Category: poetry
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Robert Mezey 2.
Perhaps my simmering shingles gave me a shot of extrasensory perception, for yesterday, when we received our issue of next week’s New Yorker, to my wondering eyes did appear a poem by Robert Mezey! A bit light, but you can read it here. I am duly chastened by the vast number of writers I don’t…
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Commonplace 2.
“The Highwayman,” by Alfred Noyes is another poem I copied by hand into a commonplace book. That took a while. But there’s something about handwriting a poem, especially a long poem, that really drives the rhythm of it home, makes it indelible, makes it yours. And oh, this poem, the way it builds, and I…
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Commonplace journals.
Back in the days I was a student, before the internet took hold & you could find almost any poem in the canon you wanted & print it out, I used to keep commonplace books, blank journals in which I wrote by hand the poems I loved and wanted to keep. I was an English…
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Poet’s Bookshelf.
I’ve been dipping into Poet’s Bookshelf (edited by Peter Davis and published by Barnwood Press), and I found this from Henri Cole: The two biggest influences on my work are sleeping and reading. I wish I could do them simultaneously. They make the little hamster of the unconscious run wild on its wheel. Amen to…
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Birthing a poem.
A friend of mine is close to term with her first child, and, right on schedule, that means she’s beginning to worry about the birth. To stoke the fires, here’s a poem from Julianna Baggott’s newest collection of poems, Compulsions of Silkworms & Bees. If you haven’t read her before, get this book, it’s fantastic.…
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Katha Pollitt: poet, essayist, poet again.
One of the first books of poetry I loved by a contemporary poet was Katha Pollitt’s Antarctic Traveller. It was published in 1982. The final line of the cover copy is, “These beautiful poems announce a poet of outstanding gifts.” So you can imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find another book of poems by…
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Poems that remind me of dear ones.
There’s a poem by Jacqueline Berger in her collection, Things That Burn, that so much reminds me of one of my oldest friends: the idea, the way it’s expressed, it’s quintessential Kristin: …Charlotte tells me it’s not obsession she admires, but eccentricity, people who fall in love with the tree outside their window and for…
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New Books!
My W. W. Norton sales rep canceled our meeting this morning due to the plague, but I’ve looked through the catalogs already, and the poetry list is awe-some: Catching Life by the Throat: Poems from 8 Great Masters. How to read a poem & why. by Josephine Hart, includes 80 min audio CD recorded live…
Marie Gauthier 