Article

Honoré Daumier

The absurd has its reasons which the reason      absorbs: now the outlines throb when you draw, and the decade of sight left you      will leave you diligently vulnerable to the long littleness of life,      who revealed so little else— for you humanity was definable      broadly by its weaknesses or narrowly as your crayon could encroach…

Hurricane Watch

The power was off. We cleared dishes from the table. Shutters crashed against the windows. Below us, in the lake, the minnows were in a frenzy. Limbs cracked like knuckles—one great trunk smashed to the ground. Leaves flew past, pasted themselves to the panes. Somewhere, my father was on a train. The blue walls quaked,…

(Detail)

A dusky cloud, a tree, a giant (caught on the line of magnification) deeply whorled hand from the group at the center. A picturesque little house with watersteps and a boat, momentarily forsaken. You can see its boatman down by the lagoon with two others, pointing deeper into the painting with a shrewd air of…

Taint

Did your mother ever wear a hat with a whole bird’s nest growing on it, or a dress patterned with naked bodies? Remember how long the street seemed then, how you stepped behind her to investigate a fence post, shop window, blade of grass, anything to let you fall behind? Perhaps she was an immigrant,…

The Department

                           Siste, viator Bereaved of mind by a weird truck, Our fraternal philosopher To whom a Spring snow was mortal Winter— a wild driver in the best Of cases, on the margins of Communicability— exchanged a bad Appointment in New Hampshire For a grave in the Jewish Cemetery In Waltham, Massachusetts. Across The street…

The Laughing Angel: Reims

In all the cathedrals of Europe I’ve seen only one smiling angel, feathered wings like the others, blasted by war. She’s famous not only because she’s smiling but because of the smile. It might be that the harvest is fine, but I don’t think so: too much reflected mischief in her face. As if a…

The Book of Father Dust

for Louis, my father As God knows,           the child sees,                 in middle age The strewn windfall of the befallen.                            Today I am reading the poems written when I was a child (the cobalt tower text Of Hart Crane; spinster Stevens’ intricate Book of needles; oracular Yeats, Unkind). And I am writing a…