THE FIFTH ELEMENT

2012-02-08T02:13:00.007-07:00

El Alma del Oeste

In recent weeks on shifting cliffs

at Canyonlands, or Rabbit Hill,

at Window Rock, or Wrinkled Sands,

or mesas where, this time of year,

slowly spill the waters,

we have sighted the claw

of the infant spring,

and heard the bighorn’s hoof ring.

Like children we have peered into

the bed of the west, the canyon’s rib,

and the empty nest.

Like children we have wondered who

induced all this, and what comes next.

And here we are, the two of us.

The lynx’s prints at Corral Fork

have brought us to a cloud of quail.

We build a cairn and turn back to the trail.

A breeze can shift a mother’s fears

of letting go. So shall ye sow.

We speak in English, wind, and Espanol.

Thou Eunoch of Language

2012-02-06T22:15:00.003-07:00

1791, Rabbie Burns responds to one of his critics:

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus.

R.B.

2012-02-06T17:23:00.005-07:00

Don’t listen to what a person calls him- or herself; listen to what is said when the guards are down. And the proof is always in the poems, because if your guards aren’t down when you go to that necessary place, then you were lying before you even started.

- Reginald Dwayne Betts

Momentary

by Alicia Stallings

I never glimpse her but she goes

Who had been basking in the sun,

Her links of chain mail one by one

Aglint with pewter, bronze and rose.

I never see her lying coiled

Atop the garden step, or under

A dark leaf, unless I blunder

And by some motion she is foiled.

Too late I notice as she passes

Zither of chromatic scale—

I only ever see her tail

Quicksilver into tall grasses.

I know her only by her flowing,

By her glamour disappearing

Into shadow as I’m nearing—

I only recognize her going.

- from Poetry Magazine, February 2012

2012-02-04T20:43:00.011-07:00

It is said that Blake was an Innocent, not just because he was fearless in confronting human emotion, but in large part because he did not live to see himself imitated.

Maurice Sendak on Colbert

2012-02-03T17:42:00.003-07:00

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

Video Archive

2012-02-03T01:21:00.004-07:00

A Lizard in Spanish Valley

A lizard does not make a sound,

it has no song,

it does not share

my love affairs

with flannel sheets,

bearded men, interlocking

silver rings,

the moon, the sea,

or ink.

But sitting here the afternoon,

I’ve come to believe

we do share

a love affair

and a belief --

in wink, blink, stone

and heat.

Also, air.

Impatience,

remember this.

2012-02-02T11:54:00.003-07:00

Small poem of mine in the current issue of Poetry:

Videlock

Szymborska

2012-02-02T09:20:00.005-07:00

Rest in peace, Wislawa Szymborska.

Wislawa on How to and How Not to

2012-01-31T01:41:00.003-07:00

There was so much to love I could not love it all;

I could not love it enough.

- Louise Bogan

Two Tim Murphy Poems

2012-01-31T00:49:00.006-07:00

Red State Reveille

Daybreak. A youth at Fargo's Jiffy Lube

reloads his grease gun with an oil-stained tube,

prints out the service records on my truck,

changes three filters fouled with gunk or muck,

rotates the tires and drains the filthy oil,

tops up my fluds. Happy with his toil,

grinning broadly, he send me on my way,

in time for Mass. God bless the USA.

The Reading

Some owlets eye me from a scrub oak tree.

They're fledged and glass me with their yellow eyes,

and not a one will fly off in surprise,

their wing tips rounded, flying silently,

because I bear a gun, because I'm me.

These are Bob Clawson's kids in Acton, Mass.,

and they are unpersuadable by Frost,

their fathers absent and their bearings lost,

and God excuses kids like these from class.

What shall I say to owlets as I pass ?

-from Mortal Stakes/Faint Thunder, Dakota Institute

2012-01-31T00:18:00.001-07:00

A class I'll be teaching in February:

Synergistic Visions

Scattered Blues and Coppers

2012-01-27T01:43:00.007-07:00

On Being Asked Where I Have Been

In a field of wheat,

on a dragon's tongue,

at the bottom of

a bottle of rum,

at the axiom

of a metaphor

and a bad pun,

at the loosening

of a baby tooth,

under a spell,

over the moon,

out of the blue,

at the quivering tip

of an arrow and

a bottom lip,

left behind,

at the canyon's rim,

on the back of the wind,

let loose,

taken in.

2012-01-26T11:50:00.004-07:00

Even in Kyoto

hearing the cuckoo's cry

I long for Kyoto.

- Basho

2012-01-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

2012-01-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

Another interview I did with Bob King of the CPC:

CPC interview

Louise Bogan

2012-01-22T00:27:00.002-07:00

A Tale

This youth too long has heard the break
Of waters in a land of change.
He goes to see what suns can make
From soil more indurate and strange.

He cuts what holds his days together
And shuts him in, as lock on lock:
The arrowed vane announcing weather,
The tripping racket of a clock;

Seeking, I think, a light that waits
Still as a lamp upon a shelf, --
A land with hills like rocky gates
Where no sea leaps upon itself.

But he will find that nothing dares
To be enduring, save where, south
Of hidden deserts, torn fire glares
On beauty with a rusted mouth, --

Where something dreadful and another
Look quietly upon each other.

Jack Mueller, a Glimpse, on 3 x 5 cards

2012-01-18T12:16:00.015-07:00

The Capture

2012-01-18T00:54:00.011-07:00

A poem should not 'capture' anything, but rather unloose a thing.

The poem

is torpor, hurdle,

infomercial,

cricket, faery,

bloody

mary, cobbler,

florist, rain

forest, mustard,

mortar, ghost

buster, lizard,

laser, star

cluster, phantom,

leopard, feather

duster.

2012-01-17T02:01:00.001-07:00

Alcohol Ink on Yupo, with Buson

2012-01-17T01:14:00.012-07:00

This cold winter night,
that old wooden-head buddha
would make a nice fire.

Dreaming Poppies in January

2012-01-12T02:20:00.001-07:00

Hold Your Ideas Lightly

2012-01-12T01:28:00.009-07:00

Without wild places I would have little to say.

- Peter Anderson

-------

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

- Frost

----------

Plato asserted that there is a realm of Forms or Ideas which exist apart from the one who may have thought of these ideas. Material things are then transient reflections or instantiations of unchanging ideas. Consequently, Plato considered that knowledge of material things is not really knowledge; real knowledge can only be had of unchanging ideas.

Of Plato I draw no conclusions, but If indeed Idea and ideas or as old as the wind, they seem to move among us not just on the the back of the wind, but also on the soles of the feet, the tip of the tongue, the misplaced thing, and also in dream.

Lost and Found, Hermes Trismegistus

2012-01-08T01:53:00.007-07:00

In Classical Greece the lucky find is a 'hermaione' which means a gift of Hermes.

Of course the sudden loss -- of a thought, or a memory, or an object, is also attributed to Hermes.

As well as the crossroads, the unknown, initiation, tricksterism, poetry, magic, alchemy, mercury, departure and passage.

La entrada y la salida

2012-01-06T14:42:00.005-07:00

Alcohol Inks on Yupo, Landscapes and Iterations

2012-01-03T23:10:00.016-07:00

By the old river

in the middle of winter

who is to say

who's modest

and who is opulent,

who is flute

and who is consonant,

who is greed

and who is populist,

who is clash

and who is complement,

who is rife

and who is somnolent.

A Rose Kelleher Poem

2011-12-28T10:53:00.001-07:00

Zero Tolerance

There will be no one waiting,

tense as a pulled pin,

to hop the subway turnstile

just as the train rolls in.

There will be no one glancing

warily left and right,

agitating aerosol

behind the school at night.

No criminal will circumvent

the rules by stealth or cunning.

No muffled voice will ask

Is your refrigerator running?

No missile filled with water

will dislodge a single hat.

In the darkest of dark alleys

there will be no alley cat,

when a penny’s worth a dollar

and boys are hanged with men

and apple pies can safely cool

on windowsills again.

from New Walk, Autumn/Winter, 2011

2011-12-28T02:15:00.000-07:00

Nevertheless in Hudson Review

2011-12-28T01:36:00.008-07:00

I'm told my book is reviewed (favorably) in the current issue of Hudson Review. The magazine reserves its content for subscribers only, so there is no online reproduction available. I have yet to see the review, but I'm glad to hear the book wasn't panned.

I'm especially charmed (and bemused) by this because HR has sent me a smart fistful of rejections over the years.

Also, Les Murray in Australia has committed to publishing "Comfort and Oy" and "Dear Clive" in an upcoming issue of Quadrant. That guy has a funny bone.

The Politics of Poetry: three random articles

2011-12-27T23:52:00.005-07:00

Vendler and Dove Duke it Out -- The Penguin Anthology

The Mystery of Vachel Lindsay -- Slate

Pale Fire, New Yorker

Potter on Blake, a Fragment

2011-12-27T23:50:00.003-07:00

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks

of Religion.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging

of the stormy sea and the destructive sword, are portions

of eternity too great for the eye of man.

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.

I sit at my desk reading a sheaf of printed words, but all the while Blake the terrible puppet master jerks all the strings. This time he does not allow me the predatory pleasures of the tyger. I cannot leap into the heavens alongside him, seizing the fire, twisting the sinews. Again, and yet again, he requires me to document my unveiled ignorance. For I cannot dredge up anything coherent to say about these proverbs -- except that they frighten me. They seem to exist in order to prove that I am a trapped animal, a doomed beast, a burden of dust, who knows nothing, nothing at all, of death or life, good or evil, hell or paradise.

“Where man is not nature is barren,” Blake declares. Outside my window, a small wind clatters among the dry leaves and raps against the pane. Tomorrow is my forty-fifth birthday and all I have learned about myself is to keep reading. I look down at my book, and Blake says, “He who has suffered you to impose on him knows you.” For a moment the wind quiets, and now a single car sifts past, tyres sighing on the damp tarmac. I don’t know what the poet wants from me. But if nothing else, I can be sure he intends no comfort.

Dawn Potter, New Walk

2011-12-27T01:42:00.006-07:00

The effects of physical laws in the world that we live in are not fixed, but shift according to the state of collective consciousness.

- LS

What Rupert Didn’t Need to Tell the Moon

It took a long time

but the little grey mouse

in California learned to squeeze

through a maze, nudge a thing

and get himself a piece of cheese

and once he had,

a little grey mouse in another lab

in London or Peru will learn this trick

mighty quick.

......Put that in your pipe

and smoke it, muttered Rupert to

the shrink, the shim, and the poet.

2011-12-19T00:48:00.005-07:00

Tread softly!

All the earth is holy ground.

- Christina Rossetti

Sand

2011-12-19T00:40:00.008-07:00

The God Particle

2011-12-13T11:19:00.005-07:00

The Higgs Boson said to the universe, Sir, I exist.
Swell, replied the universe, let us attend mass.

- Richard Epstein

Richard's poems can be seen here: RHE

El Tiempo es Oro

2011-12-12T22:42:00.021-07:00

Home sick with a cold, five days and running. It's remarkable how much can get done from the confines of the couch. I've read three books, written a couple of congested poems, caught up on my emails, responded to an interview, screwed around sufficiently on FB, consumed a few dozen cups of camomile tea, lost a couple of pounds, written my holiday cards, accrued a couple of blisters, and considered carefully the laws of gravity, depravity, and unintended consequences.

We turn from the light to see.

- Don Paterson

When asked what single thing humans might, en masse, visualize, pray for, or meditate upon, which might produce a collective shift, the noted meta-biologist replied:

Not world peace, nor love; these things are too nebulous, and perhaps even beyond our imaginations. Better instead to manifest gratitude.

Perhaps gratitude, he adds, is the only antidote to greed.

----

Merrill proclaims: Echo of mine, I am amenable !

Emerson speaks of the aboriginal self.

Yeats of simplification through intensity.

Bloom of the wonder-wounded state of mind.

A suicidal friend from long ago murmurs from the edge of time.

Nearly midnight, and snow has begun to fall in the valley.

El tiempo es oro.

In some quarters, this little spanish phrase is translated as

Time is money.

In other quarters,

Time is golden.

What does the snow

know,

asks the text,

about translation ?

A thing or two,

replies the moon,

the roof,

and the annotation.

A John Whitworth Poem

2011-12-12T00:58:00.002-07:00

Life at Eighty

This world of dew is but a world of dew. And yet. And yet.

- Issa

I like to loaf, I like to laugh; I like to read the Telegraph;

I buy it at the student rate, it tells me of affairs of state;

And on the state I meditate: I am a wise old fellow.

I potter in a world of prose; grandchildren tell me how it goes.

They drink and disco at the club; I soak for hours in the tub,

Careen my carcass, scrub-a-dub; I am a hale old fellow.

I mutter when I do not shout; in welly boots I splash about;

I walk on rainy afternoons; I dine on cauliflower and prunes,

And never mess my pantaloons; I am a clean old fellow.

A television haruspex; I like the violence, hate the sex;

I comb the Oxfam shops for togs; the country's going to the dogs,

I chart it all in monologues; I am a stern old fellow.

The doctor gives me coloured pills to cure me of my various ills,

My smoker's cough, my writer's stoop, my lecher's eye, my brewer's droop,

My belly like a cantaloupe; I am a sad old fellow.

A world of dew. And yet. And yet a world not easy to forget;

I cannot let it pass me by; I stop and look it in the eye;

and as you see, I versify: I am a game old fellow.

2011-12-11T23:29:00.001-07:00

A Jack Mueller Poem

2011-12-11T23:07:00.002-07:00

You will

never

understand me.

I will

never

understand you.

Love starts there.

- Jack Mueller

Don Paterson, Take VII

2011-12-10T02:11:00.003-07:00

Some people achieve humility by prayer and fasting, some by great charitable works. My own method is to behave like a complete moron every three months or so.

- DP

2011-12-09T23:51:00.010-07:00

It hurts to be touched.

- JH

Poema

Has no one ever said to you

this is the ache

this is the song

that curls itself around the world

child

you are beautiful

did not the bird, did not the sound

of autumn moving round and round,

did not the candle in the room,

the dog who let his guard down

the bloom,

the root,

the moon

have not your angels stopped to say,

this is the ache

this is the song

that curls itself around the world

child

it is beautiful. ..

Alcohol Inks and Yupo, Metaphors and Reservoirs

2011-12-08T00:05:00.027-07:00

Down long channels of the inner ear

celebrations

revelation

windswept spirits,

fear,

and over there

another tale,

a blue flag,

the mesa lake,

a whispered gale

and baby pygmy goats for sale.

A Few Things from the Desk

2011-11-30T10:14:00.017-07:00

The editors from "Dream the End" have been in touch to ask if they could select work from 'Nevertheless' for the current issue of the zine. An unusual presentation of the poems: Dream the End

I've been contacted by the Poetry Foundation, who have asked permission to run ten of the poems in collaboration with PIW. This one is very good news indeed. Since I've stopped actively publishing, the work that is already out in the world moves round a little, without any help from me. That some of the poems have legs is comforting, though of course I'd prefer they had wings.

Also, I've discovered that New Walk Magazine, out of Leicester, England, will be running a review of "Nevertheless" in their upcoming issue. Hope it comes down in general on the favorable side. It's a strong journal.

And finally, the visual work is currently featured at the Blue Pig Gallery out in Palisade: Blue Pig

Over the River and Through the Wood

2011-11-29T15:01:00.013-07:00

a Thanksgiving Journey

Mesa, Loma, Moab, Bluff,

ghost of coyote, Neil Young

and every junkie

a setting sun,

eagle, Hopi, alma,

loom, the seven sacred

sacred pools,

child, do not trust the ones

who are not fools

fools for love,

Montezuma, pitonisa,

destination,

will,

Salamander

Hill, the children and

the rubble,

the sand and the humble,

falafel and

corona, the new

moon, Sedona,

the spiral and

the ring,

not a gift

an offering...

We oughtta

get a move on

we’re late again

for Tucson,

Bloody Basin Road,

pumpkin pie and strange

haven,

mouths and christian

condemnation;

know again

your station:

Mesa, Loma, Moab, Bluff,

ghost of coyote, Neil

Young,

and every junkie

a setting sun,

eagle, Hopi, alma, loom,

child, do not trust the ones

who are not fools

fools for love,

the seven sacred

sacred pools,

Montezuma, pitonisa,

destination,

will, Salamander

Hill, the children and

the rubble,

the sand and

the humble,

falafel and

corona, the new

moon,

Sedona,

the spiral and

the ring,

not a gift,

an offering.

Stay Limber !

2011-11-27T22:27:00.013-07:00

2011-11-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

(Mueller)

for Carol Ann Duffy

2011-11-19T11:03:00.014-07:00

The people look to the little fruits

which dangle from the trees

in the mornings and the mist

and say

see deep

imagist.

see new formalist,

see

transcendentalist,

romanticist

classicist,

see

fundamentalist;

see

beat, femme,

vers

librist,

greek

tragedeanist,

see

metaphysic turn

of the century

symbolist.

2011-11-17T01:19:00.007-07:00

Everything starts from a dot.

Kandinsky

Я так не считаю господина Кандинского

The Examiners, Take II, III, and IV

2011-11-16T22:06:00.012-07:00

A year or so ago I was asked to do a reading outdoors in the downtown area here in town. It was a blustery, miserable evening and nobody at the microphone could be heard over the din and chaos of the wind. I knew I couldn't read any of my little lyrics into that bluster, so I leafed through my journal, which flew (did I mention it was windy?) open to John Whitworth's "The Examiners". It is a great, ambitious poem, full of foreboding and humor, paranoia and obsession, with a chilling, weird refrain and many sweet spots and blind alleys. Even the wind that night was no match for that poem. I do believe I might've actually howled it out.

That remarkable poem has now been put to music by John Wesley Harding, whose latest album is a collaboration with Peter Buck from REM. I couldn't be happier for Mr Whitworth, the curmudgeonly old 'light verse' poet from England. He's a master craftsman and a remarkably unique poet, with great range.

The article can be found here:

JWH

The Art of the Proverb

2011-11-15T13:28:00.005-07:00

One never knows when death or a customer will come.

India

No nickname, no wealth.

China

It is easier to speak than to say something.

Ukraine

An hour of play discovers a year of conversation.

Portugal

There is no worse robber than a bad book.

Italy

Every alley has its own tin can.

USA

Don't show a hyena how well you can bite.

Kenya

A blessing does not fill the belly.

Ireland

On a smooth road the foot will slip.

Serbia

Proverbs are the coins of the people.

Russia

2011-11-15T13:27:00.001-07:00

2011-11-14T23:36:00.009-07:00

In a secular society such as ours, bound by the tyrannical consensus of materiality, where the realm of imagination is reductively considered only the imaginary, any hint of the visionary is often summarily flattened with irony or deflated by good utilitarian common sense.

- R Nemo Hill

Extraordinary conversation between Nemo and Tom Merrill here:

Hypertexts (click "Spotlight")

2011-11-11T12:03:00.004-07:00

I hate to boast but I make the best humble pie ever.

- Robert Schechter

Wendy Videlock in the NYT

2011-11-11T09:47:00.004-07:00

Once a poem has been published and unleashed unto the world, one never knows where it will be reproduced. One could do worse than the back pages of the New York Times. With thanks to a kindly reader who alerted me to this: NYT

2011-11-11T02:21:00.003-07:00

Warm in November

2011-11-08T01:03:00.002-07:00

2011-11-08T00:17:00.001-07:00

Alchohol Inks on Yupo, Visions and Revisions

2011-11-07T23:55:00.006-07:00

Visions and Revisions

The busker from Conundrum is blooming

rhododendrons and the woman

of the moon

has become an ivory schooner

and the keepers at the gate

have placed

their hands at poker while the swallows

take their baths in the black

bear’s tracks

and the snooze button Buddhist has

drunk another nectar

and the working class

hero is receiving all his vectors

and the crazy old witch

has scooped up all

the gardeners and sent them to the breeze,

singing do you see

do you see

these ordinary ancient seeds

and scribbled

little runes –

they were not used

for divination,

but for magic, fools.

Nouns of Assemblage

2011-11-07T17:02:00.003-07:00

Murmuration

2011-11-03T23:43:00.004-06:00

My war, and I have yet to win a decisive battle -- is with the modes of thought which prevail in psychology and therefore in the ways we think and feel about our being. Of these conditions none are more tyrannical than the convictions which clamp the mind and heart into economics, fundamentalism, and positivistic science.

James Hillman

2011-11-03T23:23:00.002-06:00

Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom.

--Thomas Carlyle

And by the way let us recount our dreams

2011-11-03T23:15:00.007-06:00

Rest in Peace, James Hillman

2011-10-28T22:49:00.002-06:00

We forget that the soul has its own ancestors.

James Hillman

2011-10-26T11:01:00.002-06:00

2011-10-25T12:23:00.004-06:00

(JM)

Back from the dead, one little Zorro.

(photo DR)

2011-10-25T00:57:00.003-06:00

Let chaos storm!

Let cloud shapes swarm!

I wait for form.

- Frost

(Anita Wiehe)

You Don't Have a Soul

2011-10-24T23:41:00.015-06:00

You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.

- CS Lewis

Steeping steeping steeping

says the gardener from

the dolmen arch peeping.

"To put it simply, I feel that the universe is full of glorious energy, that the energy tends to take pattern and shape, and that the ultimate character of things is comely and good. I am perfectly aware that I say this in the teeth of all sorts of evidence to the contrary, and that I must be basing it on temperament and partly on faith, but that is my attitude."

- RPW

2011-10-20T15:35:00.000-06:00

Western Colorado Writers Conference, Rites and Lights

2011-10-10T09:48:00.078-06:00

Poetry is a silly business. Unnecessary, and complete.

-Jack Mueller

Chrissie Allinson and Jack Mueller

yrs truly (photo Uche Ogbuji)

Oh. My. God.

Chrissy and yrs truly (photo Dave Mason)

Danny Rosen and Maria Melendez

--------

All change is good.

- Cally Conan Davies

Jack Mueller, Chrissy Allinson, Danny Rosen

Chrissy Allinson and Dave Mason

The Yoot

------------------

What do we know but that we face

one another in this place ?

- WBY

Jack and Dan

Chrissy and Dave

Ouchi Ogbuji and Rich Ott

----------

Mapmaker,

too long I have trusted you.

Rosemerry Wahtolla Tromer

Rosemerry and Janice

Shawnee Rayne Videlock

Tony Alcantara and yrs truly

Little do we know this fall ...

- Janice Gould

Janice Gould and Mimi Wheatland

Jackie Sue Holt

You got an attitude

a' gratitude...

- Kim Nuzo

Kim

Dave Mason

Danny and Francis

Uche and yrs truly

(Jack)

Shawnee and Robin

-----

Leaping

from shape to shape ....

- Art Goodtimes

Arturo

There is no need to overcompensate.

-Luis Lopez

Luis

Images Plucked from Facebook on a Wednesday Night

2011-10-05T23:14:00.008-06:00

2011-10-03T01:25:00.002-06:00

Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Aspen Tree

2011-10-02T22:10:00.006-06:00

2011-09-27T00:24:00.008-06:00

An interview I did with Gadfly's Marissa Fox can be found here:

A Word on Verbs, an Interview

2011-09-27T00:19:00.003-06:00

I was asked to read in Aspen over the weekend. The audience, sprawled on couches and leaned against one another at all levels of a pyramid-like staircase, was generous, intelligent. receptive, interactive, and prone to the belly laugh. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, there is the dark spark, the clear bead, the spontaneous, and the sense that one has just been to the church of poetry. Very often at these kinds of events, the organizer over-plans, over-thinks, over-moderates. Not so, Kim Nuzzo, who runs the show in Aspen, and never even so much as told me how long I was expected to read. A marvelous young guitarist opened the show. There was also burgeoning talent in evidence during the Open Mic, particularly the works of Tony Alcontara, Lynda La Rocca, and others whose names I'm afraid I do not recall. Saw some old friends from the festivals, and many new faces. We also heard from Lorca, Jack Gilbert, Plath, Kipling, Kerouac, and Dante.

'Is there not still magic in America? Beauty. Truth. Love. Sisters and Brothers. Full moons. Stars. Awareness. Cultivation. Community. Oh Yes. And Agape'.

- Kim Nuzzo

2011-09-26T23:40:00.000-06:00

Iambic Hemptameter

2011-09-26T23:39:00.001-06:00

Just roll me up and smoke me when I die.

- Willie Nelson

2011-09-26T23:37:00.000-06:00

2011-09-23T00:03:00.003-06:00

Two poets have been awarded the MacArthur Genius Prize this year: Kay Ryan and AE Stallings. I can't help but mention that the latter wrote the introduction to my book.

MacArthur

2011-09-22T22:50:00.001-06:00

2011-09-22T22:44:00.002-06:00

Reason is as guilty as passion.

JH Newman

2011-09-22T22:38:00.003-06:00

2011-09-22T22:38:00.001-06:00

September

As the spirit

plunges under

and the body

knows its sender

and the reaper

splices the moon,

we brooders

burst into bloom.

2011-09-22T22:25:00.000-06:00

2011-09-22T00:54:00.002-06:00

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Nelson Henderson

2011-09-22T00:39:00.001-06:00

2011-09-22T00:38:00.000-06:00

My work appears in the October issue of Think Journal. They do not reproduce the content of their issues online, but information on the journal is here:

Think Journal

2011-09-22T00:29:00.004-06:00

2011-09-16T22:49:00.000-06:00

2011-09-16T22:46:00.005-06:00

I was asked to guest- teach at Western State College in Gunnison this week. The organizers put us up at a large ranch, with many critters, giant sky, a kitchen full of s'mores, and a library to die for.

Well, I thought, what can I possibly say to these senior English majors that they haven't heard a thousand times before...

Shall I speak of sonics, rhythm, prosody, process, concision, revision, publishing, influence, assonance, consonance, confluence, flatulence...

Shall I mention that poetry, like any other sacred science, is a wisdom tool.

Well, of course I did all that.

Blah blah blah.

But I also gave them this small ars poetica, and told them, rather emphatically, they'd do well to study it for a year.

Give thanks for all things

On the plucked lute, and likewise

The harp of ten strings.

Have the lifted horn

Greatly blare, and pronounce it

Good to have been born.

Lend the breath of life

To the stops of the sweet flute

Or capering fife,

And tell the deep drum

To make, at the right juncture,

Pandemonium.

Then, in grave relief,

Praise too our sorrows on the

Cello of shared grief.

- Richard Wilbur

2011-09-13T17:19:00.000-06:00

My brain is a fatty cyst.

- Jack Mueller

2011-09-13T17:18:00.000-06:00

2011-09-13T17:08:00.003-06:00

In defense of the modern sonnet, (and in promotion of an anthology in which my work appears):

Best American Poetry, David Lehman

2011-09-12T14:45:00.001-06:00

In Memoriam

2011-09-11T21:08:00.002-06:00

"Nevertheless" reviewed in Gadfly

2011-09-06T15:21:00.004-06:00

My publisher has directed me to a review of my book, which appears in Gadfly:

"Nevertheless"

2011-09-06T12:04:00.001-06:00

2011-09-02T13:54:00.003-06:00

At the Writers Conference

Henri Coulette, 1927-1988

And now the questions come. Why do you write?

Using the present tense, I speak of love,

Serif and seraphim, feeling and thought.

They buy it as the body buys the grave.

But I am wrong. This perfect asterisk,

This classic hush, is shattered by a yawn,

And what they really want to know they ask.

They want to publish, for they perish soon.

So where? So how? They are like Herrick’s roses,

This caution who has heard the shadows sing,

This blade who carves up any form he chooses:

Petal and thorn, they yearn for gathering.

To be like this, bereft of title page,

Vanity without signature or spine --

Is that so bad? To rage a silent rage,

And never point a finger and say mine?

There is a burden, but it’s no refrain.

The question looks the answer in the eyes,

And looks away, and does not look again.

I nod and exit to their sweet applause.

2011-09-02T13:52:00.000-06:00

2011-08-31T01:26:00.004-06:00

The road cannot make up her mind,

the clock is tired of tracking time,

the leak is leaping from the pail,

the turtle flying through the air,

the night has stolen the owl's chime,

the moon has rolled away its rind,

the poppies are rocking the rocking chair,

the crickets are courting the spectacled bear,

the aspen have eaten

the magical pear,

leaving a sprig in the pocket where

the fisherman's wife had patched a tear

within the sleeve of the the book of verbs,

the fluttering souls

of dancing girls,

the eyelash of the hummingbird,

the grain which paved

the ocean's pearl.

2011-08-31T01:05:00.002-06:00

-----

Any poetry that's worth reading has an agenda.

- Duncan Gillies MacLaurin

2011-08-31T00:59:00.002-06:00

I am in the place where the daemon is, but I do not think he is with me until I begin to make a new personality, selecting among those images, seeking always to satisfy a hunger grown out of conceit with a daily diet, and yet as I write the words "I select" I am full of uncertainty, not knowing when I am the finger, when the clay.

Yeats, from Per Amica Silentia Lunae