January 2016
A native of Johnstown, NY, I've taught writing and literature and writing at Ripon College in Wisconsin since 1987.
I've published six collections of poetry, including Stutter Monk and Second Wind; I also co-edited (with Kate Sontag) the essay anthology After Confession: Poetry as Confession. Essays, reviews, and individual poems have appeared widely, both in print and online. In recent years I've spent nearly as much time on photography as poetry. A gallery of my work is online here: http://instagram.com/doctorjazz
I've published six collections of poetry, including Stutter Monk and Second Wind; I also co-edited (with Kate Sontag) the essay anthology After Confession: Poetry as Confession. Essays, reviews, and individual poems have appeared widely, both in print and online. In recent years I've spent nearly as much time on photography as poetry. A gallery of my work is online here: http://instagram.com/doctorjazz
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Editor's Note: In his submission letter to me, David wrote: "[Here are] some sections of a series of poems I've been working on. I have been calling them sestets, because they're all six-lines long. In them I am trying out some new things, most notably letting more allusion in than I usually do. I'm also allowing myself very long lines, as you'll see, and (for me) a greater directness of statement. In a way I am consciously paying tribute to some of my poetic masters, with quotations, epigraphs, and ideas taken as prompts for my own meditations."
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Insomniac Moon
The time was neither wrong nor right.
—Frost, "Acquainted with the Night"
Last night's moon was dramatic—near full, teasing
and testing the high clouds, shadowing the bedroom wall,
pale light swelling and fading all night. Worth it
to stay awake late, counting slow pulses of that lunar clock.
How easily any dream fades, like salt dropped in water.
"A dream," said Magritte, "intended to wake you up."
The Sin of Sins
"How strange to think of giving up all ambition!"
wrote Bly, way back in the fullness of his hungry years.
How many snowflakes counted and melted since then?
Still, the smell of baking bread never gets old,
or strange like last century's clothing. "If we can stay
out of jail," said Stafford's mother, "God will be proud of us."
Thinking About Love and Marriage While Listening to Old Blues Records
I can't decide if this makes no sense at all or the very deepest kind—
all those I'ma gonna cut yous and My man he done me wrongs:
they shouldn't make me feel giddy glinting pleasure, but there you are.
Just last night in the kitchen, stirring pasta while my wife chopped fruit,
we sang Married man's a fool to think that his wife love nobody else but him
as we have for forty years and counting on our anniversary.
The time was neither wrong nor right.
—Frost, "Acquainted with the Night"
Last night's moon was dramatic—near full, teasing
and testing the high clouds, shadowing the bedroom wall,
pale light swelling and fading all night. Worth it
to stay awake late, counting slow pulses of that lunar clock.
How easily any dream fades, like salt dropped in water.
"A dream," said Magritte, "intended to wake you up."
The Sin of Sins
"How strange to think of giving up all ambition!"
wrote Bly, way back in the fullness of his hungry years.
How many snowflakes counted and melted since then?
Still, the smell of baking bread never gets old,
or strange like last century's clothing. "If we can stay
out of jail," said Stafford's mother, "God will be proud of us."
Thinking About Love and Marriage While Listening to Old Blues Records
I can't decide if this makes no sense at all or the very deepest kind—
all those I'ma gonna cut yous and My man he done me wrongs:
they shouldn't make me feel giddy glinting pleasure, but there you are.
Just last night in the kitchen, stirring pasta while my wife chopped fruit,
we sang Married man's a fool to think that his wife love nobody else but him
as we have for forty years and counting on our anniversary.
©2016 David Graham