Wyatt Prunty’s latest poetry collection is Couldn’t Prove, Had to Promise. He lives in Sewanee, where he is the Ogden D. Carlton Professor in Sewanee’s English Department. He directs the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Tennessee Fellowship Series. He edits the Johns Hopkins Poetry and Fiction Series.
Poetry
Nov/Dec 2020
Compulsive Insistence upon Repetition in the Face of Reasoned Opposition
Old shapes — ships and cars and all intentions Time has rusted out: Retention of purpose past its point. Whose point was it? Ours or our enemy’s? No matter now. We engineered […]
Poetry
Nov/Dec 2020
String River
String river washes new life over rocks Out to a sea where never seen again. Its harmonies repeat so closely they are monotone In arguing they will never end with […]
Book Reviews
July/Aug 2017
Rereading Ransom
The Collected Poems of John Crowe Ransom, Editor Ben Mazer. Un-Gyve Press, 2015. 396 pp. $75.00. The Collected Poems of John Crowe Ransom, edited by Ben Mazer, is something […]
Poetry
Summer 2012
Reading the Map
An anniversary Whatever bearing you select, Eventually your path will intersect Such variance in elevation you will find you need A topographic map for where things lead. Brunton Pocket Transit […]
Nonfiction
Winter 2009
Making and Taking
The prickly territorialism of poets is legendary, from asides made by Catullus at the expense of Suffenus, to John Dryden’s writing “Mac Flecknoe” so as to put Thomas Shadwell in […]
Poetry
Spring 2006
Two Views
1 Into the laterals and faults of strata Whose linear seams are like memory, Water wades its way, settling matters In small aquifers, incised meanders; Then floods over a landscape […]
Poetry
Spring 2003
Ash: 9/11
The light shifts earlier these days, While I, inspecting it from my one room, gaze Out, watching the inevitable change Gather almost imperceptibly among The lift and bow and graduals […]
Celebration of Robert Lowell
Winter 2000
Panel: Lowell on the Page
Introduction by James Kimbrell This morning our discussion is “Lowell on the Page.” We will have Mr. Bidart., Mr. Prunty, and Mr. Tillinghast and after that we will have a […]
Poetry
Spring 1996
The Pyromaniac
A one-story is disheartening, Brief unelaborated light building Under eaves, traveling sideways, gulping air, And the slow smoke bellying after. Three stories, four, five, or more work best For my […]
Poetry
Summer 1989
Playing by Ear
Plunking the keys until sent out To plunk anything that didn’t resonate, So, playing the sticks against a fence And tremoring garbage cans with rocks … Later, reaching the Zenith’s […]
Poetry
Summer 1989
The Wild Horses
The horses imagined by a boy Who cannot get himself to sleep Are grazing so deep within a story He cannot say what it means to keep Such things inside […]
Poetry
Summer 1989
With Others
Once capable of swimming the mile In the low twenties, half-adolescent Into his years, he drove across The pool as if the afternoon Were permanent, some personal fixture Stationed over […]
Poetry
Summer 1988
The Blue Umbrella
This is not about the barrenness of winter, A single bird fluting that tired song, But another melody, caught just before Our voices turn to words or faces flex Expression, […]
Poetry
Summer 1988
For Don, Who Slept through the War
When I was a boy, waking my uncle Was dangerous, his fists flew out In every direction, like a stunt man Falling over a balcony. No angleWas safe. Best to […]
Remembering 9/11 Web Feature
Ash
9/11 The light shifts earlier these days, While I, inspecting it from my one room, gaze Out, watching the inevitable change Gather almost imperceptibly among The lift and bow and […]