Tuesday, June 24, 2008

More Counting Down to Dodge

Father's Day, the end of the school year, and various other hobby-crowding obligations over, we're back to looking forward to Dodge. Today's featured reference is Jane Hirshfield. My favorite of her present-tense-dominated poems is "Mule Heart", which begins:

On the days when the rest
have failed you,
let this much be yours --
flies, dust, an unnameable odor,
the two waiting baskets:
one for the lemons and the passion,
one for all that you have lost.

She's not always so meditative, but I think she's much more effective when she is. Of all the returning "big name" poets, I'm most interested to hear what she has been working on.

No comments: