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Circle of Blades

for Taha Muhammad Ali and for Aaron Shabtai From nothing but his fear, and kiss her cunning brows Who braves the risen salar, daughter’s bursting ripeness Moaning through the sash, he marries to a settler The crown sits on his head, to hold her as he wants For him the dead king’s wife, in a…

Wild Heart

Where would I be if not for your wild heart? I ask this not from love, but selfishly— How could I live? How could I make my art? Questions I wouldn’t ask if I was smart. Take the whole thing on faith. Blind eyes can see where I would be if not for your wild…

from Zeno’s Cure

The shame of an idea is in its seriousness, a conqueror’s     seriousness, shameful the way it surveys the landscape of remains, laying claim to the vast ruined view and each surviving privacy     alike, claiming its own pure force as the origin of things, seizing even the moonlight on the leaves of half a…

Natural Light

That summer I saw you as a bird, a whitethroat singing O Sweet Canada Canada but a strange sooty color, then as the dwarf peach that had never borne ruddy with hanging fruit, actually bedecked like a Christmas tree. Everything promised transformation, day into night, stars unrolling like an opera score for owls, crickets, and…

Pleasure Dome by Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa, Pleasure Dome, poems: A compelling twelfth collection that gathers work from the past twenty years, as well as some new and previously uncollected work. Publishers Weekly astutely predicts that readers will want this volume for its “heady mix of gothic foreboding, racial history and realpolitik, biblical and Attic allusion, and sexual longing.” (Wesleyan)

The Image

In one film, a man turning the pages of a book. In another film, a man turning the pages of a book. Outside, the snow and the semis cover everything with mud and someone talks to someone else. The snow creaks like an old floor. Inside, the paper weighs the same as the inside of…

About Donald Hall: A Profile

Hall as Young Artist Approaching his mid-seventies, Donald Hall is — as he frequently reminds people — an old man now. Yet the term old can encompass a long shelf life, and no American writer has done more to honor the reality of time and generation than has Donald Hall. He’s given detail, definition, and…