrate-me">"won't you celebrate with me"</a> by Lucille Clifton and <a href= "https://poets.org/poem/instructions-not-giving">"Instructions on Not Giving Up"</a> by Ada Limon remind me to keep pushing. To breathe. To live.  </p> <p><em>Ana Portnoy Brimmer on her selections:</em></p> <p>In Nicole Cecilia Delgado's collection, <em>Apenas un cántaro</em>, a graffiti credited to "la Pensión Meza, cuarto 14" reads: "Vivir es despedirse." To live is to say goodbye. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about departures, leave-takings, distance, even before the Covid-19 pandemic and (extra)exacerbated political crisis came into view. The poems "In Exodus I Love You More," by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (translated by Fady Joudah), and "Lamento Borincano," by Puerto Rican poet Nicole Cecilia Delgado, seeme