Bye, bye, Corinthians?

  Is it just possible, that

  we may be putting away the

  the Bush era's signature,

  juvenile fantasy? 

  Just ask anyone you know,

  if we could stand it.

Epistles 

  to the Corinthians

  I, 13, 8-13

i   Elliott Erwitt

Robotic continuities

We seem not to inhabit uninteresting
times, in one respect at least. As
our sailors have been abandoned to
legitimacy in their private conduct,
the drone has emerged as the wunder-
kind of lawless warmaking, infalli-
bly of one mind with authority, our
totem of unit cohesion, incarnate.
Will matrimony just hasten this re-
nascence of bitter, senseless venery,
and other compulsions of repression?

The jest rides only on coincidence -
is each constraint on the authority
state to be balanced by its escape,
denying us all breath of separation.

   To take up where you left off!

   Without a breath of separation

   your new movement is begun.

   The heart pulses on, developing

   a future. You do not rest

   your lips, your ears, your fingers.

   The field is full of daisies

   and the sun is shining greenly.

   It is a musical development,

   taxing and inspired, before

   the old love has echoed away.

   To the eager suggestion of a new

   face. It will be a great movement!

   begun warmly and without pause.

   You have carried yourself to a new

   world, put off the final applause.

Frank O'Hara
Donald Allen
  editor
Poems Retrieved
Dedicated to Edwin Denby
  Attacca
  1956
City Lights, 2013©

René Burri
Sailors, Beirut
1962

Baguettes

  

Designing conversation

   an expansive category,
   inventing imagery one
   can move in

School of Turner
Scene on the Loire
ca 1830
Ashmolean Collection

Memorial Day

   But to the extent that I can
   understand my own motives ..
   I want to keep the history of
   our generation fresh in my
   mind so that I don't let my-
   self slip - it is so comfor-
   table sometimes, so enter-
   taining - into easy cynicism.
   I want the anger that comes
   with its harsh ironies and
   absurdities, to keep my own
   sense of location from dying
   while I am still capable of
   passion.





 The text is a diary entry
 by a character in a novel
 by a classicist and teach-
 er of distinct stature in
 my experience. Out of con-
 text, it is merely a frag-
 ment of characterisation,
 not the summation it can-
 not be, of external or in-
 ternal conditions. It ad-
 dresses remembrance as if
 conservation were still a
 respectable, and not just
 a nostalgic undertaking.

Edmund Keeley

A Wilderness Called Peace

[Tacitus, Agricola, 98 A.D.]

Simon & Schuster, 1985©

Jack Rans

I think there'll be no last one in

    But fruit still fills our sudden branches,
    The wind still what makes us move.


   
















Nathaniel Perry
Nine Acres
  Grafting Fruit Trees
  [fragment]
American Poetry Review
Copper Canyon Press
2011©

Erin go bragh!

  

  He came back to the sofa. He lifted
  MacMurrough's wine and silently gave
  it into his hand. They listened to
  the night sounds through the window,
  while the mood recouped, repossessed
  them.

  "MacEmm, can I ask you? I don't know
  does it mean .. does it mean any-
  thing with marrying, MacEmm? Doyler 
  and me..

  I don't know, you see..

  I never thought of it before and   then I wondered, is it this way     
  you'd be with a wife? You see, I
  don't know."

                "MacEmm, you haven't brought this

                from England with you, you know.

                It was here anyway. I wasn't the

                first in the Crock's Garden and I

                doubt I'll be the last. I'm sorry

                for the soldier for I doubt I was

                much comfort to him and I hope he

                found better joy where he went.

                

                But you know I wouldn't live that

                way. It will be different, won't

                it?"

                "I hope it will, my dear."

Jamie O'Neill

At Swim, Two Boys

op. cit.

Scribner, 2001©

i      Charlotte Hedley©

iii   The New York Times©

Shall we have Gail Collins or lose this day after all

    Like you, I'll do anything

    to avoid one of our Satur-

    day commute postings, but

    I was prepared to go ahead

    with a blithely nautical

    entry, albeit under penal-

    ty of enlistment. We late-

    ly saw a reader encouraging

    the page to continue our

    coasting on quotations, but

    also to invent a few lines;

    and if one can't say some-

    thing nice about a sailor,

    it would smack of tarring

    him with the brush we re-

    serve for his uses.

   

    What I think we all like a-

    bout our modern writers is

    that they don't make us re-

    member very far back. This

    defies Fitzgerald's Law of

    Second Chances, but it ex-

    plains our wars to a T, not 

    to mention our zombies of

    Presidential aspirations.

    One could go on in this

    vein, but to deny readers

    a chance to relish Gail

    Collins' tracking of such

    an aspirant with his may-

    onnaise jar, groveling

    for a flag to wrap him-

    self in in Iowa, would

    contradict the spirit of

    the Saturday commute. 

    Is there still a Scott

    Walker, we must ask; and

    if so, why?

    

Gail Collins
Rush to Judgment
The New York Times
22 May 2015©