Last Bender

This a poem of George Oppen’s, a favorite of my friend Randy. I had read Oppen and not had much sympathy for him until Randy showed me this one, in The New Collected Poems. But all of that is for another post. For now I just want to put this poem up. Psalm   Veritas [...]

Frank O’Hara was not the first poet I read, but he was the first poet i read whom I felt was speaking directly to me in and through a world I knew intimately and in a language I knew how to speak. I didn’t need to analyze, translate or interpret what he was saying; he [...]

Seems to me the filthy old 2nd Earl of Rochester deserves to have a female companion. It is obviously a little more decorous but I have no doubts about where the fountain lies where rage is cooled. The Disappointment by Aphra Behn (1640?-1689) 1. One Day the Amarous Lisander, By an impatient Passion sway’d, Surpris’d [...]

Here’s a smutty tidbit from the Second Earl of Rochester: So a proud bitch does lead about  Of humble curs the amorous rout,  Who most obsequiously do hunt  The savory scent of salt-swoln cunt.  Some power more patient now relate  The sense of this surprising fate.  Gods! that a thing admired by me  Should fall [...]

James Dufficy is an old friend who lives in London. He can observe the farce that is america from afar, or across a puddle anyway. I envy all of my friends who live overseas. Many years ago I lived in Australia, and after that New Zealand, in an effort to escape Ronald Reagan and the first George [...]

Like most people I found my way to John Skelton because of Robert Graves. Because Skelton wore a gown embroidered with the name Calliope and kept a pet sow, and because he invoked the triple goddess on occasion, Graves was convinced he was a muse poet, which he might well have been. Skelton was a [...]

I have been reading Blake for many years now. When I feel like cheering myself up, when I want to know that sane people have existed in other times, I read him. All winter my idea of a good Sunday was that I wouldn’t open my wallet or take out my car key and that [...]