Thursday, July 31, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 31 



Oh, the road!
The open road!



Wednesday, July 30, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 30 



Walking with death -
familiar steps.



Tuesday, July 29, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 29 



Grey hawk
on a grey

sky -
where does

one end,
the other

begin?



Monday, July 28, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 28 



Death
has taken my summer

and keeps taking
my father.



Friday, July 25, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 25 



Each
crow

lifts
the

whole
sky.



Thursday, July 24, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 24 



Morning lifts us -
the joy of crows.



Wednesday, July 23, 2014

WHERE POETRY ARISES 

It seems my sense of loss and longing and loneliness always connects to looking west, to the setting sun, the long shadows coming from that direction. This is a connection made during my childhood on the Iowa farm, and it continues to this day as I look west from the big red house in Fairwater. Always something to do with the far horizon and with the disappearance of the sun.

By contrast, dawn - with its own glow and long shadow, its own horizon - suggests possibility, fullness, some rich refreshment of the spirit. Same sun, same sense of horizon, but in the other direction.

Then, too, it is autumn which invokes in me longing, loss, and loneliness, a whole season of sundown.

And it is out of this loss and longing and loneliness that my poetry arises, I think. As poets we need the solitude, but we also need the hunger for what is lost or what lies just beyond our reach. A rich lyricism may rise from loneliness, engendered by our trying to find beauty wherever it might be seen in our lives.

LINES FOR JULY 23 



Wet sky with crows
slicing the rain.



Tuesday, July 22, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 22 



If we'd run
that race,

death would
chase us.



Monday, July 21, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 21 



Lights on.
Doors open.

No one
at home.

It's a small
small town,

and night's
holding on.



Friday, July 18, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 18 



Long
shine of

morning
on the

water.



Thursday, July 17, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 17 



Even with
the rain,

the light.



Wednesday, July 16, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 16 



Just enough of summer
to know of winter's pain.



Tuesday, July 15, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 15 



Is it better
to be

hunter or
hunted?

It is better
to want

what you have.



Monday, July 14, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 14 



Not exactly
inexact,

not exactly
not. If

not exactly
where I say

it is, it's
inexactly near

where it was
not.



Friday, July 11, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 11 



Finally
I am

no longer
afraid

of fear.



Thursday, July 10, 2014

J.D. WHITNEY, SWEEPING THE BROOM SHORTER 

J.D. Whitney, Sweeping the Broom Shorter. Longhouse (PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, VT 05303), $15 + $2 shipping.

One could, if he wished, remark on the range of materials that Whitney chooses to handle - from the personal to the tribal to the mythic; from the lovely to the unlovely; from the torn and broken to that made whole.

I would rather point to the constant in his work across all his years of writing -- the line, the voice, the ear. What is it that makes these poems? The break of the line, the way the voice pauses before going on, the way the form of the poem is the poem while the content is like coffee in the cup -- strong, black, what we take with us while the cup remains. What Whitney does in his Sd poems (1973, 1988, 1990, 1995) he does in all his poems, the tall, skinny tumble of words down the page -- tumble is not the right word, for the arrangement is at once casual and perfect. Robert Creeley's skinny lines come to mind, yet Creeley is not so exact. Robert Lax comes to mind, and Larry Eigner. William Carlos Williams.

Has Whitney found the American idiom that Williams sought. Yes, I think he has. Not the American idiom, for there is not one single speech for all of us, just as there is no single English language for all its speakers. He has found his American idiom, and we are blessed for it.

We trust Whitney's ear. We trust his eye. His line. If you wish, you can read some of my earlier remarks on Whitney here and here. Suffice it to say: Sweeping the Broom Shorter should be on every poet's bookshelf, and on the bookshelf of anyone else who says he or she loves poetry.


LINES FOR JULY 10 



Some may have called
that hawk a lazy

flapwing but none
have survived

to tell us why.



Wednesday, July 09, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 9 



If the wind
knew where home

was, it would
race me there.

If I knew
where the wind went,

I'd go too.



Tuesday, July 08, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 8 



The wind
wants to play.

The trees
are not so sure.



Monday, July 07, 2014

SLOW READS ON IN THIS PLACE 


Peter Stephens at Slow Reads has just published a long and loving comparison of my work to that of painter Andrew Wyeth. The comparison of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013 to Wyeth's painting astounds me, for some years ago, when I was at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, I turned into a small alcove (photo here) where the only thing hung was Wyeth's "Christina's World." It was if I had been clubbed. I stood transfixed, pulled in, caught. One of my companions said afterwards: "Tom, I saw you go into that painting. I didn't know if you were coming back out." Peter's words humble me. Thank you, Peter.




Friday, July 04, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 4 



Dust
in the fields,

a harvest
of weeds.



Thursday, July 03, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 3  



The natural order of things -
rain on Monday.



Wednesday, July 02, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 2  



Nothing
to speak of

but clouds
hanging down,

and rain,
oh the rain.



Tuesday, July 01, 2014

LINES FOR JULY 1  



Old horses
in the sun -

I'm tired
and I've

barely begun.



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