Longfellow’s “The Cross of Snow” and Kasischke’s “Things That Have Changed Since You Died” By Zara Raab We want to read and write poems that speak to us in this time and place. That’s how they come alive. But there may be value in the very strangeness, the otherness of poems from other times and […]
Poems on the homeless: David Ferry’s “Dives”
[Note: “Dives” is reprinted below and is available on line in Google archives.] Among poems about the homeless and insane, “Dives” is not perhaps as powerful, dramatic, or moving as Donald Justice’s “In Memory of the Unknown Poet, Robert Boardman Vaughn,” or even Ferry’s own poem “The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People,” […]
Ian Duhig’s “Unmaking”
Ian Duhig’s poem “Unmaking” powerfully brings the boar and his slaughter, his unmaking, into being. I love the details even Wikipedia won’t give you about the boar’s bristles, about boar-hunting spears. I love the language, as well, thurifers and mast. Here’s the poem, which appeared in Poetry London 2010: Unmaking Boar-hunting spears have a cross-piece […]
Edward Byrne’s Seeded Light
Seeded Light by Edward Byrne Cincinnati, OH: Turning Point, 2010 102 pages, $18.00 Unceded The short, spare lines Edward Byrne wrote as a young poet selected by John Ashbery for his first book, Along the Dark Shore, have eased open into the long, iambic couplets of his latest, sixth collection. Turning from the heartaches and […]
I’ve been reading Phililp Levine’s work this week. I love this poem, called “An Ordinary Morning”
An Ordinary Morning A man is singing on the bus coming in from Toledo. His voice floats over the heads that bow and sway with each turn, jolt, and sudden slowing. A hoarse, quiet voice, it tells of love that it true, of love that endures a whole weekend. The driver answers in a tenor […]
Parables of Contemporary Life
Neverheless, hello by Christopher Goodrich ISBN 978-0943264-9-8 Bowling Green, KY: Steel Toe Books, 2009 Paper, 77 pp. Fables of Contemporary Life Among the countless poets, some are at ease in the Zen master’s chair, slyly distilling contemporary folklore, or offering odes of wry praise or comfort in grief. The thematic patterning of these books, and […]