If poetry has nothing else to say, it says this: this world is much more peculiar than you imagine.

It is one thing to write an inspirational poem about the raising of Lazarus, from this great distance in time and space, and another to be Lazarus: to be the one who is raised. I think any genuine religious art leads the reader (and presumably the writer) to a place of encounter, an encounter with radical otherness.

I would like for Louise Glück to be my friend. This is a recent problem

Wild Is the Wind, Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018) The Book of Endings, Leslie Harrison (University of Akron Press, 2017) In the Language of My Captor, Shane McCrae (Wesleyan University Press, 2017) WHAT CAN POETRY DO that other genres cannot? What makes it unique among the arts? What territory, however small, can poetry…

Lord Mouth dear     Tongue dear Only-Pierceable- Parts to what now shall I compare Thee Lord I am a lonely man     I do not see My children often     to a summer’s day To autumn     Lord     Thou art more peaceable Less difficult to leave to     die in more Relenting though the sun does set     in the sea…

Lord of the hopeless also dear     Hat-Soak Pole-in-the-Canal and Red-Tie Father     Son And Holy Ghost not     in that order break The rottenness of those who torture one Of Thy least wrath-deserving exiles me Not     wholly undeserving     no     but some And isn’t it the some that counts with Thee O     Gondola also as the trees pass…