Doug Anderson: Because Poetry
Has become of such little use to you Has no meaning outside its tribe Has been supplanted by music lyrics for most of the population who might otherwise be reading … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: It Ain’t Over
Some things are over before they’re over. A bad marriage. A bad war. It got so a squad would go out, call in checkpoints as if on the move, sit … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: The Charm
During the reception, while the bride and groom were smiling till their faces ached, wishing it were over, and the parents were alternately weeping and jockeying for position in the … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: He Came That Way
each day with the sheep, where the clear water from the spring enters the darker water of the river, that very place where it whirls and whorls and makes a … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Another Birthday and the Heart Sutra
Now well past the age T’Ang poets sent old men to the mountains to wander and live close to the bone. How a sudden gust could sound a chord through … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Mary Anne
Her hands are as strong as mine. She says, these folks don’t have any common sense. And I don’t mean how to count eggs. I mean, look out there. I … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Without Diplomas
They failed angelic studies and thus wandered the back streets of heaven. You can find them hanging out in Rumi’s Tavern: not sad, they bear the stain of human life … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Live Myth
I would believe in the unicorn if it stood heaving and slathered, snapping flies off its flank with its tail. It does not smell of sweat and stable, does not … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Operation Badger Tooth
Once a year, on December 25, a darkness comes up from the earth into my life. On December 24th, nineteen sixty-seven, a battalion landing team comprised of three infantry companies … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Morning Poem
In the detail from Botticelli’s painting, the one of the oranges in their deep green trees at twilight, I’m able to feel it again. As a child, I didn’t … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Youth And All That
After Keats My mind was everywhere but seeing. The tree was just another me, the water my fluid state. And others, well, they might as well have been wearing my … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Tucson, 1968
We were still, I think, beautiful, even after that jug of cheap Chianti that stained her teeth and t-shirt, our breath combined enough to kill an orchid. I watched her … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: On Sex, Politics and Poetry
My friend Jane Legrand has written “I must find something to do with all that I feel.” What a perfect expression of why we write act direct draw sing photograph. … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: On Politics, Poetry and Love
Truth pronounced begins to petrify. Except in the case words so woven they keep an inner fire alive that flares at the reader’s breath. Poetry is yeast inside language. Imagination … Continue reading
