From a distance Closer still I’ve been in a silent streak these last few days. Is it because the fall is so exceptionally beautiful this year that I am feeling even more speechless than usual? Perhaps. But also I think it is because I’m deep in a dig. This time it is a new curiosity […]
Poetry
Take Me to the River
Salmon Boy That boy was hungry. His mother gave him Dog Salmon, Only the head. It was enough, And he carried it hungry to the river’s mouth And fell down hungry. Saltwater came from his eyes, And he turned over and over. He turned into it. And that boy was swimming under the water With […]
That Form in the Grass
A Message from the Wanderer Today outside your prison I stand and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen; you have relatives outside. And there are thousands of ways to escape. Years ago I bent my skill to keep my cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies, and shouted my plans to jailers; but […]
How Kind Time Is
Thomas Merton in the fields near the Abbey of Gethsemani. (Credit: Sybille Akers) At Thomas Merton’s Grave We can never be with loss too long. Behind the warped door that sticks, the wood thrush calls to the monks, pausing upon the stone crucifix, singing: “I am marvelous alone!” Thrash, thrash goes the hayfield: rows of […]
Caretakers
The new Poets House building in Lower Manhattan near the Hudson (Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times) As the plethora (din?) of voices and venues in the online free for all continues to expand exponentially, it is so helpful to have your own trusted list of favorites. Judith H. Dobrzynski is one of mine. […]
Lay It Down Like You Know You Know How
I have recently (re)fallen under the spell of Levon Helm’s music. His latest releases—Dirt Farmer (2007) and Electric Dirt (2009)—have some cuts that will be part of the soundtrack for this phase of my life. “The Mountain,” by Steve Earle, (on Dirt Farmer) is a heartbreak every time I listen. And “When I Go Away” […]
McHughing
Two poems from newly-anointed MacArthur genius Heather McHugh: Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun A book is a suicide postponed. —Cioran Too volatile, am I? too voluble? too much a word-person? I blame the soup: I’m a primordially stirred person. Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings. The apparatus of his selves made an ab- […]
McHugh’s MacArthur
Heather McHugh How nice when the arbiters of taste and genius align themselves with my way of seeing the world. The MacArthur Genius Grant recipients have just been announced, and a well deserved award goes to poet Heather McHugh. Her fabulous poem, Coming, was posted here on Slow Muse in June of 2008. Here’s what […]
Sleep to Grief as Air is to the Rain
The Eden of the Author of Sleep And sleep to grief as air is to the rain, upon waking, no explanation, just blue spoons of the eucalyptus measuring and pouring torrents. A kind of winter. As if what is real had been buried and all sure surfaces blurred. Is it me or the world, risen […]
Letting the Window Open
Christ’s troubled sleep from Milton’s ‘Paradise Regained’, Book IV lines 401-25, c.1816-18, by William Blake Once again I am moved to share an excerpt from my friend Andrew’s Sunday epistle. Armed with a piercing intellect and a PhD in literature, he often crafts entrances into Blake or Milton or Donne that I would not be […]