August 2015
Poetry is a lonely business, but I have a friend who plays guitar, and when I play bass with him, I find community. My most recent book is In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013 and I've had recent poems in Hummingbird, Atticus Review, Hamilton Stone Review, and other literary magazines. I'm honored to serve as managing editor of the Lorine Niedecker Monograph Series, What Region?. I blog as The Middlewesterner (www.middlewesterner.com), and have put up at least five little poems a week since mid-2008.
Love and Death
Love and death, I say, are what
poetry is made of. Love
of mother, father. The chaste
love of sister, brother. Then
there's one's love of one's lover,
with whom you make the sweetest
noises, without whom you could
not face your wretched excess.
Death? Death tears by taking from,
removing those we love one
by one, blessing little but
our vain, empty, stupid
attempts at verse. Yet somehow
death leaves us what love endured.
©2015 Tom Montag