Live Nude Poems

He doesn't avoid his feelings, which I respect . I always wished there were people like him in my crit groups--people who just fucking said what they thought regardless of feelings. That's much easier to deal with, I think, than people who read and try to quietly kiss your ass with gentle words when they really hate your work. That's what criticism is for, pointing out the weaknesses. I admit I'm too nice most of the time, though somewhat less so these days, since I'm no longer teacher material--at least in a university. I think everybody is too nice. Anyway--on to the criticism. fugh The Shampoo (From The Nightingales) by David Wojahn How long it must have been, the girl’s hair, cascading down her shoulders almost to her waist, light brown and heavy as brocade: the story I’m remembering of N’s, remembering as my own hair’s washed and cut, the salt-and-pepper cuneiform to frill my barber’s smock. Arts and Science is expanding. The wall to th...

  from Flashpoint   Yeah. I read a bit of this post by Johnathon Williams in my morning blog constitutional, and liked what I read of Lynette Roberts . I like discovering poets few think of any more ( Keith Douglas anyone? Thanks to Ben Mazer for making me aware) or in some cases ever, so this is a great find for me, and I ordered her work. Lynette Roberts, whose poetry was championed by T. S. Eliot and Robert Graves, might fairly be claimed to be our greatest female war poet, and her work constitutes one of the most imaginative poetic responses to modern war and the home front in the English language. Her first book, Poems, was published in 1944, with a blurb from Eliot, her editor at Faber: "She has, first, an unusual gift for observation and evocation of scenery and place, whether it is in Wales or her native South America; second, a gift for verse construction, influenced by the Welsh tradition, which is evident in her freer verse as well as in stric...

I would have said on the Mule, but I didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea. These are part of the last couple year's work. Poems . Still radio silence until we get moved into the new house, where I will have an entire room full of books. My library, finally.

Hello all of you who are Googling 'praying hands' and finding this site. I can't imagine you're finding what you're looking for. Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani?

another poet I know little about. I saw this poem first on one of the many iterations of Bill Knott's blog. I don't think it's available anywhere on the 'nets, but I hope people read it here and go look up Nye's work, which, what little I've found of it, is remarkable. This poem appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, May 26th, 2006. MATCHES (by Robert Nye) Some matchsticks in a patch of melting tar Held my attention for at least an hour One afternoon when I was rising four. Crouched in the shadow of some willow trees I stared at them and saw the way love sees, And all was close and clear and singular. Three matchsticks in a black hot patch of tar, One spent, one bent, one still a fusilier Standing up proud and perpendicular With fire in his head, my cavalier. Well, I knelt by them on my naked knees, Transfixed as always by simplicities. I loved those lordlings of the molten square, My puny masters stuck in hot black tar, Though only n...

If I didn't have an MFA already in fiction, and if I wasn't thisclose to paying off my loans from those first two times around, I would hunt down Andrew Hudgins and make him (by which I mean ask him politely to) be my teacher. What I like most about this piece is how it switches registers on us gleefully and without apology, from the exquisite bathos in the first two lines, the whole first stanza actually, which dials down to the very earnest final four lines. I would like to write a poem that is funny. Any kind of humor would do, honestly, but I aspire to this kind of poem. Someday. Praying Drunk by Andrew Hudgins Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk. Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks. I ought to start with praise, but praise comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you about the woman whom I taught, in bed, this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form keeps things in order. I hear from her sometimes. Do you? And after love, when I was hungry...

I am caught between the snake and the prey right now. Let's hope no swallowing is involved. Here's a poem which circumstances demanded, though not in the way the poem implies. I just found out that Down Dirty Word nominated it for one of the best of the web anthologies. I appreciate that gesture, Katie and Jim. It wears its spleen on its sleeve, ergo, won't get in. But anyway, here it is: Cutter Between the witching hour and its successor, I caught her with my utility knife in the open closet, drawing a dark rill of blood from her forearm; I watched unsure of what to say or do, frozen, more or less, in the mountain of air separating us. Wise words slipped from my mouth like indigo birds into the caries-colored early evening, supported by nothing I could draw on from reality. In the end, this poem will rise and fall on the relative success of what I should have said, known, thought, or taught. Before. Instead things fall apart as I gra...