June 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.
The Old Poet Shuns Prestige
He has not played their games.
He does not. He will not.
The cost of it is too much.
He has more to lose than gain.
It is enough for him
to come home to the silence
at the heart of his art
in the harboring darkness.
It is enough for him
to stay here where he owes
only his poems and his
poems owe only him.
Where the Old Poet Finds Poetry
Where he walks, the darkness
walks with him. He does not
mean to lose his way.
Somewhere another star
burns out. He won't know it
until he, too, is gone.
He shrugs and shuffles on.
Wind moves the moaning trees.
He doesn't hear the sound
of death. What he sees
is a shimmering moon
on water. Where he walks,
God walks too. When God talks,
he keeps that for a poem.
©2015 Tom Montag