New British Poetry: An Anthology
Spring 1987
New British Poetry Introduction
Let me begin this introduction to my selection of recent work by a few of the British poets I admire by going back to the last time The Kenyon Review […]
Poetry
Autumn 1985
Out of the Blue
For a time her world is what she reads, she grasps it in both hands. Must appearances always cheat? The scene looks clarified of human error, of all we used […]
Poetry
Autumn 1985
Black Pansies
Dark holes in the blue blaze of every day’s sky-inflected flowers, they spread nothing of cheer like the blithe tricolor heart’s-ease. Under the nodding hours of columbines they flutter their […]
Five Poems
Spring 1983
Now She Sleeps
Now she sleeps, my little one. I can give at least this present tense, an active mood. Among all the males of the line I’d hoped there was one who […]
Five Poems
Spring 1983
Fractures
tacitae per amica silentia lunae — Virgil I Tacit night. This truth is not more friendly than moon-struck silence: I am traced and ghosted by a face I have never […]
Five Poems
Spring 1983
Engraved in Plural Voices
I In the church-place I remember they pulled words out of their long sockets and prayed Help me, God wheezing and coughing and groaning so that they might not hear […]
Five Poems
Spring 1983
Effigy
The days are not divided. I watch, agnostic father and afraid. Your mother’s hand gently strokes your face, shapes the setting wax, as light as winds in summer on contours […]
Five Poems
Spring 1983
Eclipse
And since death must be the Lucina of life . . .* — Sir Thomas Browne She had her mother’s way of looking but she does not see the light […]
Contemporary English and Irish Poetry
Summer 1981
Loveless Times
From The Loveless Letters Dear, distant wife, here the bell does not call us to think on the divine, leaning on the dark wood of childhood in clean and singing […]
Contemporary English and Irish Poetry
Summer 1981
Loveless Leaving
From The Loveless Letters Dear, distant wife, soon no longer distant: my masters have spoken to swivel my world again and I’ll trade in this gaudy pang of distance for […]
Contemporary English and Irish Poetry
Summer 1981
Parting Present
From The Loveless Letters The years are replaced and petrify. Some distant percolation of rain-forest like a dream still there in daylight has given me this polished five-sided talisman: a […]