Myth of the Bear
Nathan McClain
That winter, snow dusted the hemlock, each spiked cone.
Snow salted my hair—it was that long, that winter.
A black bear cub curled beside me, hers a dark, honeyed sleep.
If this were a fable, one could sleep the whole winter

without interruption, that’s how long it felt as the bear cub
and I kept each other warm. She had no clamp, no shackle
or trap marks in her fur, of course I checked. Carefully,
I peeled fat, gray ticks from her back, but I was gentle

then. Sometimes it was my turn to wade
waist-deep into the river, and that was fine. If we were
lucky, there were fish, though no fish would
consider this luck. Sometimes the bear cub seemed to stalk

a smell, sniffing, I assumed her mother, but it could
have been anything, that winter. You wonder what
there is to learn here, other than this is not a fable.
Other than, whenever I woke, the bear was always a bear again.
from the book PREVIOUSLY OWNED / Four Way Books
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During and after the writing of "Scale," I thought I'd only ever write poems about fatherhood, or absence. Now, granted, as I say this, both subjects are present in the poem, ha ha, but this poem reminded me of the power of allegory, story, figuration, especially as "Scale" was often straightforward in its approach to its materials. The poem taught me about the closeness of clarity and mystery, how each could impart its own nuance, and really, that I had more within me to explore. But also, that I didn't have to feel pressure to explain everything, even to myself.
Informal color photograph of poet Charles Simic leaning on a deck railing
"In Memoriam: Charles Simic"

"He draws on the dark satire of Central Europe, the sensual rhapsody of Latin America, and the fraught juxtapositions of French Surrealism, to create a style like nothing else in American literature. Yet Mr. Simic’s verse remains recognizably American—not just in its grainy, hard-boiled textures, straight out of 1940s film noir, but in the very confidence of its eclecticism."

via THE NEW YORK TIMES
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Cover of the issue of New Humanist in which Brian Henry's translation appears
What Sparks Poetry:
 Brian Henry on Tomaž Šalamun's "Sutra"

"Though Šalamun would leave the interview format behind, he continued to ask many questions in his work, sometimes building poems upon a series of questions, as in the poem featured here. Although the title, 'Sutra,' implies the imparting of wisdom or knowledge, Šalamun was more interested in the interplay between the questions and answers than in satisfying the expectations of a conventional sutra."
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