Dazzling. We started with Baudelaire and Rimbaud (dual language books) and moved on to Hart Crane and then the three above. I still adore Crane. And one prof wrote a brilliant biography of Crane years later.
Ah yes. A distingushed career. I also dimly recall (NY Times? mid-2010s?) what seemed like an oddly catty review of Mariani's book about Wallace Stevens.
I found out from someone in the know that NYT reviews were sometimes deliberately given to enemies of the author or at least competitors. I think one of my professors was distraught when her Cather bio was given to a reviewer who hated her. It's sometimes a corrupt system.
My poetry is all in Special Collections at MSU but I do remember the opening of a poem I wrote decades ago about Crane and suicide and love: "He stepped into the sea...."
I wrote poetry under the influence of Crane and others and some poetry when I had a poet friend and she and I even did a reading together, but it was never my main focus and I never thought of myself as a poet.
Lev, are you still at the same address? I want to send you a little something to (I hope) brighten your convalescence a bit. Seven years ago, I went through something similar after a bicycle crash (months of physical therapy following hip replacement and ORIF surgery for a shattered humeral head). I know just how tedious it can be!
That's so thoughtful of you, and yes, I'm at the same address. I have my on-month checkup tomorrow and assume there will be a scrip for rehab, which luckily will be just a few minutes away with therapists I know and admire. But still. Oddly enough, a very good friend was writing to me about his bicycle crash 15 years ago and his ORIF. Weirder still, I had never heard the term before and then was watching some movie or TV series where parents were told what kind of surgery their child was going to have and he said "ORIF" and explained what it stood for.
This brings back fond memories of reading him, Stevens, Crane in a terrific two-professor seminar.
That must have been so special!
Dazzling. We started with Baudelaire and Rimbaud (dual language books) and moved on to Hart Crane and then the three above. I still adore Crane. And one prof wrote a brilliant biography of Crane years later.
Paul Mariani was his name--the book reads like a novel and his feel for the poetry is perfect.
Ah yes. A distingushed career. I also dimly recall (NY Times? mid-2010s?) what seemed like an oddly catty review of Mariani's book about Wallace Stevens.
I found out from someone in the know that NYT reviews were sometimes deliberately given to enemies of the author or at least competitors. I think one of my professors was distraught when her Cather bio was given to a reviewer who hated her. It's sometimes a corrupt system.
That doesn't surprise me at all. If unsurprising, it's also inexcusable.
My poetry is all in Special Collections at MSU but I do remember the opening of a poem I wrote decades ago about Crane and suicide and love: "He stepped into the sea...."
Nice opener, that.
Thanks, it came to me at midnight walking up a moonlit street to the house I shared with 4 people, one of whom enjoyed messing with my mind.
Here’s to not “showing your work!” It shows up on the page. Nice.
I wrote poetry under the influence of Crane and others and some poetry when I had a poet friend and she and I even did a reading together, but it was never my main focus and I never thought of myself as a poet.
Lev, are you still at the same address? I want to send you a little something to (I hope) brighten your convalescence a bit. Seven years ago, I went through something similar after a bicycle crash (months of physical therapy following hip replacement and ORIF surgery for a shattered humeral head). I know just how tedious it can be!
That's so thoughtful of you, and yes, I'm at the same address. I have my on-month checkup tomorrow and assume there will be a scrip for rehab, which luckily will be just a few minutes away with therapists I know and admire. But still. Oddly enough, a very good friend was writing to me about his bicycle crash 15 years ago and his ORIF. Weirder still, I had never heard the term before and then was watching some movie or TV series where parents were told what kind of surgery their child was going to have and he said "ORIF" and explained what it stood for.
Thanks, Mary.
Lovely and gentle. Not using my bandwidth on chasing the ten passes. Admiring that you used yours to make this poem.
Not quite sure why it struck me as gentle ... but it did.
Well done.
Thank you, Janie.
refuse to fall
to let go
refuse to leave
the garden
. . . .
A new Eden.