Rob Schlegel

is pointless, my son says. If you write that down
I'll kill you. I fear he fears
the attention I give it. I used to drive
till he fell asleep. Ten minutes, then silence

the river knit with ice. In tonight's movie
a boat swerves against bullets.
He sings the movie's theme. I kill you,
you kill me
. Plot against all

that is good. Good for whom?
I know every word that rhymes
with my assailant's first name. It's difficult
to achieve real-world fear

in a movie. My son crawls into bed.
There's nothing I need more than you, I say.
Not true, he says. The rudder turns
in my throat. Every sleep he needs me less.
from the journal POETRY
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Louise Glück's Icy Precision

"Some days, and in the dark intervals between days, it seems to me that Glück’s preoccupations are what poetry is for, that poems are confrontations with the void. If we’re on a moving walkway approaching the void, we can ignore it, avoid all thoughts of it, for only so long."

via THE NEW YORK TIMES
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Shara Lessley on Li-Young Lee's "My Father, in Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud"

 
"The more I studied 'My Father, in Heaven...,' the more I appreciated the stanzas’ complexity, pattern-making, and interiority, and how the poem reflected the lyric’s capacity as a communal art. I knew this is what I wanted. Whether I could write anything of dimension was uncertain. But in Lee’s work I discovered textures of energy, music, and intimacy I hoped to emulate—even if I couldn’t predict my effort’s outcome."
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