Month: February 2014

DPF / Ruefle

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From The Best America Poetry, 2013: Editor, David Lehman, Guest Editor, Denise Duhamel (my erratum from Duhamel’s 2/15/14 post: guest editor The Best American Poetry, 2013, of course, since there is no “best of” for 2014 yet, since 2014 has barely begun). Love her A Little White Shadow erasures, too.

from Little Golf Pencil / by Mary Ruefle

                     …I told them that in the beginning you understand the world but not yourself, and when you finally understand yourself you no longer understand the world. They seemed satisfied with that.  

DPF / Lincoln

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For President’s Day, from his book, The Poems of Abraham Lincoln.

from My Childhood Home I See Again / by Abraham Lincoln

My childhood home I see again,
        And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
        There’s pleasure in it too.

DPF / Jeffers

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Thank you to our 21st-Century guide, Lucas Seastrom, for bringing the skull to light and for capturing the imagination of our children with, not only the secret doors and passages, but with the poetry of the carved word, the painted word, the quoted word, the spoken word (by Jeffers himself) and the printed word read aloud, offered back again, as it once was daily, to this plot’s salt air. 

from Tor House / by Robinson Jeffers

My ghost you needn’t look for; it is probably
Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not dancing on wind
With the mad wings and the day moon.

DPF / Duhamel

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Duhamel is the editor of the 2013 Best American Poetry.

from Hippie Barbie / by Denise Duhamel

               She couldn’t
make a peace sign with her stuck-together fingers.
She felt a little like Sandra Dee at a Janis Joplin concert.

DPF / Bervin

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From her erasures of Shakespeare’s sonnets; from her book entitled, Nets.

from 15 / by Jennifer Bervin

                      the stars

                                                      the selfsame sky

                                          for love of you

DPF / Pizarro Harman

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For Leonora Carrington’s painting. And, mothers and daughters.

from Baby Giant / by Michele Pizarro Harman

        For your birth,
                           a river-rush basket
                       lined in fleece,    

            willow walls,
                         and knots of pillows
                            stitched in birds.   

DPF / Schnackenberg

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From her signature poem. And, fathers and daughters.

from Supernatural Love / by Gjertrud Schnackenberg

                        My father puzzles why
It is my habit to identify
Carnations as “Christ’s flowers,” knowing I

Can give no explanation but “Because.”

DPF / Greger

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Brothers and sisters. And, snow.

from Wind Wrapped in Snow / by Debora Greger

    Snowflake, you’re out
with no coat. Listen. Stand still.
    No one is calling
across a world half-buried in snow,
     Come back, you hear me,
Come back this instant, you forgot —

DPF / Merrill

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from The Book of Ephraim / by James Merrill

Yet even the most fragmentary message —
Twice as entertaining, twice as wise
As either of its mediums — enthralled them.

DPF / Blanco

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From one of the snowbirds — as a child, I spent more than a few snowy, Ohio days on the beaches of Florida, building castles to the tune of cheerful (or so it seemed) grandparents, parents, tourists.

from Looking for the Gulf Motel / by Richard Blanco

I want to find The Gulf Motel exactly as it was
and pretend for a moment, nothing lost is lost.