Paul Christensen: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Twit
I used to wander around on lower Broadway in Manhattan when I was still a teenager. I had a dead-end job at a valve company taking orders from plumbers wanting a gate valve or oversized coupling for an apartment building going up.
Paul Christensen: The First Chill Air of Summer’s End
The village bar is still serving lunch on the weekends, which is welcomed by us as a way of entertaining without having to cook the food, lay in some bottles of wine, find a dessert or make our own pastries. We just come in, sit on the terrace, order whatever is the main dish of the day, and slurp some cold rose or white wine while we amiably chat with our invited friends.
Paul Christensen: The Breaking of the Sky
We had been waiting for two long, agonizing months for rain to come, for anything to cast a veil over a furious sun that dried out fields, withered up grape vines, even discouraged the cicadas from droning in the pines. Now the rain started falling, thick, icy gobbets of it, drenching us the moment it struck.
Paul Christensen: What the Heat Demands of Us
We may not make it through this crisis. But no one can say for sure it is too late.
Paul Christensen: What Binds Us. Together
We’ve had two small heat waves since I arrived here in southern France in mid-June. Neither was terrible, neither quite made it to the level of a canicule, a blistering heat bloom usually starting out its career in northern Africa and drifting down onto western Europe where it stagnates over the red-tile roofs…
Paul Christensen: Return to France
And I come, suppressing my eagerness for as long as I can, until I burst with affection at the sound of a cork being pulled by a solemn waiter, who waits politely while I sink my liver into a pool of forgetfulness at the first sip.
Paul Christensen: Jasmine Blossoms
A chilly, damp, paralyzing Spring, with soggy skies and faded landscapes. Reality feels like a pair of washed-out blue jeans. But the ground keeps birthing its progeny of weeds and … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: Earth Household
As the world rages to our east, and the fires flare up in Arizona, we have the first signs of spring – dark green spikes, crumbly surfaces around certain roots, … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: The Hinge of Summer’s Door
The vernal equinox came and went, like a cat creeping over the newly sprouted heads of anonymous weeds. You hardly knew, unless you were listening to NPR, that such an … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: Portrait of the Artist | James Dickey
He liked one phrase especially, “every word is a sunken Atlantis.” It said a lot about the way poetry functioned –every word in lyric was attached to a root mass of meanings, associations, feelings.
Paul Christensen: The Snow It Snoweth Every Day
I’m not complaining too loudly. The Ukrainians are out there on the hills waiting to get into Poland, and the snow is pelting their thin coats and caps and making the kids squirm up against their moms.
Paul Christensen: The Rhymes of Nature
Old snow. It’s like the linens piled up in a corner of a thrift shop, the kind passed down from grandmother to mother and then to a daughter who regarded … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: While Boston Sleeps
The day proceeded to turn over heavily, with the sun appearing to be bolted to a chink of sky between morose gray clouds. Poor Boston, poor humble Providence, all those rivets of history to our genesis as a nation graying in the ancient countryside.
Paul Christensen: In the Icy Womb of Winter
My wife noted this morning that the temperature gauge outside our kitchen widow read minus 9 degrees. The windows in the bedroom were frosted over with a thick rime, so … Continue reading
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