This ocean, humiliating in its dis… Tougher than anything. No one listens to poetry. The oce… Does not mean to be listened to.… Or crash of water. It means

Hush now baby don’t say a word Mama’s going to buy you a mocking… The third Joyful mystery. The joy that descends on you when…

The trouble with comparing a poet with a radio is that radios don’€™t develop scar-tissue. The tubes burn out, or with a transistor, which most souls are, the battery or diagram burns o...

A Translation for Steve Jonas… Along East River and the Bronx The kids were singing, showing off… At the wheel, at oil, the rawhide,… Ninety thousand miners were drawin…

If the diamond ring turns brass Mama’s going to buy you a looking… Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound an… going on a picnic together when th… University of Pennsylvania

These letters are to be as temporary as our poetry is to be permanent. They will establish the bulk, the wastage that my sour-stomached contemporaries demand to help them swallow and...

Your joke Is like a lake That lies there without any though… And sees Dead seas

Coming at an end, the lovers Are exhausted like two swimmers.… Did it end? There is no telling.… Like an ocean with the dizzy proce… From which two can emerge exhauste…

A dead starfish on a beach He has five branches Representing the five senses Representing the jokes we did not… Call the earth flat

Listen, you silk-hearted bastard, I said in the bar last night, You wear those dream clothes Like a swan out of water. Listen, you wool-feathered bastard…

A Postscript for Marianne Moo… No one exactly knows Exactly how clouds look in the sky Or the shape of the mountains belo… Or the direction in which fish swi…

What can I say to you, darling, When you ask me for help? I do not even know the future Or even what poetry We are going to write.

The bartender Has eyes the color of ripe apricot… Easy to please as a cash register… Enjoys art and good jokes. Squish

When he first brought his music in… He was absurdly confident. Even o… shapeless fires And the jukebox groaning of the da… Some of them would hear him. In t…

When the trains come into strange… The citizens come out to meet the… I love you, Jack, he said I love you, Jack, he said At another station.