T. R. Hummer’s tenth book of poems, Ephemeron, was published by LSU Press in November 2011; his second book of essays, Available Surfaces, will appear in University of Michigan Press’s Poets on Poetry Series in 2012. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and teaches at Arizona State University.
Nature's Nature
May/June 2016
In a Small Park with Bench, Jacaranda, and Bird’s Skull
A woman was praying for a clump of fern to sprout or otherwise make a miraculous appearance on the ground Beside her, to soften the harsh linearity of the concrete […]
Nature's Nature
May/June 2016
Dove
A pestilence of doves descends, an idiocy of fowl, sister of the pigeon, comrade Of the seagull and all rats with wings. The lawn is seeded with cereal of a […]
Nature's Nature
May/June 2016
Prehistoric
Of the time before I could speak, I cannot speak. I was prehistoric, doing the dinosaur lurch Across my crib. The world was there, worlding away, and I was in […]
Poetry
Winter 2012
Terrorism
Black wavelets lap against pilings. Bone dust settles on the pier. The ferryman looks up from his tiller at a man in an Armani suit Who steps out of the […]
Poetry
Winter 2012
Text
The blues pianist's bleeding hands trace calligraphy on the keys. This too is art. And the rabbi's prayer on the killing floor. Ritual slaughter is known as shechita. The knife […]
Poetry
Winter 2012
Whitman’s Pantry
Dried beans in a muslin sack, tied shut with greasy string. An ounce of ginger root to brew digestif, Procured on physician's advice from an "Oriental" grocer at remarkable expense, […]
Poetry
Winter 2012
Post-American
Bougainvillea and Tuscan tile on the patio, sunset composed above the lake. Between one altar and the other is interposed a southering flock of monarchs. There's a chair for a […]
Poetry
Summer 2004
The Universe
The universe called him back. Collect. He answered Several letters, finished all essential reading, distributed Instructions for his employees, left the building, And was gunned down by a sniper, or […]
Poetry
Summer 2004
Zero
Zero balance. Double entry. Every accounting method Failed. There could be no question of error or ignorance— His omniscience was intact. But still the recalcitrant numbers, False sums, disagreement. And […]
Poetry
Summer 2004
Questions for Study: Ephemeron
Those are windflowers glowing in the outer darkness Just beyond the gateposts. If I squint, I see them clearly: white windflowers, flicker of stargas, Bridal-veil nebula—an infinity bent By the […]
Poetry
Summer 2004
After
After the explosion, no one knew what to do For the boy who’d stood closest to the abandoned leather briefcase. By some miracle, he was the only one injured. It […]
Poetry
Summer 2004
Years
Years ago, the story begins. Once. In such-and-such a place, some season or other, A stranger, two lovers, disaster. She wants to close the book, but constellations Of narrative structures […]
Poetry
Summer 2004
X
X is dominant—and fatal. She remembers this From a poem she read once, in a classroom Where a shaft of light illuminated dust motes Levitating over the forehead of a […]
Poetry
Winter 2000
Mimesis
The fat sun of Atlantic autumn burnishes equally the gold leaves of a ginkgo and a police cruiser’s chrome. The officer by the fender is dressed in silver and black, […]
Poetry
Winter 2000
Encoded Dithyramb
He sits on the bridge rail at midnight, watching silhouettes of helicopters eclipse Star after star over the river, spotlights probing for a speedboat load of cocaine runners Or the […]
Poetry
Winter 2000
Soft Money: 10/31/97
An American moon tonight. It renounces its own definition. It lights the sidewalk cinematically— Scatters dramatic chiaroscuro, as if a war is imminent, as if this nightclub’s facade conceals a […]
Poetry
Winter 2000
Antimetrical Lyric of the San Joachin
One syncopation in the clean rhythm of another enjambed morning, November, 6 A.M.: A switch-engine slows by the depot, and two men swing off. They walk the strophic walk Of […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1995
Laughed off: Canon, Kharakter, and the Dismissal of Vachel Lindsay
The priest departs, the divine literatus comes. — Walt Whitman It must be tough to be a poet. — Vachel Lindsay’s Milkman Oh gawd!!! — Ezra Pound It […]
Poetry
Summer 1993
Walt Whitman in Hell
. . . on the black waters of Lethe? GINSBERG In the second circle—the level of perpetual dysfunction Where untouchable lovers are damned by definition To read each others’ stories […]
Poetry
Spring 1991
Confusion in the Drought Years
All along, there was thirst shaping up in the uterine rot of fence posts Everywhere the sunlight touched. All along, the field hands’ sweat Was ominous with salt. Sister, the […]
Poetry
Spring 1991
Greek
Hard now to remember those winters, snow scabbing the stonesOutside Gettysburg ten years after the names sank in with the carcasses.What did I know about the unities? It was freezing, […]
Poetry
Spring 1991
Philadelphia Sentimental
Conduits and overwrought fire escapes. Icons from Little Italy. Rifted backstreets of Hungarian strangers in the aura Of diesel and hops. “Unchained Melody” leaksFrom a ghetto blaster some ghost of […]
Introduction
Spring 1990
Introduction: Impure Form
Half-ass, garrulous priest, his religion’s a hybrid that feasts on contradictions. Rodney Jones, “Mule” It was Philadelphia, it was February. My mood was exalted and vile: exalted because I was […]
Poetry
Summer 1986
The Real
Years before I knew about the CaveOr those double-sexed science-fictionArchehumans of the Symposium,I first heard of him On a second-grade field trip tourOf my miserable hometown libraryWhere he was reduced […]
Poetry
Summer 1986
The Ideal
for John Hales and Joe Battaglia CARDIFF GIANT: The world’s greatest hoax: made by a Chicago stone-mason, buried on a New York State farm and later exhumed, the “Giant” in […]
Book Reviews
Spring 1986
The Heroics of Clarity
Local Assays: On Contemporary American Poetry by Dave Smith. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985. 252 pages. $18.95, hardbound. The Roundhouse Voices: Selected and New Poems by Dave Smith. New […]
Poetry
Spring 1985
The Moon and Constellations
None of the cliches will do it: like glass: like crystal: pure As the driven snow. But what can you say? Branch tips Freeze into this air, inseparable from dusklight […]
Poetry
Spring 1985
Winter, a Walk in Pinewoods
Sometime, but not too long from now, it will come to you That nothing you hear in the trees is trying to speak: You have listened all this time without […]
Poetry
Spring 1985
Cancer Rising: A Dream of Walking
Maybe this has been done before. Light scatters Over that ragged western edge of sky he knows Is trees, hedgerow, wheatfield’s boundary, the end of the family Farm, a border […]
Poetry
Spring 1985
Dogma: Pigmeat and Whiskey
I woke in half-dark. There was smoke That followed me, And I floated up choked on pin oak, post oak, Water oak, and just enough hickory Burning. Somebody came, Lifted […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1984
Revising the Poetry Wars: Louis Simpson’s Assault on the Poetic
People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949-1983 by Louis Simpson. Brockport NY: BOA Editions, 1983. 215 pages. $7.95. The Best Hour of the Night by Louis Simpson. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, […]