“…houses
reverting into the lost
and forgotten; granite
subsumed, a rumor
in a mumble of ocean.”
Read all of Amy Clampitt’s poem, “Fog.” Perhaps this doesn’t describe your day or what you could have seen this morning. My area is bright and sunny, high of 93. This quiet moment is what I wanted after the last post.
Jeffrey Overstreet’s wife, Anne, has a debut volume of poetry on the shelves at all the best bookstores near you. It’s called Delicate Machinery Suspended: Poems
The hotel fan’s one long drawn exhalation
disturbing the heat that has settled like dust
across the room, the square-cornered chair
the unsteady spool of table. You are broken
into pieces and lie scattered …
The next U.S. Poet Laureate has been announced. It’s Detroit-native Philip Levine.
John Thomas reports: “On the announcement of his being named U.S. Poet Laureate, Librarian of Congress James Billington said, ‘Philip Levine is one of America’s great narrative poets. His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling The Simple Truth — about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.'”
Here’s a bit of Levine’s work:
The new grass rising in the hills,
the cows loitering in the morning chill,
a dozen or more old browns hidden
in the shadows of the cottonwoods
beside the streambed. I go higher
to where the road gives up and there’s
only a faint path strewn with lupine
between the mountain oaks. (Read on …)
The New Criterion published George Green’s poem, “Rose Poe.” I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s a vignette perhaps. Here’s the open:
Rose Poe was homeless after Richmond fell,
abandoned by the millionaire MacKenzies,
whose ward she’d been for over fifty years.
She spent her days down at the railroad depot
trying to sell some faded photographs
of her unhappy brother, Edgar Allan,
now long deceased, the author of “The Raven.”
…
I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaical fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless,
Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa the mountain;
A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, entangled him, not quite utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight, unsought, presented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber.
“Moonrise” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
O beautiful for heroes prov’d
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev’ry gain divine.
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassion’d stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.
America! America!
God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.
I took this photo on Saturday during the 1809s Day parade through Ringgold, Georgia.
It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down.
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues for noon.
It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.
And yet it tasted like them all,
The figures I have seen
Set orderly for burial
Reminded me of mine,
As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame
And could not breathe without a key,
And ’twas like midnight, some,
When everything that ticked has stopped
And space stares all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground;
But most like chaos, stopless, cool,
Without a chance, or spar,
Or even a report of land
To justify despair.
Emily Dickinson’s “It Was Not Death”, first published in 1891.
Some beautiful poetry by Kay Ryan, our current national poet laureate. Cicadas, loquat leaves, breeze, renewal. I love it.
A designer has worked up a typography video of Carl Sandburg’s poem, “Chicago.” There’s a small promo at the beginning.
Free Fall from ProlifikFilms on Vimeo.
I saw this performance of Greg Ferguson’s poem, “Free Fall.” It’s beautiful and chilling, being it is the story of Genesis 3. Scott Erickson and Sharon Irving are the two performers.