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DO YOU REMEMBER
Do you remember when you read the Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe? The whole cycle of love was explained: something I would rather not know. You were disgusted when I came too close, yet longed for me...
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WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ABOUT THINGS
Everything is a thing; the poet discovers the idea the first time he writes a good poem, the lover, when she glimpses the truth: all love is the same. It hurts to let go of your personhood and your...
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SHE WILL KNOW POETRY
She will know poetry Immediately who never got it in school. Fortunately for poetry, there is no rule taught in any school, no dictum, ought, or should which makes poetry any good. She cannot learn it...
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WHEN YOU SPEAK, WHO LISTENS TO YOU?
Dad felt depressed after the wedding, despite his successful children dancing and hugging. He and mom, dragging their ninety years, slowly moved into the next room; the loud music afflicted their...
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NOT ME
Love is pleasure. But hate becomes love’s fate— since paradox is everywhere. You know it’s true. Even now paradox is destroying you. But not me! Can that be? Have I reasoned paradox away in my poetry?...
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WITH WHAT PURE VANITY DO NATURAL THINGS EXIST
With what pure vanity do natural things exist,Their feathers, their fur, their mandibles,Their necks, their wings with strange patterns,A leaf serving its tree, and by accident, our eye.For them an...
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NON-POETS
Non-poets are impressed when poetry hides in the news—but a symbol doesn’t need to be true. Poetry hides and lies. Plato knew. An army of images surrounds a poet feeling sorry for himself. A poem dies...
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DESIRING LAUGHTER, AND WEAK
Desiring laughter, and weak,I made them laugh,the citizens of my poems.I was weak and became a poet,and came to it so I could laugh,because the weak need to laugh. In the old days of rhetoricwhen...
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TOM BRADY: THE STATS, THE SCANDAL AND THE SCIENCE
The science of sports is like the science of anything else. It includes two basic things. The first is scientific measurement—the hard data. Data which indicates, transparently, the reality of what...
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THE WORLD
The world has gone to sleep. And I? I have been asleep. A long and gloomy sky has been my friend. Dreaming and poetry without end. You should try a life like this. A worm, too, can kiss. You—so often...
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ALL THAT WAS COOL
All that was cool is now not cool because the cool got old. The stance once seemed so bold. That long-haired guy seemed so cool and scary, emitting screams in cloudy music— but this tattoo is now fat...
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WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS
What to make of this poet who always makes the best of things, who sees sorrow, but sings? Who would shed all his sentiment for you to simply be true? Who makes a science of gladness in rare mixtures...
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MODERN MODERNISM
The well-known germophobe, T.S. Eliot, was Pound’s answer to the excess of the previous day. Science failed. Wagnerian primitives, outlandishly dressed, now had their say. Eliot’s hesitancy made sense...
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A PUZZLE, USUALLY
Sometimes I think I’m an idiotAnd I shouldn’t be writing.But the muse allows many types to practice.Many kinds of people should be looked into.My kind of poetry is the type where glass replaces...
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FOOTBALL
Once a game of mud and blood, now Tom Baby, with ten minutes to throw, hits wide open receivers, smashing the records of the old greats. These observations, my loves and hates, are the meaningless...
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POETS ARE RICH
The poet is rich but lives in a poor neighborhood. The neighborhood expands and the poet’s wealth grows the better he gets. One day, on the bus he realizes no one speaks his language, though everyone...
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INDIVIDUALISM
The individualism in this cemetery is amazing glimpsed from my hurrying bus— which I hope doesn’t get me to work too fast. I’ll be bored. Slow down, bus; the Swampscott tombs have caught my interest...
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TO REMEMBER
To remember, we must picture it as small. If the memory is too vast— memory will not remember it at all. The memory is distant already— like the house from the plane when the goodbyes were unpleasant,...
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IN THE TWENTIES AND THIRTIES LADIES WON PULITZERS
Religion protects us from the law. The law protects us from religion— and both sometimes sing in poetry: “I slept with her husband— but she cannot murder me.” The Founding Fathers were puritans— so...
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THAT’S WHAT YOU LIKE TO DO
Yes there are marvelous words which the world is satisfied to call poetry but which is not, it is so detached from the thing, and yet words can’t get enough of themselves since their owners are now...
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