A meditation on our current condition—and an elegy for what's been lost. 

A poem made from scratch, not knowing where it would go. Yet ”scratch“ is not quite nothing: some ingredients here were my father's death as background, and, as usual, the sonnet's gifts of meter and rhyme, the one giving me a place to stand, a pou sto; the other a place to move towards, a place to go. Meter a floor to dance on, rhyme the leaps the dancer makes. 

Early Decemberl, I sent out a poem about the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn then on stage in the night sky. Well, this poem continues that theme, honoring that great conjunction called a wedding, right here on Earth. 

A recent article in the New Yorker gave me a strong image to work from: childhood as a movie theater. My thanks to Ian Frazier. 

A Christmas like no other, but still a celebration of light. 

A quarantine poem, taking one piece of the story to its logical if heartless conclusion: someone dies alone, his death reduced to ”text sits silent on her phone.“

A commentary on history—and how we imagine we control it.

A poem from the Nineties, more or less in my father's voice, a voice aware of the pressures of history. Funny how art can let us be more than we are: borrowing his perspective, the speaker here can joke—but be deadly serious, too. She has her own injuries. Please note the form here: a Shakespearean sonnet, with a couplet at the end.  Unusual in my work. 

At seventy-one, and after these months of shelter in place, I have my nights of worry. What if I were in my eighties?

On January 25, 1979, I wrote what became the first poem in my catalogue. Shortly thereafter, I promised myself to write a poem a day, a promise I have more or less kept since then. Here you have number 11400, forty-two years later. 

I've been writing a series of poems on a controversial topic. Mentioning them to my companion Margaret, she asked, “Why are are writing about stressful things? Why don't you write about, oh, say—the beauty of the day?” She's the most sensible woman I know, so, as I have for twenty-five years now, I followed her lead . . .

A recent poem sent out on Valentine's Day.

A piece from the past. Back at university getting a teaching credential, we were asked to write about a family heirloom. I came up with this one . . .

When the quarantine began, I undertook an education in film with my sister Deborah. We had only just upgraded from 1980s equipment: what timing! We've watched about a hundred films over the course of shelter in place, including (referenced here) Some Like It Hot, with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, and of course, Marilyn Monroe—who was famously difficult to direct, including a scene in which it took so

The lemon grass—in full bloom in my sister's feral garden—sculpts itself into hills and valleys, with its bright yellow flowers opening at dawn, following the sun all day, and closing at dusk: intelligence, awareness, made visible . . .

A poem that begins in laughter and ends in love. What more to ask for?

A poem to welcome the resurgence of spring—with a pun on chess at the end.

Returning to roots, I've been experimenting with envelope rhyme, where, in the two quatrains, a couplet appears between two outer, or envelope, rhymes. Part of my practice has been revisiting the rules: the sonnet has many, and they tend to go astray over time, so I revisit them and try to (forgive me) toe the line. 

This one explores a poet's favorite subject, the power of poetry itself.