Poetry
Winter 2009
Undertow, Memory, Regret, and Silence
I didn’t see you, but I felt your presenceand leaned against you. Then the colors changed.A curtain flapped once in the sudden wind.Sky darkened, something flashed. I was a cloud,backlit; […]
Poetry
Winter 2004
Folded Back
I. In Plath’s late poem “Edge,” the perfected woman’s two dead children have been folded back into her body. However one envisions this, the image is disturbing: finality of dead […]
Poetry
Spring 2000
Déjà Vu
A flap in time, a hinge in space, a secret drawer, a panel, an unexpectedly discovered island in the river, an instant confidence that is immediately forgotten until, unless some […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1998
Four Voices Thinking out Loud
Through One Tear by Edward Nobles. New York: Persea, 1997. 96 pages. $22.00. Falling Water by John Koethe. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. 80 pages. $22.00. Music Minus One by Jane […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Spring 1998
James Merrill’s Early Work: A Revaluation
A number of poems by James Merrill (1926-1995) appeared in The Kenyon Review in 1947 and 1949: “Dancing, Joyously Dancing,” “The Drowning Poet,” “Cloud Country,” “Entrance from Sleep,” and “Transfigured […]
Poetry
Summer/ Autumn 1997
Pomegranate Variations
Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red: Sweeter than honey from the rock, Stronger than man-rejoicing wine, Clearer than water flowed that juice; She never tasted such before, How […]
Nonfiction
Winter 1997
“We Both Knew This Place”: Reflections on the Art of James Merrill
This past April, teaching some poems of Elizabeth Bishop in my American Poetry course at Rutgers, I went back to the chapter on Bishop in David Kalstone’s Five Temperaments. The […]
Poetry
Summer 1994
Recoveries
Sweet Briar, Virginia, November 1992; Alsace, pre-1924 A college pool, central Virginia. The octogenarian who swims next to me for half an hour at noon each Saturday recalls Olivier’s confiserie, […]
Nonfiction
Summer 1994
Changeling Sorrows
Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast or Sorrow such a changeling be? —Tennyson, In Memoriam July 1992 At bedtime, reading Jonathan “Ali Baba and […]
Poetry
Spring 1992
Birthday: Aubade and Argument
Eight. Morning shadows are long: already? still? Aubade or argument of glaze and glare. Black looming versus blushing upper panes. Eleven. Having dropped my son at school hours back now, […]
Poetry
Spring 1992
In the Mirror
I see myself: an aging face Watches me from the mirror’s prison. Pastoral beauties of this place, The soft sky strike me with derision. Knives of light make their incision […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1992
Two Courses in Poetry
An Enabling Humility: Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and the Uses of Tradition by Jeredith Merrin. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. 185 pages. $35.00; $17.00, paper. The Didactic Muse: Scenes […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1991
Morose Confusion
My title is from the first line of Paul Valéry’s beautiful poem “Aurora,” which I’ve been translating; Valéry refers to “la confusion morose qui me sert de sommeil.” The confusion […]