Category Archives: Poetry

A quick portrait of a marriage from of the verse letters in Clive James Fan Mail (1977). I don’t know what my wife’s at, half the time: Locked up with microfilms of some frail text Once copied from a copy’s … Continue reading →

Sky Gilbert in the poems collected in Digressions of a Naked Party Girl (ECW, 1998) lays out in many a poem exemplary safe sex practices: semen spread over bodies, condom use supplemented by retraction. But nothing captures the ethos of … Continue reading →

Duco, the automotive lacquer, Wikipedia informs us, was used by Jackson Pollock in his paintings. Why you may ask has this piqued my interest. A few lines from a poem by Clive James from his set of seven verse letters … Continue reading →

3 Figures from Anne Michaels Skin Divers taken out of order. Minarets of burdock Thus begins “Wild Horses”. For the longest time, I was captivated by the junction of architecture and botany in this image. And almost equally as long, … Continue reading →

“Bluebottle Jellyfish” […] little deadly pillows that roll in surf until one drifts lashing a surfer’s leg the silk fine cat-o’-nine tail tentacles become laces of indigo pain. Robert Adamson Waving to Hart Crane When I first read this poem, … Continue reading →

Many of the poems end with lilting verses reminding us of mortality and the great stretches of time of which we are not part. Could this theme be traced back to his translations? Emblematic are the final lines of a … Continue reading →

e.e. cummings his queer hands twitter before him, like foolish        butterflies he is the most courteous of men Eugenio de Andrade, “Penniless Lovers” But at every gesture they made, a bird was born from their fingers and, dazzled, vanished into … Continue reading →

The poetic voice in Judith Beveridge’s “The Mosquito, Riffs and Plaints” demonstrates a preference for sounds and noises in all sorts of shapes and sizes before settling in to apostrophize a certain insect and in so doing tell us of … Continue reading →