My mother’s teeth were kept in a bottlemarked with the sign of the cross. I usedto shake it till they’d rattle,interest and childish horror fused.They weren’t her teeth. They were mine.My brothers’ and my sisters’, too.The one’s we’d shed, as sharks do,pearls we’d surrendered to . . . . Continue Reading »
My father holds a panel of glassbetween us: we are both bathed blue.Wordlessly, we let the light passthrough. Where blade scores, glass breaks true. Cut pieces are placed side by side.Burnished, their edges touch through foiland lead. Coils of thin smoke dividethe air above us. From such has come . . . . Continue Reading »
Not with the myth and phosphorus of metaphor. Notwith lines of force looped in true-love knots.Not by dumping the urn and reading the ashes. Notthrough sonic wantonness, but not through disciplined listening, either. Notwith numbers always setting words at naughtnor letter-cluttered words whose O is . . . . Continue Reading »
Martin Heidegger is notorious for his embrace of Nazism in the 1930s. Yet he was a luminous commentator on the religious substance of modern poetry. Perhaps because of his own misbegotten metaphysical aspirations, Heidegger could feel and understand the anguish of those who sought but could not . . . . Continue Reading »
Those early weeks, you could have been anyone, Too young for fingerprints, much less a name,And years away from our first catch-and-toss— A little flesh and blood, no brain, no bone, No one to blame.You did not count, you were not even close. We do . . . . Continue Reading »
joins in to discuss his new book, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment. Continue Reading »
No one will say it, but we knowtoday’s fresh-flamed hibiscus flowerreveals in one brief, glorious showour birth, our life, our final hour. Sacrament and synecdochelive in a pot near the atrium door,mirroring holy brevitywhich, in a day, is evermore. —Jane Greer Image by R. D. Smith, . . . . Continue Reading »
One way of telling the story of Western philosophy over the last few centuries is to present it as the rise and fall of a particular view of language. Gradually, piecemeal, the idea of language as primarily a matter of accurate naming and information-sharing has yielded to a recognition of language . . . . Continue Reading »
Thanks for playing. Here’s your consolation prize:a mountain capped with fog, the sun behind throwing light circumspectly on a lake, the waya painter lights a lovely face from out of frame. I’m sorry that you didn’t win, but here’syour daughter’s voice at eight floating on breath as softly . . . . Continue Reading »
Someone somewhere long ago with a pair of hands, a bit of earthand a thirsty soul, crafteda beautiful bowl. Just as someonenot so long ago made a buffaloof chrome, a staircase madeof stone, a cracked egg of dinosaurand a pendant made of bone. Just as someone long ago with a . . . . Continue Reading »
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