VII (Wendell Barry) I know I am getting old and I say so, but I don’t think of myself as an old man. I think of myself as a young man with unforeseen debilities. Time is neither young nor old, but simply new, always counting, the only apocalypse. And the clouds —no mere measure or…
Tag: poetry
poem: “we talked about the fact …” (robert lax)
We talked about the fact … (Robert Lax) We talked about the fact that it wasn’t the danger, it wasn’t the skill, it wasn’t the applause that made the act what it was. It was principally the grace; the bringing into being, for a moment, the beautiful thing, the somersault, the leap, the entrechat on…
poem: No Hemlock Rock (don’t kill yourself)
No Hemlock Rock (don’t kill yourself) (Jennifer Michael Hecht) Don’t kill yourself. Don’t kill yourself. Don’t. Eat a donut, be a blown nut. That is, if you’re going to kill yourself, stand on a street corner rhyming seizure with Indonesia, and wreck it with racket. Allow medical terms. Rave and fail. Be an absurd living…
poem: to lou andreas-salome (rainer maria rilke)
The memory of this poem lodged in my mind this morning at work, and I haven’t been able to shake it off. I found it pasted on the front page of my marble composition notebook journal from the spring I lived in London. I still think it’s magic. To Lou Andreas-Salome (Rainer Maria Rilke) I…
poem: baseball (gail mazur)
I haven’t celebrated baseball or National Poetry Month enough. Baseball (Gail Mazur) the question of what makes a man slump when his form, his eye, his power aren’t to blame, this isn’t like the bad luck that hounds us, and his frustration in the games not like our deep rage for disappointing ourselves the ball…
poem: prayer in my boot
Prayer In My Boot (Naomi Shihab Nye) For the wind no one expected For the boy who does not know the answer For the graceful handle I found in a field attached to nothing pray it is universally applicable For our tracks which disappear the moment we leave them For the face peering through the…
the pull of gravity
This is my favorite Adrienne Rich poem, II from Twenty-One Love Poems. I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming. Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other, you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed: our friend the poet comes into my room where I’ve…
to anticipate a thaw
Revival (Luci Shaw) March. I am beginning to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost where the moles have nosed up their cold castings, and the ground cover in shadow under the cedars hasn’t softened for months, fogs layering their slow, complicated ice around foliage and stem night…
shut up and read
Don’t Be Literary, Darling (Sasha Moorsom) Don’t be literary, darling, don’t be literary If you’re James in the morning you’re Hemingway in bed Don’t talk of yourself in the style of your own obituary – For who cares what they say of you after you’re dead. Don’t be always a thought ahead and a move…
grown but not grown up
When I Grow Up (Catherine Wiley) I want to be the waitress snapping gum, who leaves an orange crescent on the thick white cup, calls the six a.m. men sagging at the counter “Hon,” even when I know their names. In the rumpled wallet photos, their kids’ hair moves up, then over, ears; tuxes lead…
brand new kind of photography 