You trip over a word while carryinga tray of vocabulary out to the poolonly to discover that broken glassis a good topic.
You know the parlor trick.wrap your arms around your own bodyand from the back it looks likesomeone is embracing youher hands grasping your shirther fingernails teasing your neckfrom the front it is a...
This is the middle. Things have had time to get complicated, messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore... This is the thick of things.So much is crowded into the middle—...too much to name, too much to...
ThemeIt's a sunny weekday in early May and after a ham sandwichand a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace,I am consumed by the wish to add somethingto one of the ancient themes–youth dancing with...
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.
It is time to float on the waters of the night. Time to wrap my arms around this book and press it to my chest, life preserver in a sea of unremarkable men and women, anonymous faces on the street, a...
I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.
… I am the sound of rain on the roof.I also happen to be the shooting star,the evening paper blowing down an alley,and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.I am also the moon in the treesand t...
Are we just avoiding our one true destiny when we do that, averting our glance from Philip Larkin who waits for us in an undertaker’s coat?
The fly lands on the swatter.The movie runs backwardsand catches fire in the projector.This species apes us wellby talking only about itself
The History TeacherTrying to protect his students' innocencehe told them the Ice Age was really justthe Chilly Age, a period of a million yearswhen everyone had to wear sweaters.And the Stone Age beca...
It seems only yesterday I used to believeThere was nothing under my skin but light.If you cut me I would shine.
Is there a better method of departure by night than this quiet bon voyage with an open book, the sole companion who has come to see you off, to wave you into the dark waters beyond language?
But did you know that at your age Judy Garland was pulling down $ 150,000 a picture, Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory, and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room? No wait, I mean he h...
I know my voice has a limited range of motion; I don't write dramatic monologues and pretend to be other people. But so far, my voice is broad enough to accommodate most of what I want to put into my...
The life of Edward Estlin Cummings began with a childhood in Cambridge, Mass., that he described as happy, but he struggled in both his artistic and romantic exploits against the piousness of his fath...
Poetry can do a lot of things to people. I mean it can improve your imagination. It can take you to new places. It can give you this incredible form of verbal pleasure.
Humor, for me, is really a gate of departure. It's a way of enticing a reader into a poem so that less funny things can take place later. It really is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.
There's something very authentic about humor, when you think about it. Anybody can pretend to be serious. But you can't pretend to be funny.
This love for everyday things, part natural from the wide eye of infancy, part a literary calculation,