MARK IRWIN’s fifth collection of poetry, Bright Hunger, appeared from BOA in 2004. He teaches at the University of Southern California and divides his time between there and his home in Colorado.
Poetry
Winter 2011
Elegy
I carry a ball and glove. I study the stars. I arrive and depart. "Love many, lose some till none remain," the sailor sang. Ho hum. Near dusk the shadows […]
Poetry
Spring 2009
Red Feather
This red feather floating down from the green canopy of a tree, the one we watch all of our lives, then remember as so many other breathing things. Caught in […]
Poetry
Spring 2009
In Winter
In winter, I like to walk out of the house in evening when the bronze light’s cast rose and people seem made all of a liquid and I can walk […]
Poetry
Autumn 2005
Elegy (With Advertisement) Struggling to Find Its Hero
It was a century in which we touched ourselves in mirrors over and over. It was a decade of fast yet permanent memories. The kaleidoscope of pain some inflicted on […]
Poetry
Spring 1997
Elk
That it was. —Fleshwarm, earthen, a marvelous breathing thing. And the glance, a lastingness from the cornea, milky, asking sky. And if you had seen the great beast fall—unsure, to […]
Poetry
Spring 1997
Horse
On a metal table, a horse's heart and lungs. I stare the slow miles down. July, the Rio Grande's green tongue. Desert nights, crystal animals,—a silver throw of stars. Constellations […]
Orpheus. Descending.
Winter 1996
Orpheus
Before the end, before the lovers spoke only in numbers, before the photographs replaced memory, before vanity became a form of passion and chic men and women stood idly before […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1988
Toward a Tragic Wisdom and Beyond
Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai edited and translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. 163 pages. $18.95, $12.95, paper. The Springhouse by Norman Dubie. […]
A Poem
Summer 1985
Against the Meanwhile
To David St. John Point Nine I Memory—hardly through the dusk do the letters of that word break. A boy calls his brother. What the other boy walking home thinks […]
A Gathering of Poems
Spring 1984
from ‘The Wisdom of the Body’
I April. The day is all middle. The center diminished to everywhere— The listening soil in light of all else. I carry the trout to the garden, lay them on […]