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Channel: poetry – Prufrock's Dilemma
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Winter Dreams

It sifts from Leaden Sieves - It powders all the Wood - It fills with Alabaster Wool The Wrinkles of the Road - It scatters like the Birds – Condenses like a Flock – Like Juggler’s Figures situates...

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My Susan Howe

During the 1980s I wanted to transplant words onto paper with soil sticking to their roots . . . —Susan Howe I was introduced to the work of Susan Howe through a MOOC. Not just any MOOC, mind you, but...

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Guest Post: Connecting Threads with Poet Elaine Sexton

I dust my mother’s shiny black Singer, her foot on the pedal, the hum she’d retreat to, the needle and bobbin. —Elaine Sexton (excerpt from “Enclosures”) This is a dirge encrypted in things, porcelain...

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Just Walking Around

. . . as you realized once again That the longest way is the most efficient way, The one that looped among islands, and You always seemed to be traveling in a circle. —John Ashbery [Just Walking...

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A Mind of Winter

One must have a mind of winter —Wallace Stevens Snow left by the blizzard has receded here, but the cold continues on. We view the landscape from the warm side of the window, venturing out only as our...

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Time Traveling with Susan Howe

Every mark on a page is an acoustic mark. —Susan Howe [WR] Every word was once a poem. —Ralph Waldo Emerson I used to be attracted by word-a-day calendars. I had a friend who memorized each new word...

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Try, Try Again (or what do poet William Carlos Williams and composer Andrew...

Having written something that pleases one doesn’t give one instructions on how to do it again. —John Ashbery William Carlos Williams’ Portrait of a Lady is a peculiar thing, stuttering along as it...

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Spring and All

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; —Chaucer, from The Canterbury Tales,...

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Turbans in Connecticut (and New York)

The great structure has become a minor house. No turban walks across the lessened floors. —Wallace Stevens (The Plain Sense of Things) Turbans, along with sombreros, appear early on in the poems of...

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I will arise and go now . . .

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade....

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A Dream of History

When invited to give the Norton Lectures at Harvard, John Ashbery related that he “was somewhat in the dark about” why. [OT 1] Naturally, I did have a few theories, however. The first one that came to...

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Invective Against Swan(n)s

And the soul, O ganders, being lonely, flies Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies. —Wallace Stevens, from Invective against Swans After a visit to the Morgan Library earlier this year, I set...

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Fall and All

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. —Wallace Stevens (from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird) Stevens was a master of autumn. (Spring, he didn’t like...

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Fall and All, Continued

Outdoors, the technicolor display of autumn continues. Indoors, I’ve been having energetic discussions about Bach and Schoenberg with online classmates. I find myself worrying, of all things, about...

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Fall and All, The Peak

The apples are all getting tinted In the cool light of autumn —John Ashbery (from The Skaters) Right now, the Hudson Valley is awash in apples and winter squash, and the blaze of color is nearing its...

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Guest Post: The Bakkhai According to Dylan Mattingly

Earlier this year, I attended a preview of Dylan Mattingly’s new choral work, The Bakkhai. I was bowled over by the work and fascinated by the story of its creation. December 10, 7PM, at Bard’s Chapel...

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Gorgeous Somethings

Preserve the backs of old letters to write upon. —The American Frugal Housewife We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much. —Robert Walser (from A Little Ramble) Over the...

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Skating Above The Ice

Today I wrote, “The spring is late this year. In the early mornings there is hoarfrost on the water meadows. And on the highway the frozen ruts are papered over with ice.” The day was gloves. How far...

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Just Skating Around Eliot’s Four Quartets

It is this madness to explain. . . . —John Ashbery, The Skaters (I) The thermometer reads 5 degrees; goldfinches hang from the feeder, juncos peck at seeds on the ground. I wonder at their ability to...

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Shawn Jaeger’s Payne Hollow

Harlan: I wanted to watch, every morning forever, the world shape itself again out of the drifting fog. —from Wendell Berry’s Sonata at Payne Hollow It’s not often that Modern Farmer is the magazine of...

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