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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

I love a lot of poems & poets. This is one by Liam O'Flaherty which I've loved since I first read it over a decade ago. Happy #WorldPoetryDay!

Rock Flowers

I said to the flowers:
“isn’t it a bleak spot you’ve been given
to be breathing in
and wedged at the edge of a cliff
with nothing but the mossy rock
and the dirt of the birds,
a place that takes, full of fog
and a raging sea.
The sun doesn’t beam here
from Monday to Saturday
to brighten your hearts.”
The rock flowers said:
“We don’t care, my dear,
we’re spellbound
by the music of the sea.”

Liam Ó Flaithearta, translated from the Irish by Dan Murphy

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Hey, look who's (kinda) in the Boston Globe: www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/18/a... Excited to read from my book ESTATE SALE tonight alongside two excellent poets, Nathanael O'Reilly & Antonina Palisano. 7pm at the Grolier in Harvard Sq. #poetsky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity

Text from Boston Globe digital: Dan Murphy ("Estate Sale"), Nathanael O'Reilly ("(Un)belonging"), and Nina Palisano are
introduced by Karl Kirchwey to read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Grolier Poetry Book Shop and virtually via
Zoom. (Reservation is required.)

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Big congrats to @lukejohnsonpoet.bsky.social on the publication of his #poetry collection, DISTRIBUTARY. Can’t wait to dive into it, hopefully this weekend? 🤞😆 #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #poetsky

A poetry book on a wood counter: Distributary by Luke Johnson. The cover appears to be an atmospheric painting with dark coloring, a bird squawking, the moon centered, but distant, a figure holding an old lantern, maybe.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY: I’ll be reading from #EstateSale w the inimitable Robert Pinsky (@rpinsky.bsky.social) on Cecilia Woloch’s Zoom reading series. Limited space, & preregistration req, so sign up here, if interested: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #poetsky

CECILIA WOLOCH & FRIENDS POETRY ON ZOOM PRESENTS A CELEBRATION OF NEW BOOKS BY
ROBERT PINSKY
3-TIME US POET LAUREATE
& DAN
MURPHY
WINNER OF THE AGHA SHAHID ALI PRIZE IN POETRY
SUNDAY, AUGUST 24
NOON PACIFIC * 3PM EASTERN* 9 PM PARIS
FOLLOWED BY A BRIEF READING BY CECILIA AND A Q&A * ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

Seen in the wild at Little City Books in Hoboken: ESTATE SALE sandwiched between a few #poets you’ve probably never heard of 😆 (!) #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #booksky #sealeychallenge

A bookcase at Little City Books bookstore in Hoboken, NJ. Estate Sale by Dan Murphy sits between multi-colored bindings of poetry books (mostly) arranged in alphabetical order, including titles by John Milton, Marianne Moore, Paul Muldoon, Tomas Q. Morín, Eileen Myles, Richie Hofmann and Pablo Neruda.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

On my way to drop off some books at the Bookstore of Gloucester (Mass)— THE THEORY OF POETRY The air is an organic farm for the practitioners of Paradise Vincent Ferrini (1913-2007) #poetsky #writingcommunity

On a building’s brick wall, a black & white mural with a portrait of a man in a hat and to his right the words:

“THE THEORY OF POETRY

The air is an organic farm
for the practitioners of Paradise

Vincent Ferrini (1913-2007)”

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

“Only loudspeakers will spout joy.”— from the #poem “This Land’s No Joy” by Nguyên Chí Thiên, translated from the Vietnamese by Huynh Sanh Thông & apropos of nothing in particular…

Poem:

Title: This Land's No Joy

This land's no joy.
By day they wipe off sweat, and tears by night.
To prison camps and barracks they all stream— a trickle will come back.
Children look pale and sick, like young banana leaves.
Of plowing women take full charge.
In hamlets not a glimpse of younger men.
Death notices drop thick and fast on thatch.
Here all is grief— only loudspeakers will spout joy.
Translated from the Vietnamese by Huynh Sanh Thông

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Mahmoud Darwish "Victim Number 48" translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies

Poem by Mahmoud Darwish
"Victim Number 48"

They found in his chest a lamp of roses and a moon
And he thrown dead upon the stones.
In his pocket they found a few piastres,
A box of matches, a travel pass,
And tattoo marks upon his young arm.

His mother missed him,
Mourned him year after year.
Boxthorn sprouted in his eyes
And darkness thickened.

When his brother grew up
And went looking for work in the city’s markets
They put him in prison:
He carried no travel pass.
All he carried in the street was a box of garbage
And other boxes.

So, children of my country,
Thus did the moon die.

translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Rest in peace, Michael Longley. Here’s a #poem from his collection, THE WEATHER IN JAPAN.

Poem:
Michael Longley (1939-2025)

THE BULLET HOLE

Imagine Uncle Matt, head full of Henryson
And Ferguson and fear of death and excitement,
After coming through the North African Campaign
Sweating it out up the steep road to Fiesole
Past the cathedral and the Roman amphitheatre,
The tombs and the temple, at the top of the hill
Turning into this road and approaching this house
And this garden where we sit with an old friend
Between peach and pomegranate trees, a pergola
And all that is left of an Etruscan wall, then
Opening fire, nervously, once, because he thinks
There are Germans in the kitchen, and leaving In the chestnut crossbeam a hole, a stray bullet
That has taken half a century to find its mark.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

A Charlie Simic kind of mood:

Poem by Charles Simic:

DARK CORNER
Say, how'd you find me?
Ordinarily, I act deaf and dumb, but with you
It's different. Darting in and out
Of doorways, prowling after me
Like a black cat.

Just look at the suckers, I kept
Shouting at the world. It was no use.
They just stepped over me holding on to their hats,
Or lifting their skirts a little
On the way to hell.

He must be crazy, sprawled there
On the sidewalk, his fly unzipped,
His eyes closing. Only you came back
To see how I'm doing,
Only you peeked into every dark corner.

I'm a bird fluttering in flight.
Find me a nice, large cage with the door open.
Back me out of here with your kisses.
My shoes need laces.
My pants need your finger to hold them up.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

As I put on my hat and vest to go string some lights, this moving classic by James Merrill, written just months before his death:

Poem:

JAMES MERRILL
CHRISTMAS TREE
*
To be
Brought down at last
From the cold sighing mountain
Where I and the others
Had been fed, looked after, kept still, Meant, I knew -of course I knew - That it would be only a matter of weeks, That there was nothing more to do.
Warmly they took me in, made much of me, The point from the start was to keep my spirits up.
I could assent to that. For honestly, It did help to be wound in jewels, to send Their colors flashing forth from vents in the deep Fragrant sables that cloaked me head to foot.
Over me then they wove a spell of shining— Purple and silver chains, eavesdripping tinsel,
Amulets, milagros: software of silver, A heart, a little girl, a Model T,
Two staring eyes. Then angels, trumpets, BUD and BEA (The children's names) in clownlike capitals, Somewhere a music box whose tiny song Played and replayed I ended before long
By loving. And in shadow behind me, a primitive IV To keep the show going. Yes, yes, what lay ahead Was clear: the stripping, the cold street, my chemicals Plowed back into the Earth for lives to come—
No doubt a blessing, a harvest, but one that doesn't bear, Now or ever, dwelling upon. To have grown so thin.
Needles and bone. The little boy's hands meeting
About my spine. The mother's voice: Holding up wonderfully!
No dread. No bitterness. The end beginning. Today's
Dusk room aglow
For the last time With candlelight.
Faces love-lit, Gifts underfoot.
Still to be so poised, so
Receptive. Still to recall, to praise.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Great to see @martinespadapoet.bsky.social on here! I admire so much of his work. Here’s one I’ve used to teach (about conceits) from his award-winning collection, FLOATERS: “Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window”

Poem by Martín Espada

Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window

for Lauren Marie Espada
JUNE 13, 2019

The word love: there it is again, indestructible as an insect, fly faster than the swatter, mosquito darting through the net.
How the word love chirps in every song, crickets keeping a city boy up all night. I wish I could fry and eat them.
How the word love buzzes in sonnet after sonnet. I am the beekeeper who wakes from a nightmare of beehives.
To quote Durán, the Panamanian brawler who waved a glove and walked away in the middle of a fight: No más. No more.
Then I see you, watching the violinist, his eyes shut, the Russian composer's concerto in his head, white horsehair fraying on the bow, and your face is bright with tears, and there it is again, the word love, not a fly or a mosquito, not a cricket or a bee, but the Luna moth we saw one night, luminous green wings knocking at the screen on the window as if to say I have a week to live, let me in, and I do.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Aphoristic #poem by Roberto Juarroz from “Third Vertical Poetry”

A poem by Roberto Juarroz:

From Third Vertical Poetry

A lamp lit
in the middle of the day,
a light lost in the light.

And the theory of light is broken:
it’s the greater light that recedes
as though a tree were to fall away from its fruit.

Translated by W.S. Merwin

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

That’s gotta be Boston City Hall 😆

Boston City Hall in Boston, Massachusetts. An example of brutalist architecture looking very dystopian and made mostly of concrete.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

From the Polish poet, Ryszard Krynicki, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Barańczak:

Poem:

I Can’t Help You

Poor moth, I can’t help you,
I can only turn out the light.

Ryszard Krynicki translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Barańczak

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

As the environment, our world, is about to face perhaps its biggest challenge yet, a modest eco poem of mine arrived in this environmental anthology published by Red Press (based in Scandinavia.) "Comhartha" was first published in TAB Journal and will be out again in my book (Spring 2025):

Poem in Irish and English:

Dordéan beag,
liathróid ag faoileáil,
anam dúchasach—

Cén uair a bheas tú ag caochadh?
Tá an t-uisce milis san aer anois
cosúil le mo mhamó.

Cén saghas nuacht a thugann tú?
Inis dom. Inis dom. Ní chloiseann na daoine
taobh amuigh dá suíocháin.

In aice láimhe, téann tú amú
ag déanamh staidéir ar a sholas dearg,
ag déanamh staidéir air ró-fhada b’fhéidir.

Comhartha

Little hummingbird,
knuckleball in flight,
indigenous soul—

when do you blink?
The sweetwater is air now
like my grandmother.

What news do you bring?
Tell me. Tell me. The people in pews
can’t hear you out here.

By my turn signal, you linger
studying its ruby glint,
studying it, perhaps, too long.

Dan Murphy (A former carpenter, Dan Murphy teaches at the Waring School and Boston University. Recent poems have appeared in Sugar House Review, The Summerset Review, Slipstream, Terrain, TAB, and The Indianapolis Review. His debut collection, Estate Sale, won the 2024 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in poetry and will be published by the University of Utah Press in 2025.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 09/11/2024

apropos of nothing in particular in the news, my #poem "On America" first published in Panhandler Magazine & out next year in my forthcoming book, ESTATE SALE:

Poem: On America

A moment arrives in oversleeping
when the body seems all the more tired,
when sleep itself ceases to refresh.

All that rest becomes heavy, pins
the head and limbs.

In the landscape of hunger
there’s a rusty gate in a field of rock

beyond which
it’s just as painful to eat
as it is to starve.

-Dan Murphy

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

Poets, friends: Black Box Reading w/ my friend Duy Doan next Tuesday night, Nov 12th starting at 7:00pm at 745 Comm Ave in Boston—my first one in years! It’s at the BU School of Theology, room 625. Come commiserate the state of things as I read unholy poems from my forthcoming book ESTATE SALE.

Flyer for a poetry reading at Boston University. A cartoon of a book wedged into a cornucopia with grapes and apples. Details: Black Box Reading w/ my friend Duy Doan and others next Tuesday night starting at 7:00pm at 745 Comm Ave in Boston. It’s at the BU School of Theology, room 625.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 02/10/2024

With fear & elation, I made my deadline w/ the University of Utah Press. One step further toward seeing this #poetry collection out in the wild. 😅🍻

Stapled manuscript on desk with the words “Estate Sale” written on it.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 01/10/2024

Paw paws straight from my backyard trees. Was so great to finally taste them this year. #native #gardening #Massachusetts

Ripe paw paws on a table. All different sizes and shapes.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 03/09/2024

Posting my newly-adopted rescue dog, Duffy, for good vibes.

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 21/08/2024

So excited & grateful to share this! I have so many poets, friends, and family to thank for their generosity & support. I’ll get to them in the acknowledgments. 😀

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Dan Murphy @dmurphy.bsky.social · 15/08/2024

@shopoetryjournal.bsky.social has put out another great issue of work. So glad to be in it w/ thanks to its editors. #poetry #poems

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