Poetry, Religion, History and Art
Many thanks to David Suissa at The Jewish Journal, for publishing my poems “Train,” and “A Ploughed Field.” Those who have read Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, or seen Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah will probably recognize where these poems come from. Two other poems will be appearing at The Jewish Journal in the next week or […]
On 8/26/20, a virtual book launch was held in London to celebrate three new titles published by Dempsey & Windle. As part of the reading I read the following poems: “The Harvest of 1665,” on the harvest following the plague of London in that year “The Historian,” on the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh “Mr […]
Unfinished Michelangelo The impossible bodies of apostles, messiahs and slaves, statues that couldn’t have stood had he finished them, faces half buried in membranes of marble that threaten to swallow and take them back; bodies climbing without hands or feet or legs out of the mineral morass in the great struggle for birth: a nearly […]
Many thanks to editor Aaron Berkowitz, who just published my poem about Albert Einstein in The Jewish Literary Journal. Check the poem out, as well as the other fine work there.
Many thanks to Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, for publishing my poem “Caedmon Comes to Singing” in the new issue of Londongrip. Many will remember that Caedmon, who lived in seventh-century Northumbria, is credited with being one of the earliest English poets; I suppose we can all learn from his half-mythic example, of living most of his life […]
Many thanks to Sarah Law, for publishing “Mr Cassian’s 51st Dream” at Amethyst. Back in August, she also published “Mr Cassian’s 54th Dream.” These poems are part of a larger collection of fiction and poetry called School of Night. You can read other pieces here.
Many thanks to Sarah Law at Amethyst Review, who just published my poem “Mr Cassian’s 54th Dream.” You can read the poem here, and listen to a reading of it below: The poem is part of a larger collection of poetry and fiction called School of Night. You can find other pieces from the book […]
The Mother at the Salon She was at the salon hours after another mother sat in the same seat: a victim’s mother, she a perpetrator’s. Yet it wasn’t warmer or more desolate to sit where her seeming opposite had sat, both readying for a funeral or both seeking what only old habit could give. Both […]
The Two of Them They grew up with Waco, weird religion rolled over by tanks and set on fire; they grew up with Oklahoma City, white guy rage and middle-American bombs and a scalloped building seen from overhead, some cross-section into safe offices safe no more and blown out to the street below. They may […]
Infatuation She’d be nearing middle age by now, the girl all over Dylan’s journal whose name the books all black out, the girl no girl wants to be, loved by him, the boy she would never write about herself unless she loved nervousness and decay or was taken in by weakness and doubt, her head […]
Nero & His Mother I arranged to have her murdered at sea but she just swam to shore as the boat sank; I can see her doing that, unsurprised at the attempt but determined to live even the worst life. When the assassins showed up she screamed to put the sword lower, lower, thinking of […]
Originally published at Isacoustic When On High, When I Also Saw the Deep I. When I also saw the deep From earliest days I dug in the ground with no need for gloves, with a love of mud in my fingernails and filling the lines of my palms, the smack of sloppy wet earth and […]
Missing Child The sound of them woke me in the morning, feet kicking up careful spirals of leaves and lean, low voices under my window. All the way to the woods there’s a line of them, a missing boy overnight their care won’t solve: the world is too small to search all of it. I […]
Daedalus & Icarus The old craftsman came to Cumae after a long life of art and flight, love and theft, came alone to the Sibyl’s Italian shore wasted with age and reputation to the one who knew every alphabet, the seeress who saw the future in driven leaves: and warped with the same old age […]
A Disciple of Pythagoras Wins a Chariot Race Some oil there in the dirt, some spices gathered into the shape of a scented ox and lit into a rising cloud for the gods: this is better victory than flesh, better glory for my name and my town than the meat of someone I may have […]
Kafka’s Sisters With thanks I was tubercular and dead by early summer nineteen twenty-four, long in the grave with my intensity before those three sisters rose to follow, Ellie and Ottla and Valli dragged through the cattle-car years down to forty-five. Ellie and Ottla and Valli I sing, deported to Poland, deported to Łódź or […]
Robert Oppenheimer Now I come to write in light and fire in a language of power we all know, beyond every letter and poetry and all the dithering of philosophy, all the prevarication of politics. The physicists have known sin, it’s true, but also the brilliance of a burden overcome in the ageless mountains, a […]
Here are two of my favorite poems from Bone Antler Stone: one on the famous ice age “Venus” figurines from 20-30,000 years ago, and another on a shipwreck from 1300 BC. You can order the entire collection here, or find more poems from the book here. Female Figurines for Evie Hum the words with me and […]
“Our prehistory now has its poet laureate.” – Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Download readings from the book below, or read an essay about the book. US readers can order copies directly from me here: UK and worldwide readers, order directly from The High Window Press here Passing through more than thirty thousand years of history, […]
Check out the poet Tom Laichas’s review, here, of my 2011 book Hymns and Lamentations, a collection poems on the unsolvable religious problems of suffering and joy. It’s an immensely generous and thorough look at the book, probably the best it’s gotten so far. You can still order the book here.
“An incredibly well executed epic saga in a poetry format, To The House Of The Sun is complex, with manifold characters, plot developments, and internal rhythms. Simply stated, To The House of the Sun is a literary phenomenon on a scale with the Iliad or the Odyssey.” — Midwest Book Review To the House of […]
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