Good to know it's not just poets
Barbara Ehrenreich's latest column: Before You Write That Book...
Unfortunately, I'm not doing much to support the literary arts myself lately. As some of you may have noticed, it's March and I haven't added a single poem to the list I promised to keep. At this particular juncture, I just can't afford the journals, so I've been reading books instead. And with things being what they are, not terribly many of those. But this is what graduate school is for, right?
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I did go to bed with Frank O'Hara for a little while this evening.
To the Harbormaster
I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the form of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
