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Winter Feature 2013
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Feature
- Poets in Person Robert Pinsky from Cambridge, MA
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Poetry
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Essay
Feature > Poetry
Frank Bidart
Frank Bidart's most recent full-length collections of poetry are Metaphysical Dog (2013), Watching the Spring Festival (2008), Star Dust (2005), Desire (1997) and In the Western Night: Collected Poems, 1965-1990, all from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He has won many prizes, including the Wallace Stevens Award and, most recently, the 2007 Bolingen Prize for American Poetry. He teaches at Wellesley College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.from The Fourth Hour Of The Night
Out of scarcity,—
. . .being.
Because, when you were eight, your father
was murdered,
betrayed.
Because the traveler was betrayed by those with
whom he had the right to seek
refuge, the Tatars.
Because the universe then allowed a creature
stronger, taller, more
ruthless than you
to fasten around your neck a thick wooden wheel
impossible
to throw off.
Because at eight your cunning was not equal
to iron-fastened
immense wood.
Because at fourteen the slave outwitted the universe,
tore the wheel from his neck:—
because your neck
carries it still, Scarcity is the mother of being.
*
Hour in which betrayal and slavery
are the great teachers.
Hour in which acquisition
looks like, and for
a moment is, safety.
Hour in which the earth, looking into
a mirror, names what it sees
by the history of weapons.
Hour from which I cannot wake.
Essay
David Rigsbee
On Robert Pinsky
Poetry
Tony Hoagland
His Majesty
Poetry
Erin Belieu
Time Machine