Last Bender

OK, I know what this is. A torch song. A wounded bello through the dionysian wilderness of longing and pain for lost love. I don’t disown it; I hope I never have to write it again; I have not lost my love for the language of flowers; the erotic sublime may be insufficient but no [...]

George Oppen was poorly served by early collected and selected editions of his poetry. I could never get a toe-hold on his work through those publications. But the 2002 New Directions edition, The New Collected Poems, edited by Michael Davidson, changed all that. Here were all the poems published as he had originally published them, [...]

Idealist   Take the way of hips, of lips, of detergent hair, Of delinquent suggestion pursued in the dark Of an ill kept bar ringing with pinball, the thwock Of darts and pool balls sinking into pockets. Find on the bathroom wall, swimming in a sweat Of ammonia and vomit, the story of a Name, [...]