A Wild Thing And A Tended One We can talk about these corduroy pillows and how I want to shoot marbles with the ball joint of your right shoulder. Last time I tried to tell you about the guy who came in the Deli, duct tape holding his shoes together, carrying this tarnished bird cage, a finch inside and how his loose laces left a winged trail across my just mopped floor as he went to sit next to regulars, who shifted their metal chairs, and how the ice machine dumped cubes into the … Continue reading A Wild Thing And A Tended One by Maari Carter→
The premier poetry event of this year’s Festival of the Book in Charlottesville was “Shrines to Longing,” the March 20 reading by Charles Wright, America’s current (20th) poet laureate, and Mary Szybist, who was a student in the University of Virginia’s MFA program when Wright was on its faculty. Both poets attended the Iowa Writers Workshop. Both have a distinctly Judeo-Christian flavor to their work. The 79-year-old Wright read from his 24th book of poems, Caribou, Szybist from her prize-winning second volume, Incarnadine. Although the full house at UVA’s Culbreth Theater was clearly entranced by … Continue reading Of Darkness and Angels →
December is always a good time to add to my already long list of books to read. There are awards nominations, various reviewers’ choices for best books of the year, random recommendations for books people are giving or would like to receive as presents. One of the books that appeared frequently as I scanned these sources was Citizen by Claudia Rankine. I was already asking for Marilynne Robinison’s Lila and Richard Ford’s Let Me Be Frank With You for Christmas, so I bought Citizen for myself. I’m glad I did—sort of. Citizen was among … Continue reading Interactions→
Conveyance Between the bones of the plat and the sale of our land, so much needs to be done to make the title clean. The deed marked what everyone knew then—the creek to the quarters to the graveyard; they agreed with a handshake and the natural boundaries quilled in red. No one recalls, so imagine those lives in metes and bounds. On the bank they pulled fresh water, broke ice in winter, carried evening hymns over the field to the arms of the great oak. And now we see encroachments, bramble, the soft roads … Continue reading Conveyance by Julia Kudravetz→
Then I Returned to the House of the Slow Letting Go I went out into the evening, walked alone with my clippers to dead-head the marigolds the peonies, no longer spinning planets, and the now brown-leafed rhododendrons. I picked up my watering can to slake a thirsty fern, pulled yellow aromatic leaves off the pink geraniums, surprised a brown thrasher in the grass, bent to weed a circle of flowers. The house stood filled with the presence Of the dying man. It was his garden he’d brought back from wildness, tended with the dry … Continue reading Then I Returned to the House of the Slow Letting Go by Irene Wellman→
Stevie Nicks Under the strobes guitar hands, neon blonde. She sings like a forty-year-old child, wears a witch’s cape. Tosses back her jukebox tenor to the audience. We stone up, all the freaks in the back row, breathless. Where was I going before I heard her music? Back when the world was hunger, and we only took. Ann Robinson’s work has appeared in American Literary Review, Connecticut Review, Fourteen Hills, Hiram, Poet Lore, Spoon River Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Whiskey Island Review among others. Her poetry book Stone Window, by Bark for Me Publications, came out … Continue reading Stevie Nicks by Ann Robinson→
Back from Wales To headline news of health care, guns, and Syria, the coastal path slipped away, sea breeze ceased, only traffic noise, but I remember— Ahead of me behind me dominion over roads runs the hard brown path that scores cliffs, heather, gorse, and thrift, that joins villages and masters fog. Walkers I pass have small drugged smiles, sheep mill and dine in ordinary splendor. How perfect the Kestrel kiting, brown triangle pinned to sky, backlit feathers steady, spread, balanced with wind, only the head shifts in his search of prey, then unpinned … Continue reading Back from Wales by Marti Snell→
First impressions can be unexpected. Driving into Athens and looking at its poorer parts, my wife and I first thought of Mexico. When I went to see the Parthenon, it was soon clear I could never escape a crowd of tourists snapping pictures… I knew its significance, but felt alienated from its actual, physical presence. At a loss, I wandered into the ancient Theatre of Dionysus where the great plays were first performed in a rare moment when entertainment and a profound impulse to understand man and fate coincided. I found the … Continue reading Finding Greece by Lance Lee→
Dickey Ride Three hours north of Augusta, the music pumped through our car speakers asks on repeat Don’t you want a dickey ride? Don’t you want a dickey ride? I must admit I think I do, only what I want is akin more to that James Dickey, canoe down a river, drunk fun voyage, something action, some adventure, but not even that. It’s the ride I’m in now, four friends in a Ford carousing around Rabun, North Georgia chanting mid-90s rap to mica-lined rocks, them shining back like broken disco balls, sort of a … Continue reading Dickey Ride by David Moody→
Amending Gray When does the snow begin to fall? I try to witness the change as the theme of this season grays. Bolts of felt clouds roll across the heavens, a basket of straight pins spills into the night, and I’ve been sewing a lot of gray, not to be somber, but to sway light as mist, soft as the winter coat of a wolf. Snug in my velvet jacket, fleece slippers, cotton sweats, their subtle weaves showing— not that I want anyone to notice me, to see what I wear sitting alone at … Continue reading Amending Gray by Anne Bromley→
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