“America, it’s true, either spoils you with success or withers you with neglect. What other morality has the artist but to endure? The only ones who survive, I think, beyond the equally destructive temptations of self-praise and self-pity, are those whose ultimate discontent is with themselves. The fiercest hearts are in love with a wild [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

"Seneca on Banishment"
Somewhere I missed where it said not to do the emperor’s sister, and at last I get what the khans will be about: outside, nothing is more inviting than a wall visible from space. So I say to myself, O Greatest Etcetera of your generation, [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

"Idylle"
In today’s mail I found the chain letter you’ve been sending for years. I know your handwriting, your desperation, the peculiar way in which you fold the paper. This plea, you tell me, has been around the world three, maybe four times. This plea is sacred. This plea is our last hope for anything. In [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

"High Windows"
When I see a couple of kids And guess he’s fucking her and she’s Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives– Bonds and gestures pushed to one side [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

"To be honest, to be kind—to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

[photo by Greg Gladman]
"Four From the Forest Floor"
A Rhinoceros Beetle
Not dead, but dwindled, The dinosaurs: he rears his Snout and almost roars.
Overnight Mushrooms
These neighborhood shrines, White as snow, show the clean hands Of stolen labor.
A Millipede
It’s [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

[photo by debaird]
"Icarus"
I cannot count the strange animals Falling through my eyes. One is not one.
A different one, Just this morning at sunrise, Had escaped. He wore the bright orange of a convict still.
In [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

[photo by SuLeS]
"The Illiterate"
Touching your goodness, I am like a man Who turns a letter over in his hand And you might think that this was because the hand Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

"Embers"
Poor summer, it doesn’t know it’s dying.
A few days are all it has. Still, the lake
is with me, its strokes of blue-violet
and the fiery sun replacing loneliness.
This is my burrow, my nest, my attempt
to say, I exist. A rose can’t shut itself
and be a bud again. It’s a malady, [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

[photo by EJP Photo] 
One last bit of Hopkins… another too appropriate not to share.
"Carrion Comfort"
NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

[RIP]
"If We Had Known"
If we had known all that we know We never would have let him go.
He never would have reached the river If we had guessed his going. Never.
We had the stronger argument Had we but dreamed his dark intent.
Or if our [...]

Posted in General 3 Comments »

[photo by photographer padawan]
This is one of the first "adult" poems I memorized and one of the few I’ve never forgotten. Recent events reinforce what I’ve often said before… this poem has depth and complexity far beyond what is usually accorded to it in its frequent appearance in various anthologies. [...]

Posted in General 1 Comment »

Just heard via email that poet, novelist, and short story author Rebecca Kavaler has passed away. Here’s a poem of hers that I’ve seen shared in a few places.
"The Animal Within"
     Homage to Sir Thomas Browne
We, who supposedly contain all Africa and her prodigies, are revealed for what we are [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

[photo by Todd Ehlers]
"Atomic Pantoum"
In a chain reaction the neutrons released split other nuclei which release more neutrons
The neutrons released blow open some others which release more neutrons [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

Love him or hate him, Pinsky has created a good model to keep in mind when considering questions of poetry, poets, and poetics. Answer the questions with poems. It’s at least as exact as the philosophical meandering I’m likely to subject others to at the drop of a hat.
It also gives me an excuse to [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

I don’t know why I didn’t think of “The Waking”– one of my favorite Roethke poems– when I was thinking so much about villanelles last weekend. However, in one of those serendipitous exchanges that make participating in these social networks so worthwhile, David Weinstock (while you’re there, check out “I am the Eggman”) turned me [...]

Posted in General 2 Comments »

  [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 [...]

Posted in General 1 Comment »

[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 [...]

Posted in General 1 Comment »

[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 [...]

Posted in General No Comments »

[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 [...]

Posted in General 1 Comment »