** The poet speaks directly in the next poem, "Places, Loved Ones".
The poet speaks directly in the next poem, "Places, Loved Ones".
"We live in an age in which miracles of all kinds are suspect," Brooks lamented, "including the kind of miracle of which the poet speaks".
Another grave, that of the writer John Clare, inspired the line "And the poetry bursting like a diamond bomb," in which poet speaks to poet.
This emphasis on the inchoate private life has a polemical edge; Phillips has resisted becoming the "Famous Black Poet" he decries in "Passing," an early poem: When the Famous Black Poet speaks, I understand that his is the same unnervingly slow rambling method of getting from A to B that I hated in my father, my father who always told me don't shuffle.
His poems appeal to academic critics by appearing postmodern: the voice that speaks evades autobiography, poems are made of layers of quotation and misquotation, nowhere can we trust that the poet speaks of his experience.
The poet speaks in voiceover and his economy with words is matched by a simplicity to the story that is all the more affecting precisely because it lacks clutter.
Di Piero, a translator and critic as well as poet, speaks conversationally but with concentration of loss, displacement and ordinary life, whether in personal relationships or in a kind of celebration of the run-down South Philadelphia of his childhood.
The chair was apparently set up in a kind of shrine, for the poet speaks of "this grove of laurell", and "this mausoleum" more befitting Jonson's memory than "pyramides or marbles".
Di Piero, a translator, critic and poet, speaks conversationally but with concentration of loss, displacement and ordinary life, both in personal relationships and in a kind of celebration of the run-down South Philadelphia of his childhood.
