If you have attended many poetry readings, you know how often they turn out to be flat and pedestrian affairs. A figure at the podium recites lines from compositions published and unpublished, and otherwise doesn’t have much to say. You hear a bit of biographical context for this or that specimen, . . . . Continue Reading »
When Moses came down from the mountain and cloudbearing the Ten Commandments in handand saw the calf adored by the crowdand smashed the tablets of God’s commandone of the Hebrews quick-witted and proudbent and wrote the Ten down in the sand.—J. A. . . . . Continue Reading »
Once again a child asks me suddenly What is a poem?,And once again I find myself riffing freely and happilyWithout the slightest scholarly expertise or knowledge;But I am entranced by how poems can hint and suggestAnd point toward things deeper than words. A poem isAn owl feather, I say. It’s not . . . . Continue Reading »
Ben Lerner’s elegant, amusing essay turns on a distinction between Poetry and poems. Poetry is Caedmon’s dream, a virtual ideal that actual poems can’t live up to. “The fatal problem with poetry,” Lerner writes, is “poems.” Every poet is, inevitably, “a tragic figure.” Continue Reading »
“For me, the true poet is the metaphysician.” That is almost certainly an exaggeration. But we ignore the metaphysician in the poet at our own peril. Continue Reading »
Saint Paul Lives Here (In Minnesota)by zach czaiawipf and stock, 66 pages, $7.50 A fter years of controversy over the mishandling of sexual predators among the priests of his archdiocese, Archbishop of Minneapolis-St. Paul John Nienstedt resigned last June. Now facing criminal prosecution, the . . . . Continue Reading »
“Virtue! a fig! ’tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our willsare gardeners.” —Othello, William Shakespeare “Virtue! A fig!” We grasp the hoe and dig.The dirt we turn is taken from ourselves.We chop the trunk and bough; then clip the . . . . Continue Reading »
My Lady, Queen of Heaven, Queen of Earth,I weave for you a crown of white muguet.Delightful, fragrant, quiet bells of mirthI twine for Mary garlanded in May.Madonna, Fairest Flower of the Field,Of all God’s glories born from basest clay,A Lily of the Valley, Love revealed,I weave for you a rapture . . . . Continue Reading »
Barabbas we can understand—a bit unhinged, but we have plannedfor that containable derangement,just as in the kind estrangementof Legion, as he styled himself,by the grave edge of a lakeside shelf.Aside from the price of swine, you see,that madman was dependably—well, mad. Our wars, our . . . . Continue Reading »
She writes it with a quill pen, so they say,On cream-smooth vellum (paper she refuses).A photo of three granddaughters at playSits on her desk to supplement the Muses.Her subjects? Cats, and apple pies, and toys;Quilted covers, macramé, and knitting;A nest of robin’s eggs, the happy noiseOf . . . . Continue Reading »
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