Rossetti’s Notebook (1862-1869)
Poetry - “Nonetheless, a worm/had eaten its way through any number/of Gabriel’s lines, some of his best./He had to reconstruct them from memory,/or compose them anew.” 4/19/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/press-la-ghirlandata-960x683.jpg)
The Creases Between Utterances: Jenny Xie’s “The Rupture Tense”
Criticism - “Whether [Jenny] Xie’s volume was long in the making or came out in a fiery burst (maybe both, by parts?), it is a work of substance, worthy of its current high reputation.” 4/14/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/zoo-monkey-TUdM4Rw67W4-unsplash-1-960x640.jpg)
Let It Be Known
Poetry - “On its dead claws and back, mottled and plain,/from a long beach whose gulls roost on an edge,/Inscrutable.” 4/12/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/24848098973_a6ef45613d_o-960x636.jpg)
“I ask your forgiveness; I am a mountain tiger”
Poetry - “Why does she ask forgiveness?/For what and from whom?/Why does she call herself/a mountain tiger?” 4/5/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_Ginevra_de_Benci_-_Google_Art_Project-906x960.jpg)
Edgar Kunz’s “Tap Out” and “Fixer”
Criticism - “Edgar Kunz, the author of Tap Out and Fixer, does not refer to himself specifically as blue collar, proletarian, or working class. Well-meaning others, such as mentor Edward Hirsch, do so, referring to Tap Out as ‘gutsy, tough-minded, working-class poems of memory and initiation.'” 3/31/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/kunz-960x720.jpg)
Life Cycle of the Cabbage White Butterfly
Poetry - “Examining for mixed motives the flaws/That turned their city-cousins ash-/Grey. She labels one Snow-in-Ghana,/As though she doesn’t trust her own desire.” 3/29/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/Pieris.rapae_.mounted-960x609.jpg)
The Return
Poetry - “I am alive and you’re alive, and hope exists,/but I have to bid farewell to these words of mine,/which I will never shout, because I’m but a man. “ 3/22/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/table-wood-house-chair-floor-equipment-1341397-pxhere.com_-960x640.jpg)
On Arthur Sze’s “The Silk Dragon II”
Criticism - “Whatever one may say about the People’s Republic of China today, it once offered the model of the poet-emperor, as well as poets employed in political life, wedding governance to lyric spirit.” 3/17/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/7397.jpg-960x662.webp)
The Indian and Draw Near, White Man
Poetry - “And working together, what might we become?/citizens of a single kingdom./you could find it all in the palm of your hand/alongside Indian, yellow and black.” 3/15/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/IMG_2023-960x724.jpg)
Walking the Butter Mill Trail
Poetry - “I sometimes think I don’t belong here/in this wood–that the tree’s knots/are frowns grown for me, or the leaf crunch/is a worm cracking a crass joke at my expense.” 3/8/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/6590235797_f2f621bfd4_b-960x720.jpg)
Turkey Buzzard
Poetry - “Here on a narrow one-lane/overgrown with cattails and ivy/the circle of turkey buzzards draws closer.” 3/1/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/IMG_0755-960x720.jpg)
Bianca Stone, What Is Otherwise Infinite
Criticism - “By that token, perhaps Bianca Stone is just the poet for our times. Her verses wrestle with a dirty angel, one that bites and kicks. There is no snow-white falcon in her pages. But she does not quit.” 2/25/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/FI1JwdfWUAAL_6m-960x540.jpeg)
Show and Tell
Poetry - “In the actual, from which another life/Is straining to burst, to set out in navigation,/Or be swallowed by demons in the leaves.” 2/19/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/aspen_leaves__study_i_by_danieljbutler_dgdivgi-fullview-960x637.jpg)
Smart Fish Don’t Bite
Poetry - “One of these days,/the guy with the rod won’t be so kind./This is why we hear about the liars,/hypocrites and crooks like Spiro Agnew,/Richard Nixon, Jimmy Swaggart,/Bernie Madoff, Sam Bankman-Fried…” 2/16/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/image-5.png)
Journey Through Mountains
Poetry - “So many stars and mountains, crests and sky,/Are we not fools to think that we can know/What underlies such intricate designs?” 2/9/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/Xia_Gui_-_Twelve_Views_from_a_Thatched_Hut_-_Detail_2-2-960x412.jpg)
Lisa Olstein’s Dream Apartment
Criticism - “The Dream Apartment is no Barbie’s Dream House. It is rather an abode of opaque and backlit, sometimes hard-edged reverie.” 2/7/2024
![](https://cdn.merionwest.com/app/uploads/Dream-Apartment-cover-e1708025804660-960x660.jpeg)