[photo by J. Star]
"Another Look at the Garden"
The window has glass in it the garden has not. There’s a path between grass but the grass is not a path. Fairies are not paying attention at what you see outside [...]

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[photo by tochis]
"November 23"
A long train is standing at the station and the platform      is empty. Winter, night, the frozen sky is flooded with red. Only a woman’s weeping is heard. She’s pleading      for something [...]

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[photo by Roger Lynn]
"Those Winter Sundays"
Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No on [...]

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[photo by Christmas w/a K]
When I came down from the sky above Palmyra over palmettos and ruined gates and a scratch at my throat warned me you would take me;
When I came out of the sky above Acropolis and, for [...]

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[photo by SantiMB]
"Silence"
Silence Like the one before the world was created
Fog slides over the river Tangles in bushes on shore
Dew trembles on a branch A bud bursts open A fledgling moves in a nest
Silence [...]

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[photo by thinredjellies]
Despite attacks by Charles Bernstein, Richard Howard, and others, April continues to be National Poetry Month. I understand– but don’t share– their antipathy. Honestly, I find most of the protestation to be rather ridiculous and contrived. What’s left then appears to be mostly a symptom of typical elitism [...]

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[photo by Michel Clair]
"May 24, 1980"
I have braved for want of wild beasts, steel cages, carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on [...]

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[photo by geographie/prieten]
"The Saying"
In an old book I stumbled across a saying. It was like a stranger punching me in the face,
it won’t stop gnawing at me. When I walk around at night, [...]

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   [photo by Felipe Morin]
"The Past"
It shows up one summer in a greatcoat, storms through the house confiscating. says it must be paid and quickly, says it must take everything.
Your children stare into their cornflakes, your wife whispers only [...]

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[photo by Carl Van Vechten]
"In Memory of W. H. Auden"
1.
His heart made a last fist. The language has used him well and passed him through. We get what he collected. The magpie shines, burns [...]

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[photo by Hobo pd]
“The Jewel”
There is this caveIn the air behind my bodyThat nobody is going to touch:A cloister, a silenceClosing around a blossom of fire.When I stand upright in the windMy bones turn to dark emeralds.
 
–James Wrightfrom James Wright: Collected Poems

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The shadows of the couple        enter the dark field, crosssilent as a seam
having left at the centera white box, whiteas a box
for a birthday cake. Inside,the baby.Abandoned there
in the tall grass,in the night wind,
he wants for everything: food, warmth,           a littlebaby hope.
         But the worldswirls around the box. The world
like a forest goes on
and [...]

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[photo by Gavatron]
“Messenger of Tyranny”
He spits sparks on the night, cinders, love, lightning, broken wings, hate, stars and gold coins which hasten away. He sighs of remorse on the night. At the breath of silence, he grapples with man and knocks him down. He rams the silence down his throat. And, whether [...]

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[photo by Greg Gladman]
As part of an effort at soul-salving, I am resuming my poetry memorizing routine. I’m just going to start with a new list, including some that I already know though I haven’t sat and recited them to myself for a long time. For me, memorizing is a [...]

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An interesting post on the idea of “post-avant” poetics by Reginald Shepherd sparks a fiery comments conversation. Overall pretty enlightening, though the whole thing takes a turn about 2/3 of the way in that I don’t completely understand.
The issue of politics and poetry is very frustrating to me. I guess I’m a fuddy-duddy traditionalist mainstreamer [...]

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from Poetry:
…in “The Origin of the Work of Art,” he issues a particular invitation to poets, arguing that poetry is in some way the model for all other art forms, and the exemplary activity of human beings. The poet, he writes, “uses the word—not, however, like ordinary speakers and writers who have to use them [...]

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A snippet from a newspaper article on Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

“Poetry can save the world by transforming consciousness,” he argues in “Poetry as Insurgent Art,” a slim hardback pocketbook manifesto of prose epigrams, seemingly addressed to poets and those who might be.
“I am signaling you through the flames,” he begins in the new section from which his [...]

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(about poetry and being a poet)
1. A word assemblage isn’t a poem just because someone says it is; no one really knows what a poem is.
2. Most readers of poetry are poets; no one reads poetry anymore.
3. Calling oneself a poet is to call attention to how one doesn’t fit; poets are one of the [...]

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Uncle Fester providing piano accompaniment for a prepster would-be-beat poet… you have to love it.

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As anyone likely to read my ramblings already knows, Charles Simic is the new Poet Laureate. I’m glad I dropped most of my poetry blog reading list and picked up only a select few I could remember because I can just imagine the working-over that Simic, the choice of Simic, and the position and idea [...]

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