David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: W. S. Merwin: An Appreciation
The psyche is haunted by its own swollen intimacies, Merwin’s poems remind us.
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Posts by: David Biespiel
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Whitman Notebook: Which Is Ahead
Walt Whitman says that to be an American is to be a poet.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Whitman Notebook: Summer Grass
Whatever is undiscovered in “Song of Myself” is in the soil.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 14): “Some Grass Along a Ditch Bank”
…being on the edge of the natural world is like being on the edge of time.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 13): “Letter to Simic from Boulder”
“Wherever you are on earth, you are safe,” writes Richard Hugo. Really?
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 12): “Shine, Perishing Republic”
Vive le resistance déjà vu, you say? Are we only a nation that forgets, a United States of Obliviousness?
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 11): “Skinhead”
Using dramatic monologue, Smith unmasks the skinhead’s anger to fend off threats to his way of life.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 10): “The Gods”
Poetic contemplation typically is a means to container experience, like a still life.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 9): “The City Limits”
[A] nation’s poetry degenerates if it does not embody the language of what is mysterious…
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 8): “Song of the Gourd”
“Song of the Gourd” is like an eye roll at this sort of gusto about leaving the Southland.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Against Hatred
We poets do not believe the world belongs to us. Our existence is a miracle, and yet we know our world is limited.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 7): “Facing It”
There should be no forgetting, much less forgiveness, of what happened during the Vietnam War.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 6): “To Elsie”
Now the battle is joined. I will prosecute my part of it as a writer till the last dog dies…
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 4): “Roosters”
the roosters brace their cruel feet and glare // with stupid eyes / while from their beaks there rise / the uncontrolled, traditional cries.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 2): “Ave Maria”
Mothers of America / let your kids go to the movies!
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 1): “The Idea of Ancestry”
I know / their dark eyes, they know mine.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Suit
It was as if he understood that the authentic must begin in the voice. And through the texture of the voice—its moral and psychological claims—sensory details emerge with absolute authority.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Pale of Vermont
But to become a writer I needed at least to learn about my own superstitions. I needed space in the house to sketch with words. I needed to commit heresies. And those acts had to feel pleasurable.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Something’s Happening Out There
The big crowd stretched form the gold-domed State House to Park Street. I had the urgent feeling that we were part of something. That we counted.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Dugout
So much of politics is symbolic speech in the service of the syncopations of the lives we actually live. But the ways we gather to vote is with our bodies. It’s the dance that goes along with those rhythms.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Primal Talk
One of the thrills of being a writer is becoming aware of the wildness that percolates inside of you. If you’ve learned to listen, you’re able to hear it.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Not That Town
Times like those lead you to believe that writing is, before it’s anything else, about simply getting it straight.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Defeat
It never occurred to me to try to write poems without the guidance of other poets and poems.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Texas Roses
It’s a matter of self-composition: Keep concentrating, type faster—take a breath and hold it—and do it again.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Nighthawks
We live in a moment, we have an experience, and we demand to understand what is happening.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Be Wise, Drink the Wine
Be it Latin or poetry, or whatever it was—I was feeling woozy by then. If I couldn’t love what I was reading, I took it, it was better to have never read at all.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: From the Earth to the Stars Part Two
Our understandings of our experiences are sometimes shapeless. Like shadows, they move on.
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