phillip crymble

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed spring approaches-- from William Carlos Williams's Spring and All (1923)

Modernism by STUART DYBEK The two poems written a decade apart have remained modern for over a hundred years. Together, not counting titles, they total thirty words, and share the scent of a freshly fallen rain that continues to gleam on both a wheelbarrow, and the faces on a wet, black bough. Stuart Dybek is the author of five books of fiction and two collections of poetry. He is the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University.

A new poem by Stuart Dybek in the inaugural issue of PORTICO.

Provisions What should we have taken with us? We never could decide on that; or what to wear, or at what time of year we should make this journey so here we are, in thin raincoats and rubber boots on the disastrous ice, the wind rising, nothing in our pockets but a pencil stub, two oranges four toronto streetcar tickets and an elastic band, holding a bundle of small white filing-cards printed with important facts.

Margaret Atwood

RITE OF SPRING So winter closed its fist And got it stuck in the pump. The plunger froze up a lump In its throat, ice founding itself Upon iron. The handle Paralysed at an angle. Then the twisting of wheat straw Into ropes, lapping them tight Round stem and snout, then a light That sent the pump up in flame. It cooled, we lifted her latch, Her entrance was wet, and she came.

Seamus Heaney

The 'voice of sanity' is getting hoarse.

Seamus Heaney

Dropping out is not the answer; fucking-up is. Most women are already dropped out; they were never in. Dropping out gives control to those few who don't drop out; dropping out is exactly what the establishment leaders want; it plays into the hands of the enemy; it strengthens the system instead of undermining it, since it is based entirely on the non-participation, passivity, apathy and non-involvement of the mass of women. Dropping out, however, is an excellent policy for men, and SCUM will enthusiastically encourage it.

From The SCUM Manifesto (1967), Valerie Solanas on dropping out.
#InternationalWomensDay

correct

Daylight Saving MY answers are inadequate To those demanding day and date, And ever set a tiny shock Through strangers asking what's o'clock; Whose days are spent in whittling rhyme-- What's time to her, or she to Time?

A poem by America's most famous wit

A WINTER'S NIGHT The outside, where the snow Is softly and soundlessly Falling (there is no wind Tonight) has brought its quiet Into the house that was noisy All day with TV voices, The telephone ringing, And the happy shouts of children Romping from room to room. Now, except for me, sleep Has taken over the house. I bring the silence of the dark Outside into it. I wrap that Around my cares. Soon I, too, Will be sleeping.

A late poem by James Laughlin

Modernism in literature has not passed; rather, it has been exposed as never having been there. Gossip grows old and becomes myth; myth grows older, and becomes dogma. Wyndham Lewis, Eliot and Pound gossiped with one another; the New Criticism aged them into a myth of Modernism; now the antiquarian Hugh Kenner has dogmatized this myth into the Pound Era, a canon of accepted titans.

Harold Bloom, from the not-at-all ironically titled A Map of Misreading (1975)

Amazing. What a poem!

OUR SENSE OF ACHIEVEMENT trees do not mean to cause us harm themselves across the planet trees move in wide invisible lines trees are all around us like fire once there was a song called Everything We Know About Chairs but nobody wrote it where would you even begin every day many things do not happen a perfect winter a perfect love once you keep failing you've got it right you don't fail just when you think arrives some spring

Heather Christle

Loved him as O'Reilly the builder in Fawlty Towers.

UNFOLDING If there is no spirit unfolding itself in history, No gradual growth of consciousness Beneath the land grabs and forced migrations, The bought elections, the betrayal of trust By party faction in the name of progress- What about spirit in the personal realm Unfolding slowly inside us, so slowly That our best days seem like a holding action? Seasons repeat themselves, but the tree Shading the yard keeps growing. Don't be chagrined that the sadness you felt This evening beside the bed of a friend Who's growing weaker wasn't more profound Than the sadness of yesterday, that you still Can't imagine a fraction of what he's feeling As the world he loves slips from his grasp. No progress from your perspective, But who's to say what you might notice If the scroll of the last few months were unrolled On the table before you, how clear it might be That your your understanding of all you're losing In losing him has been slowly deepening? Another day, you say to yourself, at dusk As you climb your porch steps, which you notice Could use some scraping and painting this weekend, A fresh coat that with luck will last a year. --Carl Dennis

SO many great poems in these old issues of The New Yorker

I don't, but my mum might. You know the area?

The Keel Bay Guest House. I often wonder whatever became of it.

GINSBERG When Ginsberg (always tolerant and kindhearted) wanted to help a starveling young poet he might close his letter by saying: take my letter to the Phoenix Bookshop in Cornelia Street, they may give you as much as $25 for it.

James Laughlin's entry on Allen Ginsberg in The Way it Wasn't (2006)

Small world. My father's sister lives in a house on New Park Road. They bought it new. Something like this one.

Amazing. My parents owned and operated a guesthouse on Achill in the mid-60s.

Happy to. We have two new poems of hers in the winter issue.

A MARRIAGE His paintings were small, suggestions of houses, pinpricks of green for trees. She'd set her glass down, say, Paint like you're blind, from memory and passion— two words he especially didn't care for. She'd say, Paint like you're on fire. But their house was already burning, and he was going blind and deaf. So he'd carry the painting back down to the basement, resume with his thinnest sable brush. He would never touch her the way she wanted, though she kept asking him to, like this, in front of everybody. — Julie Bruck

A heartbreaking poem by one of Canada's finest

NIGHTGOWN A cold so keen, My speech unfurls tonight As from the chattering teeth Of a sewing machine. Whom words appear to warm, Dear heart, wear mine. Come forth Wound in their flimsy white And give it form.

James Merrill, born 100 years ago today

🙏

THE SECRET OF THE YELLOW ROOM Sloth's best. Lolling on a sofa In a Chinese dressing gown With the windows open in the heat, The breeze rousing the leaves. The flies dozing on the ceiling. The silky hush of a summer afternoon, Like floating on one's back With eyes closed in some pond Clogged with water lilies, Inhaling their scent as they nuzzle close. The light and shade dillydallying, The leaves sighing again. Afterward, not even that. Majestic stupor. Stirring only at midnight To click on the yellow table lamp.

Charles Simic, for your late-winter blues

Fragment Christ, may I die at night with a semblance of my faculties, like the full moon that fails.

Robert Lowell was born on this day in 1917. According to Frank Bidart, this is "[t]he final stanza of an unfinished poem that Lowell was working on the week before he died."

Honestly, if you check your local classifieds I'm sure you could find a vintage turntable in decent shape for the price of a new LP. Doing this also comes with the added advantage of providing you with a spare once you've repaired the one you already own. Anyway, something to consider.

🙏

CAR COVERED WITH SNOW Before I clear the windows, I sometimes sit inside. And the stillness is such that I lose how the day works. It soaks up all the steely details: March ripped out of February, a raw thing. Sometimes my son has patience. And we sit a few minutes like this in the weird half-light. He says: we're in a closed fist, Mama. Or, it's like the car's eye is closed. We're deep in the brain then, seeing as the blind see, all listening. Outside, the cardinal tinks tinks his alarm call, his scared call. I hear it: the snow so terribly white. And he is brilliant, conspicuous.

March / ripped out of February, a raw thing.

Marianne Boruch

Yes! You'll note that they also italicized "Lester's." The copy editor was asleep at the switch that day.

Thank you, my friend. The more things change ...