Thursday 14 February 2013

Edward Dorn's The Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2012), first selection (Early Poems, 1954-1960)



[from a poem on England...]



...the haggard
diaries of quickly here & there, like a blooded hound
with his leash in his own mouth, ringing
in the articulate air a cultural error.

*

The last gaze at stones in a calamine expanse

wherein dusty snow sifts her tin kiss to

                 tradition

                       here

                                  where

                                                 even Eros would be ill dressed.


 from "Relics from a Polar Cairn"


Today I am a vast dirge.
Today I have not flown....

*

Today I am impatient with small horrors.


from "The Revival"


Oh I love plants but where I am the weather
drives the birds away

*

Whorled, like a univalve shell
into herself,

early to bed, nothing
in her head, here and there


from "The Hide of My Mother"


...all in an enkindled February....

*

...at night too Pocatello wasn't Pocatello but a jewel
the red and the blue and bright amethyst, something you could never narrow down to gas in glass tubes.

*

...he went on anyway describing the possibilities, that's love
in the mist of indifference.

*

Everywhere I am, I feel I am everywhere else.


from "For Ray (the 6th)"


What a shock
to get over the embarrassment of using language.

That's why I write to you every day
I no longer have that tedious care.


the last lines of "The 7th"


As the expression goes, do yourself a favour, and buy Edward Dorn's The Collected Poems directly from the publisher, Carcanet Press. How could you regret it?




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