Category Archives: Anthology

My collected writings and those of family members.

The Poem of al-Khansā’

Posted on August 12, 2023 by JMN

Al-Khansā’, born near the end of the 6th century A.D., is renowned for elegies she composed for her slain brothers Mu^āwiya and Saẖr. Line 5, midway through the poem, is notable for the brusque transition to aggrieved resignation leading into … Continue reading →

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Late-Breaking from on High

Posted on August 7, 2023 by JMN

It may be that God doesn’t talk only to Their anointed few; I’ve had word from that Rascal myself. Here’s what I believe They said: I DIDN’T CREATE LIGHT WITH A THIRD-PERSON COMMAND AS YOU HAVE PROPOSED IN YOUR LITTLE … Continue reading →

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Christian Wiman: ‘Ars Poetica’

Posted on August 5, 2023 by JMN

2.These lost and charnel thoughtsless thoughts than bits of stunI suddenly find myself among;that are the me I am when I am notsleeked to reason and pacific despairspeak to me of a pain that saves,some endmost ear to shrive the … Continue reading →

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A Crestomathy of Crescendos

Posted on July 25, 2023 by JMN

From prose pieces published in Poetry, July/August 2023: Douglas Kearney, “On Spite: Folly Comes Daily” … Kit, who pokes at poetry with a long sharp stick to make certain it’s dead before skulking past it… *** Elisa Gabbert, “On Self-Pity: … Continue reading →

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Kevin Young: ‘Usher’

Posted on July 22, 2023 by JMN

…The dead wake for nothing.Or wake & nothingis still there. The wide meadow. Deep grass.Distant ships.The far fires Only glimpsedfrom a distance.Nothing looks back, blinks twice.…(Kevin Young, from “Usher”) That “blinks twice” produced a red-letter reading moment for me, a … Continue reading →

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Saskia Hamilton: Escapement

Posted on July 18, 2023 by JMN

… And yetthe escapement enforces its circleof unbreakable numbers… Sakia Hamilton’s verse “From ‘All Souls’” in Poetry, July/August 2023 refers to a pocket watch in a cupboard. Dancing with a technical term in a poem is a wily achievement. Words … Continue reading →

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A Reader Is a Buyer

Posted on July 15, 2023 by JMN

The horror vacui principle applies to messaging. A logodivergent text provokes suck-up from the reader’s own psychic aquifer. Demands are made, surmises enacted, leaps taken. A lucky text seduces its audience of one into a slow-reading entanglement. Is it the … Continue reading →

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Bradley Trumpfheller: ‘It Is Mica and Night Honey’

Posted on July 14, 2023 by JMN

There are poems whose gist I imperfectly apprehend. Putting such a poem into an acquired language can be a form of beaconing for bounce-back from latent referents. It’s therapy for bafflement. The drill induces closer confrontation with the text, on … Continue reading →

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Rowan Ricardo Phillips: ‘We Are Crowded by Presence…’

Posted on July 11, 2023 by JMN

Who is this Phillips person? — I wondered after reading aloud what had looked like a forbiddingly long poem in Poetry, July/August 2023. (The biographical note tells me what I dread knowing: He’s a distinguished professor of English!) The poem, … Continue reading →

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When the Work Be Done, Then Rest Will Come

Posted on July 9, 2023 by JMN

My title sounds like a hoary aphorism distilling virtuous wisdom passed down through the ages in simple, God-fearing households. But I just made it up. The “aphorism” models usage gone all but missing from English. An encounter with it in … Continue reading →

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