JGB's Fall 2017 Intro to Creative Writing
Posted in Poetry on Sep 26th, 2017
God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made sing his being simply by being the thing it is: stone and tree and sky, man who sees and sings and wonders why God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he’s made, means a storm of peace. Think of the atoms inside the stone. Think […]
Posted in Poetry on Sep 26th, 2017
“I tore myself out of my own mother’s womb. There was no other way to arrive in this world. A terrified midwife named me Monster And left me in the pine woods with only the moon. My mother’s blood dripped from my treed head. In a dream my mother came to me and said […]
Posted in Poetry on Sep 25th, 2017
From Poetry: Introduction: The Golden Shovel BY DON SHARE The Golden Shovel is a poetic form readers might not — yet — be familiar with. It was devised recently by Terrance Hayes in homage to Gwendolyn Brooks, whose centenary year this is. The last words of each line in a Golden Shovel poem are, in order, words from a […]
Posted in Poetry on Sep 21st, 2017
Those Winter Sundays Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, […]
Posted in Poetry on Sep 21st, 2017
Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to. At rest on a stair landing, They feel it Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship, Though the swell is gentle. And deep in mirrors They rediscover The face of the boy as he […]
Posted in Poetry on Sep 21st, 2017
At last he sleeps, in fits and half-dreamed fears, that love, and work, and life are passing vapor, and all the wings he made, he’s made of paper. In “About Suffering,” Dave Lucas does an amazing job of using Icarus and his father to represent the tribulations of mankind in everyday life. We are bold […]
Posted in Poetry on Sep 21st, 2017
My mother never forgave my father for killing himself, especially at such an awkward time and in a public park, that spring when I was waiting to be born. She locked his name in her deepest cabinet and would not let him out, though I could hear him thumping. When I came down from the […]
Posted in Poetry on Sep 21st, 2017
My mother never forgave my father for killing himself, especially at such an awkward time and in a public park, that spring when I was waiting to be born. She locked his name in her deepest cabinet and would not let him out, though I could hear him thumping. When I came down from the […]
Posted in Poetry on Sep 21st, 2017
Men at Forty Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to. At rest on a stair landing, They feel it Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship, Though the swell is gentle. And deep in mirrors They rediscover The face of the […]
Posted in Poetry on Sep 20th, 2017
Autumn Day Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by. Now overlap the sundials with your shadows, and on the meadows let the wind go free. Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine; grant them a few more warm transparent days, urge them on to fulfillment then, and press the final […]
Posted in Poetry on Sep 20th, 2017
The Heaven of Animals Here they are. The soft eyes open. If they have lived in a wood It is a wood. If they have lived on plains It is grass rolling Under their feet forever. Having no souls, they have come, Anyway, beyond their knowing. Their instincts wholly bloom And they rise. The soft […]
Posted in Poetry on Jul 1st, 2017
The wind flung a magpie away and a black- Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly… — Ted Hughes, “Wind” This poem is full of remarkable metaphors: a house “far out at sea all night,” the woods “crashing through darkness,” the “skyline a grimace,” the house ringing “like some fine green goblet in the […]
Posted in Poetry on Jul 1st, 2016
Men at Forty Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to. At rest on a stair landing, They feel it Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship, Though the swell is gentle. And deep in mirrors They rediscover The face of the […]