From the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University, a slideshow of first editions..... http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/200...how_index.html including Eliot's Prufrock, Levertoff and Plath.
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From the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University, a slideshow of first editions..... http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/200...how_index.html including Eliot's Prufrock, Levertoff and Plath.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/bo...er=rssuserland -- Super-bibliophile Danowski gives his collection to Emory University.
"Mantilla"
My resurrective verses shed people
and reinforced each summer.
I saw their time as my own time,
I said, this day will penetrate
those other days, using a thorn
to remove a thorn in the harness
of my mind where anyone's touch
stemmed my dreams.
{excerpt}
To the Author of Glare
...but I wander from the main point: the main point is one
among many dots so fine you need a microscope to see them
but then they multiply like germs: the work of the deepest cells
is ergonomically incorrect, but effective nevertheless, like
my footprints in the snow leading to you, who would be my father
if this were a dream and I on the verge of waking up somewhere
other than home: but the hours remain ours, though they
were gone almost as soon as they arrived, hat and coat in hand.
--David Lehman {"Glare" is a poetry collection by A.R.Ammons} {excerpt}
Isla Mujeres
The shoal we saw from the boat was fish;
it parted as I dove through, and formed
again overhead, each fish
like a dancing molecule in a rock.
On the flight to Merida we came down
through clouds that looked like brains
or scrambled eggs, but they were only
wisps and down we came. I'd swim
back up a chimney of fish and break,
already squinting, back into bright air.
If love is curiosity, I loved those fish. ...
{excerpt}
THE UNQUIET CITY
we are succulents
our cool jade arms open
over clean tables our fine bone
china minds pull the strings
of our tongues together we plait
our thoughts with the television
back through the aerials and
transmission towers prodding
through the literal fog
the mechanics of which distance
does not startle us or the ears
pretend to hear the telephone
the page also wearies
us we have taken the meaning
out of things by laying them face to
face in our dictionary of emotions
we are so entirely alone that we
are unaware of it
and we enjoy the religion of solitude
because religions are at base
meaningless and we can turn
from them to a new hobby
to clean ashtrays or emptier
whiskey glasses we the women
of our building Margaret Gladys
Cecily Ida Eileen and I have
the cleanest washing on our block
we are proud and air our sheets
although it's a long time since
any serious stain or passionate figment
seeped through that censorious cloth...
{excerpt}
A Sudden Rain in the Green Mountains
for Jessica Bennett
Plush hills, the raw materials, fall away.
The soaking clay
In which the serried oaks, the picturesque
And swaybacked pines, elected to evolve,
The famous marble in its bare reserve,
Vanish like guesses in these verticals
Whose heft at dusk
Blurs rooks to ridges, veils the bicycles
And splashes where they lean hard into curves.
Looming like crowds, such weather makes its world;
Its crash and draft and spate and uniform
Consonant force confirm
Or mean-not that without you there are no
Attainments I can care for or call good-
But that among them, missing you, I know
How much delight, green need ... {excerpt...poem by Stephen Burt} -------
http://bostonreview.net/BR24.1/burt.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/bo...enbach-t.html# ---Review entitled "The Wasted Land" by James Longenbach....of Jorie Graham's new book called "Sea Change" (Poems) subtitle...review dated 4/6/08
The title of this review is "Poet's Choice" by Mary Karr (4/13/08)...there will be no comment by this writer...it seems Nicanor is into "anti-poetry". http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041003233.html
Heather McHugh (b. 1948) from the poem "What He Thought" This poem is more powerful in its entirety by an exponent. Here is an excerpt. "...We last Americans__were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then our host chose something in a family restaurant, and there__we sat and chated, sat and chewed, __till, sensible it was our last__big chance to be poetic, make__our mark, one of us asked__'What's poetry?___Is it the fruits and vegetables and__marketplace of Campo dei Fiori, or__the statue there?' Because I was__the glib one. I identified the answer__instantly, I didn't have to think--'The truth is both, it's both,' I blurted out. But that__was easy. That was easiest to say. What followed taught me something about difficulty,__for our underestimated host spoke out,__all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said: The statue represents Giordano Bruno, brought to be burned in the public square__because of his offense against__authority, which is to say__the Church. His crime was his belief__the universe does not revolve around__the human being: God is no__fixed point or central government, but rather is__poured in waves through all things. All things__move. 'If God is not the soul itself, he is__the soul of the soul of the world.' Such was__his heresy. The day they brought him__forth to die, they feared he might__incite the crowd (the man was famous__for his eloquence). And so his captors__placed upon his face__an iron mask, in which__he could not speak. That's__how they burned him. That is how he died: without a word, in front__of everyone. And poetry...(we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen to__the man in gray; he went on__softly)-- poetry is what....he thought, but did not say." 1994 q1
Reviewing Three Portraits
by Madeline DeFrees
Two clocks out of synch watch faces of night
drift by. One face, a lacquered saint, dredged up
from a trunk, wrapped in virgin wool, black
robes of justice trapped in the vault of a bank.
An 18-karat guarantee of stainless steel and
peerless
dentistry, though you'd have to pry the mouth
open
to discover that. A high-priced portrait
photographer
in Chicago crossed her nervous hands on a Rule
Book
and said, "Don't smile!"
Steel girders support the lifted face, the smoky hair
and smoky voice exhaling clouded lines. A
four-wheel
drive studio, props in every back street
and a live camera that really moved. Peeling paint,
thin pulse in the temple, faint warnings of early
snow: shadows, assurance, perspective. Nothing
has been left out of this head shot because it was
not
pretty. He said, "Let your hair blow anywhere it
wants
and go right on shouting your poems."
------------
http://www.pshares.org/issues/articl...marticleID=186
{excerpt} --
Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine
Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.
Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly. {excerpt}
In the Land of the Inheritance
"In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes."
Judges 19-21
A foreigner and his *** and concubine
were huddling in the square as night came on;
around them, veil on veil of dust that hoof
and staff and sandal could only disturb enough
to show how calmly it was sifting down
into a darkening sabbath of its own.
Surely here, he thought, among the Benjamites
someone would ask him in to spend the night,
and he, a holy man, the lord's anointed,
chosen among the chosen. But while he waited,
merchants and tradesmen, young and old alike,
all hurried by without a word or look
to their own dwellings as if he wasn't there,
and only the ache from having come so far,
his sharpening hunger and the night's chill
told him he was not invisible.
His concubine kept silent, her veiled head bowed,
since it was her fault they were stranded now:
Hadn't she tried to run away from him
back to her father's house in Bethlehem,
and when he came to get her, her father said,
My son, my son, and gave him wine and bread,
and blessed him, and then told the girl, Go home.
So now he glowered at her. See what you've done,
impious woman, see what your unclean ways
have brought us to, he was about to say
when an old man who pitied their distress
said, "Peace be to you, friend, come to my house,
I'll give you food for hunger, wine for thirst,
come to my house, I'll care for all your wants."
Now as they ate and drank, as their hearts grew merry,
the townsmen gathered together in a fury
outside the old man's house and beat his door,
and yelled, "Old man, give us the sojourner
that we may know him, give him to us now."
The old man pleaded, "Leave the man alone, ...
{excerpt} -- http://bostonreview.net/BR19.6/inheritance.html
it seems that you have a great command of expressing the true self of current human being wherever he/she is. It is a mixture of individual and collective feelings and visions that dominate the world as nature leaves it impacts on us - human beings - with our true and factual experiences and actions on daily basis. the language is rhetoric and influential without ambiguity or any sort of distortion. Here, we see a figurative poetic language that truly depicts poetic moments. It could also be a crucible of romantic features and realistic ones where the poet finds every thing beautiful and meaningful.
Best
Dr Abdullah Kurraz
a very influential portrait where every thing is poetic mingled with the geo-poetics which is rife in the lines and their meaningful shadows and significant indications or denotations. also, the poem here is composed in a dialogic / conversational manner, with its poetic construction and content. Language is clear and themes are attainable.
Thanks
Best
Dr Abdullah kurraz