Here in a blue bowl, the delicate light
of a Venetian hour, the ambient hues of narrowing.
When we toured the Doge's closets,
when we thumbed his cloisonné, my replete One,
what joy the harrowing marquetry of details,
Oh pity the dead their encumbrances!
Once, in a cold subaltern rain, the navy flocked
like patterns in a marble wall that alternate
as migraine stutters through the awful
cornice of a mind's embrasures. Yes. Just that. Just
before the hesitations of a wave's lip
murmuring its religious dicta, the anachronous putti
aswarm in their immaculate perspective,
hauled up in that heavenly blue baldachin of plaster.
O pity these confections, these astute everlasting.
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Spring Feature 2014
-
Feature
- Kurt Brown A Photo Tribute
- Kurt Brown Excerpts from his "Notebook"
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Poetry
- Laure-Anne Bosselaar
- Lee Briccetti
- Wyn Cooper
- Stephen Dunn
- Richard Garcia
- Janlori Goldman
- Andrey Gritsman
- Kamiko Hahn
- Steve Huff
- Meg Kearney
- Eugenia Leigh
- Thomas Lux
- Laura McCullough
- Christopher Merrill
- Kamilah Aisha Moon
- Martha Rhodes
- David Rothman
- Harold Schechter
- Charles Simic
- Tree Swenson
- Charles Harper Webb
- Marty Williams
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Essay
- David RigsbeeOn Kurt Brown, An Appreciation
Feature > Poetry
Tree Swenson
Tree Swenson is the Executive Director of the Seattle writers center Hugo House. She previously spent ten years as Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets in New York. Her work in the literary arts began with co-founding Copper Canyon Press, where she was Publisher and Executive Director for twenty years. She also served as Director of Programs at the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is a former AWP Board President.
On Kurt Brown's "Of Lucie Brock-Broido": An Appreciation
All of the poems in Kurt Brown's book Sincerest Flatteries show how deeply he has read, studied, and inhabited the work of other poets. That was obvious to anyone who talked to him about poetry. This book shows that he reveled in the subtle distinctions of many poets whose work he loved, understanding their characteristic sounds and sensibilities well enough to produce a convincing echo. Sincerest Flatteries mirrors the style of 24 poets in pieces that are part imitation, part homage, part conversation, part parody, part argument, and wholly brilliant.
His poem "Of Lucie Brock-Broido" reflects that poet's vocabulary, her syntax, her gestures, her quirks, and her obsessions. Brown has made a poem that might pass as Brock-Broido's on a first casual reading, yet underneath the stylistic surface, it's one that only Kurt Brown could have written. He produced poems in the style of the other poets named in the collection just as deftly as this one. The variety of poets he has selected is vast, from Mary Oliver to John Ashbery, from C.K. Williams to Jean Valentine. For all the range of poetic voices, only Kurt Brown would have had the devotion to absorb them all accurately enough to produce work that blends such levity with out-and-out adoration.
All of the poems in Kurt Brown's book Sincerest Flatteries show how deeply he has read, studied, and inhabited the work of other poets. That was obvious to anyone who talked to him about poetry. This book shows that he reveled in the subtle distinctions of many poets whose work he loved, understanding their characteristic sounds and sensibilities well enough to produce a convincing echo. Sincerest Flatteries mirrors the style of 24 poets in pieces that are part imitation, part homage, part conversation, part parody, part argument, and wholly brilliant.
His poem "Of Lucie Brock-Broido" reflects that poet's vocabulary, her syntax, her gestures, her quirks, and her obsessions. Brown has made a poem that might pass as Brock-Broido's on a first casual reading, yet underneath the stylistic surface, it's one that only Kurt Brown could have written. He produced poems in the style of the other poets named in the collection just as deftly as this one. The variety of poets he has selected is vast, from Mary Oliver to John Ashbery, from C.K. Williams to Jean Valentine. For all the range of poetic voices, only Kurt Brown would have had the devotion to absorb them all accurately enough to produce work that blends such levity with out-and-out adoration.
Of Lucie Brock-Broido
Poetry
Stephen Dunn
On Kurt Brown...
Poetry
Thomas Lux
At the Blue Gates
Poetry
Charles Simic
Fisherman