The Connectedness of Things

Week #5 brought us two poets new to us, Stanley Plumly and Faith Shearin. We pondered "those accidents of timing that greets the very nature/ of artifice"--are things connected or not, why do things happen as they do, and what indeed do we think of the "man standing at the dead end of the pier"? With his waving arms he may be tolling a bell. A good example of a poem that seems at first reading easier than it actually is.

With Shearin, we grieve and hope for the luckless geese. There is the casual tone of a neighborhood and a nice tension between "the wet nest of death" and "the soft, heavenly weather of arrival."

We look ahead to our last session and the Stories and Histories of Stephen Dunn and Natasha Trethewey. We might well ask: What else has been lost.