T.S. Eliot: Rhapsody on a Windy Night
The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle): The Walls Do Not Fall
tendons, muscles shattered, outer husk dismembered,
yet the frame held:
we passed the flame: we wonder
what saved us? what for?
Michael Simms: Blue Notes
I think of Fats Waller whose left hand leaped down the keys, showing the path for every jazz pianist who followed, including the great Art Tatum and the minor Billy Joel.
Robert Gibb: A Paragraph for W. Eugene Smith
“The infinite mistake of Pittsburgh does not take from the fact that the set of photographs is among my finest.”
Lola Ridge: The Dream
But the day is an up-turned cup
and its sun a junk of red iron
guttering in sluggish-green water
Doug Anderson: Purity and Politics
We live in an age of tarnished idols. Picasso was a womanizer, drunk with his own success, having been born into the pivotal moment of modernism and thus achieving more … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: Mary Borden’s The Forbidden Zone, a near-forgotten masterpiece
Recently, PBS aired a documentary marking the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. Almost in passing, a memoir by Mary Borden who founded a hospital and served as … Continue reading
H.D: Evening
The light passes from ridge to ridge, from flower to flower— the hepaticas, wide-spread under the light grow faint— the petals reach inward, the blue tips bend toward the bluer … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: The donnée as entry to the temple
A crucial point in the making of some poems, especially long ones, arrives when the poet must decide whether to push through a kind of caesura in the process. That’s the … Continue reading
Charlotte Mew: May 1915
Let us remember Spring will come again To the scorched, blackened woods, where the wounded trees Wait with their old wise patience for the heavenly rain, Sure of the sky: … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: Prophecy and Poetry
In 1800, it was possible to imagine what might be turning Europe into a new direction, away from the lingering powers of medieval institutions like the monarchy, the Catholic Church, … Continue reading
Sam Hamill: Old Bones
I. All the quiet afternoon splitting wood, thinking about books, I remembered Snyder making a handle for an ax as he remembered Ezra Pound thirty years before, thinking about Lu … Continue reading
Jose Padua: The Complete Failure of Everything
We got there right before the guy who ran the slam started coming around with the sign up sheet, and as he walked by I said to him, “I’ll try … Continue reading
Vox Populi 