A Bowl of Warm Air Someone is falling towards you as an apple falls from a branch, moving slowly, imperceptibly as if into a new political epoch, or excitedly like a dog towards a bone. He is holding in both hands everything he knows he has— a bowl of warm air. He has sighted you […]
Poetry
- Poetry
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Even to the Boulder
I’ve been thinking a lot about Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon after having renewed my relationship with their poetry this weekend (See the posting below, The Third Thing.) I posted a poem by Hall yesterday that he wrote during her illness, but thought Kenyon deserved a few of her own too. As Donald Hall wrote […]
The Third Thing
When I started this blog in 2006, I did not anticipate how deeply satisfying it would be to develop companionship around content that matters to me. Sharing visual art and poetry are gestures that happen best outside of time, ones that are well suited for the disembodied 24/7 nature of cyberspheric reality. Discovery in this […]
Out of the Breathless Blue
Nancy Spero, currently on view at the MOMA in New York Coming is the body’s way of weeping, after a series of shocks is suffered, after the thrust of things, the gist of things, becomes apparent: the bolt is felt completely swollen in vicinity to wrench, the skid is clearly headed toward an all-out insult, […]
Nirvana is here, nine times out of ten
Ho Xuan Huong (written here without the diacritical marks, so my apologies to any Vietnamese readers) was an 18th century Vietnamese poet whose works were recently translated into English by the poet John Balaban. Ho Xuan Huong was well educated, but due to family circumstances including her father’s early death, her options were limited. She […]
- Contemplative
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Starved to Diamond
It’s a wordless place where I spend most of my time these days. Language is a bridge that gives out without warning, a friend then a foe, the metal against your skin that is either too cold or too hot. So I’m giving into my proclivities. Leaning on metaphor rather than exposition, on suggestion rather […]
Weathering
Like me, many readers were moved by Fleur Adcock’s extraordinary poem, A Surprise in the Peninsula, which I posted here on May 30. At that time I mentioned another favorite Adcock poem that just didn’t belong in a reading of that visceral, primal poem. So here is Weathering, probably Fleur Adcock’s most famous poem. I […]
Into the Grain of the Cloud
For two months now I’ve been digging in the field of grief and loss with nothing but a spoon. So when my husband David and two other friends commented this weekend on how “intense” (code word for a variety of dark and heavy descriptors) my recent postings here have been, I got the message. Time […]
Staying Awake in our Unending Dream
Emergency Kit When I find myself among a laughing tribe, I know they hide something from me; I conjure up a laughter box whose button I press to outlaugh them all. As long as they hear their music, they leave me free; I don’t want to surrender all I have. I am a moving stump […]
Talisman
A Surprise in the Peninsula When I came in that night I found the skin of a dog stretched flat and nailed upon my wall between the two windows. It seemed freshly killed – there was blood at the edges. Not my dog: I have never owned one, I rather dislike them. (Perhaps whoever did […]