Category Archives: Poetry

Canta Contro

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Francois Lachance

Domenico Capilongo I thought elvis was italian solo in giappone / alone in japan You come across a poem completely in Italian. You turn the page, like a twirl of the fork. There awaits for you the English version. si … Continue reading →

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Winter Exhalations

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Francois Lachance

Existential blocks carved out of three different poems in The Latest Winter by Maggie Nelson. Yes the dissonance is truth, whether it is killing me or not is not relevant, as I am trying to write without knowing who I … Continue reading →

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Womb Work

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Francois Lachance

Gervase Markham in The Well-Kept Kitchen (excerpts of The English Housewife published by Penguin) on the distillations of waters and their virtues notes Water of radish drunk twice a day, at each time an ounce, or an ounce and a … Continue reading →

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Compression Expression

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Francois Lachance

The glue in the perfect binding of my copy of James Schuyler The Morning of the Poem (1980) has dried up and the cover (with its lovely drawing by Anne Dunn) has become detached. I am waiting for the sections … Continue reading →

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Desperate Economy: Design Survival Desire

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Francois Lachance

William Mills The Meaning of Coyotes “Oklahoma, As You Break to Beauty” not distinguishing the dancer and the dance but widening the circle of perception to perfect the embrace of pointer and pointed. These are the last two stanzas. There … Continue reading →

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Contours of the Errand of the Eye

Posted on January 15, 2011 by Francois Lachance

Susan Howe in the preface to Emily Dickinson: The Gorgeous Nothings asks “Can thought hear itself see?” From a paper inserted in a copy of the Complete Poems at “Whether my bark went down at sea —” To close one’s … Continue reading →

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Cleaning the Unclean

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Francois Lachance

Linda Pastan in the “bargaining” section of The Five Stages of Grief has a short poem with a long title “A Short History of Judaic Thought in the Twentieth Century” which begins with the description of a rabbinical decree: The … Continue reading →

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Indelible

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Francois Lachance

For any one who has ever for a moment been pensive about the fate of Laurel while retrieving a bay leaf from a stew or a sauce. […] So what did she become as she branched into prayer to escape … Continue reading →

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Variations Again Ours

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Francois Lachance

When it first appeared in Double Going the first line of “An Abiding” by Richard Foerster was the beginning of a long apostrophe to the stricken one. The day the x-ray showed your lung ghost-laced When the poem reappears in … Continue reading →

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Two Versions of Fire Work

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Francois Lachance

With his impeccable horticultural acumen Richard Foerster takes the reader on a tour of a plant through both is parts in space and its development in time. I first encountered the poem as the penultimate poem in The Burning of … Continue reading →

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