The Traveler: On the Poetry of Alfred Corn

How many facts, though, work against / Staying put.

ALFRED CORN, “Cannot be a Tourist”

I invented a game with friends one afternoon. One of us would name a poet, and another would come up with an unlikely form for that poet. We then had to concoct the resulting poem. Examples ranged from Anthony Hecht as a language poet, to Philip Levine rendered in poulter’s measure. When Alfred Corn’s name came up, despite a familiarity with all of his then five books, I proved unable to come up with an uncharacteristic form. The epigraph—from a poem in the new collection Autobiographies–can serve as the explanation of my failure to place him. The world’s truths force the poet’s constant motion.