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Birthday
for John
.....It is the porous border of summer,
mirage of trees, clouds
floating like years over the mountains.
He has traveled far in his heart
to come to this full quiet
to witness weather stepping
across the lake toward him
like an ordinary saint bringing the news:
another whole day, loved. {second stanza}
http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/29/zimmerman.html
Editor's Note
Dear Friends of The Cortland Review,
We were already several weeks behind our publication schedule when many of you wrote to express your concern. You gave us at The Cortland Review a sense of community that motivated our volunteers to push forward, and just as we were putting the finishing touches on the issue, two planes flew into the nearby World Trade Center and stopped the world. Suddenly our issue, weeks overdue, was utterly insignificant.
Like all of you, we were caught up in confusion and uncertainty. Then many of you wrote to us again, this time inquiring about and praying for our safety. Our feeling of community grew stronger, and you helped us bring structure back to our lives. The Cortland Review is a labor of love, and we thank you for your overwhelming support, for showing us that we are a meaningful part of your lives.
Now it is time for us to show that you are a meaningful part of ours. Our hearts and prayers are with the families and friends of those who are still missing or have been lost in this terrible tragedy, and the rest of you who, like us, are still stunned by it. In a nation strengthened by unity and getting back to business, we hope you find comfort and healing in the poetry among our pages.
Thank you.
God Bless America.
Guy Shahar
Editor-in-Chief
Tenderness and Rot
by Kay Ryan
Tenderness and rot
share a border.
And rot is an
aggressive neighbor
whose iridescence
keeps creeping over.
No lessons
can be drawn
from this however. ... {excerpt} -- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=30582
Living in Curved Space
Susan Terris
She inhales stars until she is light-filled
and can bat-wing above the dark earth. ...
...Another out-of-body sequence and
her flanks fur, throat chuffs, tail grows
Below the high dam, the real Abu-Simbil lies.
Below the sea, the lighthouse of Pharos.
There are worlds, too--under lava, under ice--
where no tree falls and no sound is heard.
What is hidden will not again be visible. She
seeks refuge in these places: angles of repose
where salmon turn to seagulls and a hand
may, to infinity, hold a pen and draw itself.
{excerpt}
Caps
.....The storybook boy attempts the simple gesture
of baring his head for his emperor,
but another hat has appeared.
This happens over and over.
Who does not share his despair of simplicity,
of acting clearly and with dignity?
And what pleasure can we find in the caps,
brightly feathered and infinitely various,
that pile up so high they bury us?
-- Kay Ryan {excerpt}
Rae Armantrout
Results
1
Click here to vote
on who's ripe
for a makeover
or takeover
in this series pilot
Votes are registered
at the server
and sent back
as results.
2
Click here to transform
oxidation
into digestion.
From this point on,
it's a lattice
of ends
disguised as means:
the strangler fig,
the anteater.
3
I've developed the ability
to revise
what I'm waiting for
so that letter
becomes dinner
gradually
while the contrapuntal
nodding
of the Chinese elm leaves
redistributes
ennui
{parts 1 to 3 of this poem: from Jubilat}
I threw my arms about those shoulders...
Darling, you think it's love, it's just a midnight journey.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force,
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh, stop it, Bernie,"
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures,
alias cigars, smokeless like a driven nail!
Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches,
and the phones are whining, dwarfed by to-no-avail.
Bark, then, with joy at Clancy, Fitzgibbon, Miller.
Dogs and block letters care how misfortune spells. ...{excerpt} title=first line
Galatea Encore
As though the mercury's under its tongue, it won't
talk. As though with the mercury in its sphincter,
immobile, by a leaf-coated pond
a statue stands white like a blight of winter.
After such snow, there is nothing indeed: the ins
and outs of centuries, pestered heather.
That's what coming full circle means -
when your countenance starts to resemble weather,
when Pygmalion's vanished. ... {excerpt}
TINY WARRIOR
.....You never saw me
Your eyes were closed so tight
They say you put up quite a fight
Somehow your life was over before it had begun and
Gently did I touch and kiss your tiny-fingered hand
Born too soon
You never saw the silver moon
Or the light of a summer's day
Last night I dreamt a gathering of eagles
Had come
To spirit you away
Born too soon
Your tender heart
Could not beat
To the pulsing rhythm
Of life's taut drum
Nikolai 1982-1983 {excerpt}
A SUMMER OF HUMMINGBIRDS
Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of
Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
and Martin Johnson Heade.
By Christopher Benfey. (author of review)
Illustrated. 287 pp. The Penguin Press. $25.95.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/review/
Miller-t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bua2&oref=slogin---
-------------------------------------------------------
On Gossamer Wings
By LAURA MILLER
Published: May 4, 2008
WILD NIGHTS!
Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson,
Twain, James, and Hemingway.
By Joyce Carol Oates.
238 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. $24.95. ------
first chapter...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/bo...tml?ref=review
s/first-chapter-wild-nights.html?ref=review
---------The Dying of the Light (review title)
The John F. Kennedy Library
Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Mary, on safari in
1953.
By BRENDA WINEAPPLE
Published: April 20, 2008
ONE YEAR
When I got to his marker, I sat on it,
like sitting on the edge of someone's bed
and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite.
I took some tears from my jaw and neck
and started to wash a corner of his stone.
Then a black and amber ant
ran out onto the granite, and off it,
and another ant hauled a dead
ant onto the stone, leaving it, and not coming back.
Ants ran down into the grooves of his name
and dates, down into the oval track of the
first name's O, middle name's O,
the short O of his last name,
and down into the hyphen between
his birth and death--little trough of his life. ... {excerpt}
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/ar...s&oref=slogin# -- Jason Shinder, 52, Poet and the founder of the Y.M.C.A.'s National Writer's Voice program.
Inevitably the science community and global warming have created some poetry (what else is there to do while you wait for the fireball). In a science blog of the nytimes, you can look at a digital photo of the interior of a rock and come up with your own poem. This one by Andrew C. Revkin is posted on "dotearth" -- "Perhaps we tamed fire. Perhaps fire tamed us. Certainly we are still seduced by that glowing dance of a thousand roseate veils, whether in the shimmering heat of the hearth or the growl of the V-8.
While water soothes and nourishes, fire empowers. The astonishing magic of controlled combustion, facilitated by Earth’s just-right atmosphere and ample stores of fuels, has allowed humans to transform from scattered gatherers into a gathering global force.
Fire transports us, and in return we transport fire. Together, for better and worse, we have made the world our own." http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/20...ery-and-earth/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/bo...l?8bu&emc=bua2 New review/essay on Charles Simic from the NYTimes...dated today.