May 2009
1 post
Sleeping in the Wilderness by Maurice Manning No matter how well you dress the hide a buffalo rug will always smell like buffalo: it is a rank odor and wild, charged with old glands and cud and the memory of running ten winters, the last two blind. So you take your bed in this way, raking dry leaves into a grave-sized mound beneath you, pulling the mossy cloak upon you and you spit out the last...
April 2009
1 post
March 2009
2 posts
HRCFF: Walt Whitman
Harry Ransom Center Friday Finds: Walt Whitman
From Walt Whitman’s correspondence archives:
[1] Letter for Robert Adams (November 5, 1890) An endearing postscript: “I am under the grip yet and rather badly—have had my breakfast. Bit of meat chop, graham, bread and coffee—am sitting here in my den, in great old ratan chair (with big wolf skin spread over back) sunny but...
January 2009
1 post
Useful Information
The Norwegians have a word for “killer bear.” It is slagbjørn.
December 2008
5 posts
Trans. From Å Paradis (Oktober, 2008) by Mona Høvring:
12 (utdrag fra “Heltinnebreva”)
…
Jeg drømmer; i fanget mitt ligger en hjort— er ikke det en usedvanlig dødsinnvielse?
12 (excerpt from “Heroine Letters”)
… I dream; in my arms lies a deer— is this not an unusual initiation to death?
“Can you hear him, Danny?” “Yes,” I said. “That is a bullfrog calling to his wife. He does it by blowing out his dewlap and letting it go with a burp.” “What is a dewlap?” I asked. “It’s the loose skin on his throat. He can blow it up just like a little balloon.” “What happens when his wife hears him?” “She goes...
Epitaphs
“Cast a cold Eye On Life, on Death. Horseman, Pass by!” -W. B. Yeats
“Called back” -Emily Dickinson
“I had a lover’s quarrel with the world” -Robert Frost
“This Grave contains all that was mortal, of a Young English Poet, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be...
“The Sea Is Calm” - Cocorosie (2005)
November 2008
2 posts
la fovea →
On la fovea, poets pass the poetry torch from one bad boy to the next. Check out these bad boys. And check often, because it won’t stop here…
“Colors and the Kids” - Cat Power...
October 2008
15 posts
The Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Dinner,... →
Part 2/2 of the Stein and Toklas Dinner on The Kenyon Review site. J. W. Donaldson added a line to my bio statement, and it delights me.
The Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Dinner,... →
The Kenyon Review online
aka What Poetry Graduate Students Do For Fun (Part 2 coming soon…)
Thine earthly tent must shortly fall, And Thou...
Susquehanna River Song The tent is wide but the entrance Is hidden. Hidden & secret & Often invisible. Yes, it is wide & Long & gracious. As gracious as It is difficult to enter, this tent, but One may find it difficult, as I have Said, to find the entrance. & once One has found the entrance, he may Find it difficult to see the entrance. & once he has seen the entrance He...
Lee Hazlewood - “Hey Cowboy” (1970)
Don't worry. Emily Dickinson can't, either.
I cannot be ashamed (977) I cannot buy it— ‘tis not sold (943) I cannot dance opon my toes (381) I cannot live with you (706) I cannot meet the spring unmoved (1122) I cannot see my soul but know ‘tis there (1276) I cannot want it more (1228) I cant tell you but you feel it (164)
—From the Index of First Lines, The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press of Harvard...
HRCFF: James Tate
Harry Ransom Center Friday Finds: James Tate
From a folder titled “Rejected Poems/Drafts 1979-1984” and included under the manuscript titled The Planet of Rough Edges
[1] Handwritten across the top of the page: “Fake Songs” “Sometimes I think I’m in love with my radio. a Sony transistor I bought not long ago. With the money I won in the rodeo. They asked me to...
Trans. From Å Paradis (Oktober, 2008) by Mona Høvring:
TEORI OM KOMMUNIKATIV HANDLING Etter ei langvarig taushet, sa du: «For første gang.» THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION After a long silence, you said: “For the first time.”
“Det første møtes sødme—
Trans.: The sweetness of the first...”
– Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
HRCFF: W. B. Yeats
Harry Ransom Center Friday Finds (early edition)
From “The Winding Stair” TMS with corrections
…
VIII Her Vision In The Wood Too old for a man’s love I stood and raged At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood, Dry timber under that rich foliage, Imagining men. Imagining that I could A greater with a lesser pang assuage, Or but to find if withered vein ran blood, I tore my body that its...
Melanie - “Brand New Key” (1971)
HRCFF: e e cummings
Harry Ransom Center Friday Finds: e e cummings
[1] Two small, silver cards with cartoon reindeer on the front, given to his wife Marion Morehouse at Christmas. One simply says “Love!” inside. In the other, he drew a little elephant carrying a flag. The flag says “Love!”
[2] A bounty of line drawings done in 1902 (when he was 8 years old). Titled: “E. E. Cummings...
