Any response to the question, “What’s the matter with American poetry right now?” addresses, at least implicitly, the fate of language itself in society at the present time and the role of poets in cultivating and defending language. As guardians of the vigor of language, poets readily — and even stereotypically — express a weighty […]
Inventory
Inventory The hares didn’t move last night but there are signs of a female fisher there and there quartering. What has to eat has to eat. The browse line isn’t visible for the snow. White cedar, then hemlock— the deers’ choice. They have gone to a deer yard some miles off. A fisher can take […]
The End of Writing/Things I forgot I Wrote
The End of Writing/Things I forgot I Wrote I dream again about my father He is eating grass and slurping muddy water He asks me to chain him to a tree outside of the bank and to sell passersby the opportunity to have their pictures taken with him The light […]
Selections from The Garden
The faint sting of dish soap will linger on the lip of the cup, regardless. Similarly, my friend the diviner had reems of paperwork still to “do.” We sat, eating potato chips, surrounded by children who had come to see the bones and the stones. These bone-seeking children moved in groups, sorted […]
Composition December ’64
Balraj Manra was a pioneer of avant-garde modernist writing who changed the course of Urdu literature with a handful of innovative, hybrid texts that were published in small, independent literary journals in the sixties and early seventies. It is hard to classify Manra with any more specificity. The best we can do is pay attention […]
