Category Archives: Poetry

Turn. Pivot. Twist. On the porch, serenaded by a cricket choir — so charming! Lying in bed, the chirp of a single cricket — so annoying! A shivering dog left out in the rain, dripping wet and cold as a … Continue reading →

There is a sequence of three words captured in one line in a poem (“July”) by George Miller that are evocative all on their own mud growth sanctuary In recollection they seem to irrupt but in context they flow from … Continue reading →

Harryette Mullen. Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary. Usually small detached pieces succeed each other without connection but these three aptly for small poems about fungi are thematically connected like strands of mycelium. Paramedics check vital signs as emergency-room … Continue reading →

Carl Phillips. Reconnaissance A tree is being mapped here under the auspices of the “maple”. skies beneath which the leaves spiraled like what looked like forever, mapling even the steeper shafts in memory, parts the light all but missed, “Enough, … Continue reading →

“To Listen” with Phil Hall from The Little Seamstress  To listen—they lean forward—kids do when you read to them—they list  they know how to listen The dictionary invites us to compare the verb “to list” with the verb “to heel”; … Continue reading →

If one could smell the Rings of Saturn… On Jupiter there are sixty-one colors, one for each moon. Painting      students make moon-studies in their first color lessons. It’s hard to see in the dark, as it is for hours each … Continue reading →

Hearts, anatomical and metaphorical, appear in the poetry of Sarah Manguso, sometimes years apart. There is this bit from “Poem of Comfort” in The Captain Lands in Paradise (Alice James Books, 2002) and what about the birds who die mid-flight? … Continue reading →

“The Secretive Fishermen” It is dusk now, and the secretive fishermen are trolling for boys on the highways north and south of here: a tradition. [….] there must even be times when it is almost perfect, in its way: two … Continue reading →