Michael Simms: Dogsbody to the Muse
Sometimes it’s painful to watch a group of poets trying to work a room as if they were politicians. The AWP conference, as the wag put it, is comprised of 15,000 introverts pretending to be extroverts.
Paul Christensen: Second Sight
My mother was Italian, a passionate, sensuous woman who believed in fortune telling and heeding the voice of intuition, which was very strong inside her. She told me she had been born under a veil, meaning the amniotic sack at birth, and that this was the sign of her prophetic powers.
Paul Christensen: A Memory
I remember standing in a south wind staring at a cut bank of the Brazos River. The ground above was lush and green, with some beef cows nibbling on tufts … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: The American Dream
I never mastered the art of the hustle, and the bar, with its stench of stale beer and cigar smoke, intimidated me. I shined my father’s shoes for a dime, and scrubbed the polish off my hands with cleanser. Life is hard, and I was getting beat up by it.
Paul Christensen: The Waiting Game
I sometimes think of myself as Jody Tiflin, the boy from John Steinbeck’s story who longed to have his mare Nellie deliver a foal, the red pony, only to discover … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: The Vernal Equinox
I found three tiny crocus sprouts in the garden today. They were as innocent as a boy’s first pubic hair, tentative and shy, but determined to flow with time toward … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: January’s Two Faces
Nothing can make the soul shiver more than to look upon those tree-covered slopes with their icy diamonds shimmering on their skin. They are there to remind you that your mortality means nothing to them. They stand for the severity of time, the rules of the universe that have nothing to do with our petty lives.
Paul Christensen: The Dregs of October
I’m staring out of a large window onto a stone wall where an ancient grape vine hangs heavy with bunches of blue grapes. There’s no one to cut down these … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: After the Equinox
It’s fall here in southern France. The tourists have thinned out to a trickle of rubbernecks aiming their smart phones at almost anything green or shaggy with vines. They hardly … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: Wearing my corrective lenses
. Sometimes I find myself wandering out of a book into a rambling daydream, one that has neither a beginning nor an end, just a labyrinth of choices and minor … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: Feast Days
In Provence, we’ve just passed through August 15, one of the summer’s biggest festival days, the Assumption of Mary, the day in which Mary ascends into heaven escorted by a … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: Europe’s Heat Wave
Here’s what you give up in a heat wave here in southern France. You don’t leave the house much, since the paved streets can reach well above one hundred degrees … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: The Cedar Forest
There’s a cedar forest near where I live in the south of France, which sprawls across the slopes of a mountain otherwise covered in what the French call the garrigue. … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: The Caves We Come From
The old Calavon river, which is really a glorified arroyo here in southern France, is drying up. It hasn’t rained in two weeks and the weeds are dusty, the clay … Continue reading
