Poetry 191.3 (December 2007)

Another month, another Poetry. Highlight of this issue was, again, a prose piece: Clive James's witheringly appreciative dismantling of Ezra Pound's Cantos. And yet... and yet...

David Orr's "The Train" sprung something loose in me, not a poem -- certainly not as it is -- but an idea at least. What to do with:

Those little flashes of... nothing, of insignificance -- standing on the platform in New Brunswick; reading in the bathroom in Waikiki while my son doesn't sleep in his bed -- that make up my memories.

And though presented in an article on Italian poetry (that accompanied a selection), there was this little gem, by Patrizia Cavalli:

If you were
to knock now on my door
and if you took your glasses off
and I took off mine which are just like yours
and if you then entered into my mouth
unafraid of kisses that are not alike
and said to me: "My love,
what has happened?" -- it would be
a successful bit of theater.

My god...