Category Archives: Anthology

My collected writings and those of family members.

Sharon Olds: ‘Nothing False Will Be Spoken’

Posted on April 16, 2023 by JMN

I traversed Sharon Olds’s selection of poems in Poetry (April 2023) fresh in the morning and they entered me fluently, with almost no friction. It’s a rare and wonderful reading experience where POMAG fare is concerned. This has happened to … Continue reading →

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If You Believe in ‘Random’ Words, Reconsider

Posted on April 8, 2023 by JMN

Programming code as I understand it is language that tells a computer what to do. It has customarily been written by humans. I’ve written it. Code has to be very literal and deliberate.The machine, traditionally, is clueless as a stump. … Continue reading →

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Code Snaps for Lluis

Posted on March 31, 2023 by JMN

My Catalan grandson works for a company that makes flight simulator software. He’s experiencing the headaches of integrating C++ enhancements into decades-old legacy code written in Fortran. He complains of the lack of notes in the old code whereby programmers … Continue reading →

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Ann Lauterbach’s ‘Blue Door’: It’s Open

Posted on March 27, 2023 by JMN

THE BLUE DOOR(Ann Lauterbach, Poetry March 2023) The obligatory cancels its strophe. Let me get a grip,and begin in this other patch where the air is. “I caught a whiff of poem on the wind straightaway, which is an exceedingly … Continue reading →

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Ann Lauterbach’s ‘Door’: Trouble Me, Poet

Posted on March 20, 2023 by JMN

A noun or pronoun, with a participle in agreement, may be put in the ablative to define the time or circumstances of an action. This construction is called the Ablative Absolute… The Ablative Absolute is an adverbial modifier of the … Continue reading →

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‘Again and Ever’: Richard Deming Teaches at Yale

Posted on March 15, 2023 by JMN

Reading what writers who identify as poets say about verse can be waftish and atomized like verse itself. Straight talk doesn’t go with the territory. Richard Deming introduces the Poetry – March 2023 portfolio celebrating Ann Lauterbach with a 1-page … Continue reading →

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Try It My Way

Posted on March 13, 2023 by JMN

Ladies and gentlemen (grant me this antiquated mode of address), we have much in common. We all have nipples. We all have equivalencies of kit in our genital wheelhouses. There’s a comical, often derisory cliché of the (rare) male striving … Continue reading →

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Trigger Me, Poet

Posted on March 6, 2023 by JMN

Poetry March 2023 has arrived in my box. Jenny George powers the issue to a strong start with a poem whose title, unusually, helps read it. Here are the first 4 of its 11 lines: A snake lies in the … Continue reading →

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To Be or Not to Be That, Is the Question

Posted on February 22, 2023 by JMN

You’ve been punctuated! In my title, moving the pause (caesura) signaled by a comma turns Hamlet’s proposition into something different. Whatever “that” may be, being it or not being it is what’s now in play. The New York Times publishes … Continue reading →

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Can This Be Poetry? It’s Direct, Clever and Fun!

Posted on February 20, 2023 by JMN

Poetry, February 2023, celebrates William J. Harris (still living). Reading the issue’s portfolio of Harris’s poems gave me some laugh-out-loud moments. Here are two (in full): On Wearing EarsAs long as peoplecontinue to wearearsthere won’tbe muchpeace and quietin this world. … Continue reading →

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