A. M. Juster

Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England
 by emily thornbury
 cambridge, 338 pages, $99 My years of mandatory Latin began when I was eleven. Almost immediately I hated the language more than the mandatory tie and jacket that made me an easy target for bullying on the six public buses I rode each . . . . Continue Reading »

Here on the sand lies crusty limulus, the stalwart crab of the marine Old Right. Untouched by any trendy stimulus, our kind assesses change in clear, cold light before once more deciding to hold tight.You chose not to evolve or to rebel. Resisting odd mutations served you well. Last rites like . . . . Continue Reading »

Slow, old python of my Everglades, he astutely picks where he invades: data dumps; the depths of lower courts; knotted weeds in annual reports. Rounded figures fail to square; a will screws the worthy with a . . . . Continue Reading »

All spring she brushed aside my arguments that it was cheaper and would make more sense to fill the yard with hardy Yankee stock. She bought her maple, junked the chain-link fence, and tried to start a lawn; our crabby flock of grackles grew too fat on seed to quarrel. While masons tamed the mud . . . . Continue Reading »

63 When bloody flooding killed the human race And brand-new oceans put man in his place, Except for those who carried mankind’s seed, I, first of creatures, snubbed what law decreed, While I mocked yielding to the Lord’s command, For which, I think, a poet would declare, “The sin . . . . Continue Reading »

I conjure NBC in black-and-white. You drop dry ice in water; fog is rising. You sell us Celsius and Fahrenheit. I lose you in a cloud of advertising” Winston, Esso, Zenith, Mr. Clean, those thirty-second breaks for Ovaltine” then smile at Bunsen burners and balloons, more ropes and . . . . Continue Reading »

Loved that first book”it’s got no equal” but, Johnny, we don’t love your sequel. If you would only take a chance on self-help or a gay romance, we’d let you keep your last advance. Phony conspiracies would do if you could find a hook or two” like someone famous who . . . . Continue Reading »

for JFK Jr. A strip of violet quivers in the haze” a near-mirage above the furrowed grays and blues of Vineyard Sound, an afterthought of windworn scrub the military bought and then abandoned. Peace returned except for sea retaking shoreline. Surf has swept away most tools of combat, but in . . . . Continue Reading »

O may the girlfriend of your nightmares stalk you on the Internet, and “need to talk,” and may no Xanax lessen your despair as you obsess about what she will share, and may her many messages explain why your restraining orders are insane! . . . . Continue Reading »

Despite what’s promised when you marry, actual results may vary. . . . . Continue Reading »