Hi Everyone,
Happy New Year!
This poetry blog only asks the poet to answer one two-part question: At this moment, which of your own poems is your personal favorite, and why?
Enjoy!
Kelly
Please enjoy the recording of Leah’s poem and the poem itself below. This poem was first published in The American Poetry Review.
Leah:
At this moment in time, the poem “Lullaby” is my favorite poem. It’s from my new manuscript, Ordinary Splendor, which is looking for a home. The book is a very different one for me -- one about spontaneous beauty, joy, and wonder. It is also a book about finding love again in this crazy world. I wrote this poem as a sort of lullaby to myself a few years back, when I was still single. It’s an ekphrastic poem inspired by an episode of Poetry Unbound featuring Stephanie Burt’s “A Prayer for Werewolves.” I found her poem very comforting, very soothing, and very loving. It was the sort of self-love I needed to give myself. The poem was inspired by a walk along Riverside Park in Manhattan, on the Hudson River, back when I lived on the Upper West Side. I was taking a walk in the early evening, to clear my head, and the trifecta of Stephanie’s beautiful poem, Pádraig Ó Tuama’s beautiful discussion of it, and the sense of hope I felt while listening, seeing the night fall, and the footfalls of my own steps inspired this poem. I hope your readers will enjoy it.
Bio: Leah Umansky is the author of three collections, most recently, OF TYRANT, Word Works Books 2024. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. Her creative work has been featured on PBS and The Slowdown, and in such places as The Nation, The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, USA Today, POETRY, and American Poetry Review.
She can be found at www.leahumansky.com or @leah.umansky on IG.
Also, please enjoy this YouTube feature with Leah Umansky!
Youtube feature with Leah Umansky
A little about your host, Kelly Fordon:
KELLY FORDON’s latest poetry collection, What Trammels the Heart, was published by SFAPress in 2025. Her short story collection, I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020), was chosen as a Midwest Book Award Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press, 2019), was an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. It was later adapted into a play by Robin Martin and published in The Kenyon Review Online. Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, was published by WSUP in 2015. She teaches at Springfed Arts in Detroit and online, where she also runs a fiction podcast called “Let’s Deconstruct a Story.” http://www.letsdeconstructastory.substack.com.
What Trammels the Heart is on sale right now for 40% off at tamupress.com with the code HEART40 :) and Amazon here.
