poets
Take two curses and thank me in the morning
No sensible person is ever going to clamor to be cursed, but curses aren’t always to be avoided. For one thing, when done well, they’re fun. Like their snarling cousin the insult, curses are great vehicles for verbal gymnastics and flights of fancy. I could even make a case for curses to be a great. […]
MorePandemic, schmandemic
Cameo Appearance by Charles Simic I had a small, nonspeaking part In a bloody epic. I was one of the Bombed and fleeing humanity. In the distance our great leader Crowed like a rooster from a balcony, Or was it a great actor Impersonating our great leader? That’s me there, I said […]
MoreGive us this day our daily birds
Poem in Thanks by Thomas Lux Lord Whoever, thank you for this air I’m about to in- and exhale, this hutch in the woods, the wood for fire, the light—both lamp and the natural stuff of leaf-black fern, and wing. For the piano, the shovel for ashes, the moth-gnawed blankets, the stone-cold water […]
MoreAuld lange . . . sigh
Here at the beginning of the 20thyear of the 21stcentury; in the spirit of “out with the old, in with the new”; bearing in mind the cartoon personification of the passing year as a weary white-haired fellow; in special consideration of those readers of age to shudder at Father Time; with a sympathetic nod to […]
MoreIn which I am not a sugar ant
Respite by Jane Hirshfield Day after quiet day passes. I speak to no one besides the dog. To her, I murmur much I would not otherwise say. We make plans then break them on a moment’s whim. She agrees; though sometimes bringing to my attention a small blue ball. Passing the […]
MoreSpecial delivery: Seamus Heaney
A sunny day in northern Michigan. A long walk past farmland and on to a wooded trail. Three Seamus Heaney poems to deliver, three poems full of the most beautiful nouns and verbs but also full of death. Three watchful deer who scared the bejeebers out of me and two wrong turns that added miles […]
MoreFor two women I love
Marie Ponsot, poet, translator, teacher, stroke survivor, nonagenarian writer of acclaim who wrote for twenty-five years in obscurity, single mother of seven (six of them boys!), lifelong Catholic, writer of my all-time favorite poem “Among Women” and co-author of one of my all-time favorite childhood books, The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, died a few […]
MoreFairy Godfather to the rescue
‘Tis the season to frolic and I’m idle and sluggish. Nothing like a summer cold to sour the sunshine. And nothing like soured sunshine to call forth the de facto fairy godfather of misery, poet Franz Wright. So happened I had six Wright poems to dispose of. Leaving them around the small town in […]
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