Poetry |
“Untitled” & “Found Abecedarian: Your Guide to Total Health Care, 1996“
“We’re in public. Academic // coffee complete with neatly inked / questions in my notebook. He presses // gold-rimmed glasses closer …”
Essay |
“Strange Gatherings: The Nightworld of “Dream Song #10”
“If ‘Dream Song #10’’s dreaming Henry stands for Berryman dreaming … then the Song represents one of Berryman’s most agonized debates between his racist and his progressive instincts.”
Poetry |
“Intermezzo” & “My Mother and Robert Penn Warren”
“At the end of La Bohème / Rudolpho gives Mimi a muff / to help keep her warm. / I thought of that as I held his hand. / It was midnight, an hour / until he let go of mine.”
Literature in Translation |
“The Gap Between Mountains,” “The Wheat Is Ripe” & “Boundless Snow”
“The sky rises higher every moment. / On top of our heads a tile-blue hat / adds to the weight of Wanxi Basin. / From all directions laborers learn its lessons / and get more ignorant, too.”
Essay |
“Frank Rosenblatt in Passing: The Rebirth of the Mimetic Impulse”
“Now we recognize that what he explored and created are at the core of Artificial Intelligence, a technology transforming communication, research, design and the nature of work.”
Poetry |
“The Chalk Pig”
“Where I was, was pitch dark. / I was alone in it, / with a sound like a chirp ‘ or what a broken windowpane might make / as its pieces fell slowly to the floor.”
Poetry |
“A Planet Is A Moment”
“In the before is / everything possible / in the after even / the nothing that’s / there is missed / its absence / remarkable”
Literature in Translation |
“No,” “Talk Less” & “I am tired”
“Slowly. / Yell at me. / So I can really hear you, fully grasp what you say / and determine who is in charge.”
Poetry |
“Down by the Humus Lake”
“water worries the house posts / sits on the steps // moody / made of murk // eventually / we approach the door / the stairway down // carrying our lights / our tendency / to drown”
Poetry |
“The Visible Woman”
“Her open palms faced out — / she looked like she was asking for mercy. // I stopped playing with The Visible Woman / when she started reminding me / of Jesus Christ on his crucifix.”
Poetry |
“Invisible,” “Window I” & “Window II”
“… If I were / in a painting, if you were // to turn that painting upside- / down, I’d fall from water // into sky. What would you see? / A blur of blue …”
Fiction |
“Thinker” & “Second Chances”
“She told her husband that she was tired of pretending to be smart. She had been undone since the surgery, her thoughts short circuiting all over the place after twenty minutes of thinking.”
Poetry |
“On Ellsworth Road”
“See the cracks in our foundations? / But Sharon isn’t worried about that. / Tonight, and every night: Who will feed the feral cats — / her front step is lined with aluminum bowls …”
Essay |
“We Try to Ignore the Elephant Somehow”
“Isbell’s songs provide the language for saying something that so few of us can say on our own, whether we’re racked by guilt or shame or grief for all the things that life does to us, and we do to life.”
Poetry |
“You Thrill Me So” & “Art”
“A speaker at the memorial for my friend Miles is saying / that when his wife died eleven years earlier, Miles never /got over it, which reminds me of a letter in the advice / column of today’s paper …”