The hide-and-seek muse : annotations of contemporary poetry

303 Pages·2013·1.33 MB·English

by  Spaar

THE HIDE-AND-SEEK MUSE:
ANNOTATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY
BY
LISA RUSS SPAAR
INTRODUCED BY
NICK FLYNN
THE HIDE-AND-SEEK MUSE:
ANNOTATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY
BY
LISA RUSS SPAAR
INTRODUCED BY
NICK FLYNN
books by Lisa Russ Spaar
Vanitas, Rough
All That Mighty Heart: London Poems
Satin Cash
The Land of Wandering
Blue Venus
Acquainted with the Night: Insomnia Poems
Glass Town
Blind Boy on Skates
Cellar
books by Drunken Boat Media
Radha Says: Last Poems by Reetika Vazirani (2010)
Copyright ©2013 by Drunken Boat Media All rights reserved under International and Pan-
American Copyright Convention. Published in the United States of America by Drunken Boat
Media, division of Drunken Boat, international online journal of the arts
[http://www.drunkenboat.com]. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in
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please write: Drunken Boat 119 Main St., Chester, CT 06412 or email:
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Cover art from photograph “Lung” donated and used by permission of Allyson Clay.
Cover Design by Claire Zoghb.
Interior Book Design by Bailey Lewis.
Copyediting and proofreading by David Harrison Horton, Managing Editor, and Ravi Shankar,
Executive Director of Drunken Boat.
These essays appeared in earlier form in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Arts & Academe and
Brainstorm blogs. This book’s publication and promotion were made possible in part by grants
from the University of Virginia, Central Connecticut State University, from our Board of Advisors
and from our loyal readers who contributed during our Kickstarter campaign, made possible by
Director of Development, Michele Battiste.
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Printed by Book Mobile [Bookmobile.com] and available at [Amazon.com]
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Spaar, Lisa Russ. “The Hide-and-Seek Muse:
Annotations of Contemporary Poetry.”
Drunken Boat Media (2013)
ISBN# 978-0-9882416-0-2 (pbk.) ISBN# 978-0-9882416-1-9 (ebook) Drunken Boat ISSN #1537-
2812
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction by Nick Flynn
Preface & Acknowledgments
Whitman & Dickinson in Our Space
•
The Hide-and-Seek Muse
Edward Hirsch, “To Poetry”
David Baker, “Swift”
Brenda Hillman, “In High Desert Under the Drones”
Stephen Cushman, “List List” & “Time Management”
Mary Szybist, “Happy Ideas”
•
Spring & All: Poetry & the Seasons
Carol Muske-Dukes, “To a Soldier”
Laura Kasischke, “March”
L.S. Klatt, “Hearsay” & “First Frost on Windshield”
Jennifer Atkinson, “Lemon Tree”
•
Words in Love
Jennifer Chang, “Love after Love”
Randall Couch, “Pressed”
Cate Marvin, “Let the Day Perish”
Suzanne Buffam, “Happy Hour”
Monica Ferrell, “The Date”
•
Verse’s Rich Web Portals
Michael Rutherglen, “Went Viral” & “Cursor on a Chinese Poem”
Kyle Dargan, “Note Blue or Poem for Eighties Babies”
Kate Daniels, “Disjunction”
Jennifer Key, “Delay at Washington National”
Debra Allbery, “Of Evanescence”
•
Poetic Bloodlines
David Wojahn, “In the Attic”
Amy Newman, “While Sylvia Plath Studies The Joy of Cooking On Her
Honeymoon In Benidorm, Spain, Delmore Schwartz Reclines In
the Front Seat Of His Buick Roadmaster” & “After Sylvia Plath
Kicks Out Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop Watches Idly From A
Balcony In Rio As Police Chase A Thief Over Picturesque Hills”
Heather McHugh, “As Authors Can’t Perfect One Agent”
Paul Legault, from The Emily Dickinson Reader
•
Some Musings on Poetic Self-Portraiture
Eric Pankey, “The Problem with the First Person” & “Beneath Venus”
John Poch, “Echo”
William Thompson, “Stutterer” & “The Prayer Rope Knot”
Kazim Ali, from “The River Cloud Sutra”
Allison Seay, “Town of Unspeakable Things”
•
Illness & Poetry
Joanna Klink, “The Graves”
Mark Jarman, “Oblivion”
Alice Fulton, “After the Angelectomy”
Jill Bialosky, “Teaching My Son to Drive”
Kiki Petrosino, “Ragweed”
•
Dementia’s Commonplace Book
Claudia Emerson, “Ephemeris”
Meghan O’Rourke, “In Defense of Pain”
Michael Collier, “Laelaps”
Erika Meitner, “YIZKER BUKH”
•
The Ecstatic Stereoscopy of September
Charles Wright, “Ancient of Days” & “Pack Rats”
Larissa Szporluk, “Vanished Harvest” & “Bludgeon-Man”
R. T. Smith, “Orchard of One”
Gabriel Fried, “Ends Well”
Jane Hirshfield, “Bruises,” “The Promise,” & “Sometimes the Heart is a
Shallow Autumn River”
•
Poets in the Print Shop
Brian Teare, “Hello”
Srikanth Reddy, from Voyager
Bin Ramke, “Cloud as an Open Set Maps Onto the Hillside” & “Hausdorff
Spaces”
Hank Lazer, Two Poems (N18P60 & N18P64)
Ye Chun, from Map
•
Cabin Fever: Winter Thoughts on the Place of Poetry
Carl Phillips, “My Meadow, My Twilight”
Ravi Shankar, “Breast Feeding at the Blue Mosque”
Talvikki Ansel, “Glaze”
Mary Ann Samyn, “My Life in Heaven”
Maurice Manning, “Provincial Thought”
•
Biographical Notes
Copyright Acknowledgments