Category Archives: Poetry

Food in Lear

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Francois Lachance

Most of his limericks that feature food are devoted to the demise of the character due to overeating or feature curious food choices such as spiders. This limerick stands out for me because not only of its edible element but … Continue reading →

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Gate and Way

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Francois Lachance

These lines are from a stanza (room) at the end of the first page of the first poem (not the end of the poem). The omniscient third person speaker keeps the distance between guest and host alive with possibility and … Continue reading →

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Howard “Trapping” Browning

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Francois Lachance

Opening lines of the dramatic monologue by Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess” where the Duke of Ferrara guides a visitor to a portrait That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That … Continue reading →

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Concentration Contemplation

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Francois Lachance

Nelson Ball in the introduction to Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer by bpNicol (Coach House Press, 2004) writes Concrete poetry at its best is a contemplative poetry, allowing the writer and the reader to consider visual, aural and literal … Continue reading →

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Dream Snatcher – Poem Hatcher

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Francois Lachance

From biology through mythology, Kay Ryan ends this poem with an allusion to Coleridge’s Visitor. Don’t answer the door. Make some time, just some wee bit of time, to relish the judiciously placed repetition . . . as if examining … Continue reading →

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Gene Splicing

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Francois Lachance

Stitching a new beast … POETRY BEING AT A DEAD END POETRY IS DEAD. HAVING ACCEPTED THIS FACT WE ARE FREE TO LIVE THE POEM. Imagine the / interlocking uninsistent / tunes of drifting things. THE POEM WILL LIVE AGAIN … Continue reading →

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Dogs in Homer

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Francois Lachance

Priam to Hector in Lisa Jarnot’s translation from Book XXII of The Iliad: And then for me last of all that at my door the hungry dogs will feast upon my flesh, that someone with a heave of gleaming bronze … Continue reading →

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Erratics

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Francois Lachance

“Odd Blocks” — it’s the opening poem to Kay Ryan’s The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. […] glacier-scattered thousand-ton monuments to randomness become fixed points in finding home. […] And why not also in the self, the odd … Continue reading →

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Tools & Letters & Spaces

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Francois Lachance

Nelson Ball has a poem “for and after bpNichol” in The Continuous Present (Coburg: Proper Tales Press, 2012). He notes that “The visual poems were written while I was editing the Coach House Books edition (2004) of bpNichol’s Konfessions Of … Continue reading →

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Bravura

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Francois Lachance

There is a very swish “d” dancing on the title on the cover of The Rose Concordance (BookThug, 2009) by Angela Carr. Here is my own little concordance of lines from The Rose Concordance: [22] cartilage of the reader, the … Continue reading →

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