phillip crymble

Clementines The salad days of summer having come and gone, the kiwis, seedless grapes and garden berries you're so fond of are no longer. Now the house is dry. Our efforts to humidify the air seem almost hopeless. Careful every night to fill the tank with water, to de-calcify the heater coil--still we wake to find no difference. Winter oranges from Spain are what you always buy. Pluto made his wife stay in until the days grew mild--but you have gone today, to wander out of doors. And at your bedside, scattered citrus rinds, the cat, the scent of clementines. PHILLIP CRYMBLE

A winter poem for my sweetheart as it appeared in The Stinging Fly.

GOODBYE Perhaps some day you shall find me, as I blow smoke out my mouth While you walk the riverbank in the rain on Sunday evening. Looking for jazz, hearing love’s bellows Beauty is mine, perhaps some day you shall find it.

happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜

feel free to participate by posting small poems you wrote, +/or small poems you love by somebody else :)

here’s one by John Wieners, from Behind the State Capitol: Or Cincinnati Pike (an absolute marvel of a book freshly reissued by @thesongcave.bsky.social)~

METAMORPHOSIS HE was an evil thing to see-- Of joy his mouth was desolate; His body was a stunted tree, His eyes were pools of lust and hate. Now silverly the linnet sings On leaves that from his temples start, And gay the yellow crocus springs From the rich clod that was his heart.

Joyce Kilmer, born on this day in 1886

So glad this found you, Rhea.

The Year of the Goldfinches There were two that hung and hovered by the mud puddle and the musk thistle. Flitting from one splintered fence post to another, bathing in the rainwater's glint like it was a mirror to some other universe where things were more acceptable, easier than the place I lived. I'd watch for them: the bright peacocking male, the low-watt female on each morning walk, days spent digging for some sort of elusive answer to the question my curving figure made. Later, I learned that they were a symbol of resurrection. Of course they were, my two yellow-winged twins feasting on thorns and liking it.

Ada Limón

The Hazy Part of Art He stood on the rocks and fished then sat on the rocks and drew the trout he'd caught Beautiful pictures they were, alive in every line

Something about this Mary Ruefle poem

👏👏👏

DUST OF SNOW THE way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost

The Word of Snow As deep within the snow I went, I felt what all the snowflakes meant. The word on every wall and fence Was glistening with reticence. The snowy language with its light Italicized our common plight-- What secretly we always guess: We walk heart-deep in loneliness.

Louis Ginsberg

🙏

Recently acquired an original UK vinyl pressing of this record in near-fine condition. For me, Aloysius remains undefeated. What a song!

From her final collection.

SNOW Snow, blessed snow, comes out of the sky like bleached flies. The ground is no longer naked. The ground has on its clothes. The trees poke out of sheets and each branch wears the sock of God. There is hope. There is hope everywhere. I bite it. Someone once said: Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone. What I bite is all bread, rising, yeasty as a cloud. There is hope. There is hope everywhere. Today God gives milk and I have the pail.

There is hope. / There is hope everywhere.

Anne Sexton

YouTube video by Dead Poets Reading Series Phillip Crymble reading Edip Cansever, Dead Poets Reading Series, June 7, 2020

Such a wonderful series, and one I had a chance to participate in virtually during the pandemic:

Biggest problem appears to me to be that living poets aren't reading the dead ones.

Ha! First snow of the season. Just a few centimetres.

Snow Snow is what it does. It falls and it stays and it goes. It melts and it is here somewhere. We all will get there.

Frederick Seidel

Ha! Makes sense. Had the time of my life living in Lafayette, and learned more about poetry in a single year than I have done since. I still keep in touch with Marianne.

Maybe. I'm guessing you'd have finished your course work by the end of year two. I hung out with Henry Hughes a few times, and Willard Greenwood was in Marianne's Craft class with us. Emily Koehn was the one who gave me Tom's desk.

I was a MFA candidate at Purdue for a year in 99-00 before I transferred to U-M. Tom was in Rome during my time there, but one of the students in the cohort above me gave me his old Math Society of America Steelcase desk. Many of the poems in my first collection were written on it.

LOOKS LIKE WE GONNA GET A LITTLE SNOW, HUH? I don't know but you can bet something's going to happen.

Ted Berrigan

December Night Things return at night. Slowly the grass lifts back up. Even the pine trees breathe out, their blueprints open. At night, everything rebuilds, even violence lifts its roots.

Victoria Chang

Amazing! Thank you for corroborating this. When I first encountered this poem I searched in vain for footage, but it feels like it's all been scrubbed. It's entirely possible that this was only seen by those who witnessed the live television coverage.

Sure thing. Denby was revered by the New York School poets, first and second generation alike.

It's Only Rock and Roll But I Like It: The Fall of Saigon, 1975 The guttural stammer of the chopper blades Raising arabesques of dust, tearing leaves From the orange trees lining the embassy compound: One chopper left, and a CBS cameraman leans From inside its door, exploiting the artful Mayhem. Somewhere a radio blares the Stones, "I like it, like it, yes indeed. . . ." Carts full Of files blaze in the yard. Flak-jacketed marines Gunpoint the crowd away. The overloaded chopper strains And blunders from the roof. An ice-cream-suited Saigonese drops his briefcase; both hands Now cling to the airborne skis. The camera gets It all: the marine leaning out the copter bay, His fists beating time. Then the hands giving way.

David Wojahn

Easily 30 years since I read Heart of Darkness. This is the passage that stayed with me more than any other.

The graphic for The Fiddlehead’s 2025 Poetry Contest. The graphic reads: Turn over a new stanza. Enter our 2025 Poetry Contest. Deadline: December 1 2025. Enter via submittable. $2000 Prize plus publication. Judged by Bertrand Bickersteth, T. Liem, and Douglas Walbourne-Gough. For more info visit thefiddlehead.ca/poetry-contest

It's the very last day to submit to our 2025 Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem!

Submit or post your submission by 11:59 pm Pacific Time for a chance to won $2000 and publication in The Fiddlehead!

thefiddlehead.ca/poetry-contest

#poetrycontest #poetry #callforsubmissions #canlit

Hadn't picked up on the Hopkins echo. It's definitely there. This poem was published for the first time in the Winter '86 issue of Grand Street. Some really deft and clever rhyme work throughout.

Edwin Denby At first sight, not Pollock, Kline scared Me, in the Cedar, ten years past Drunk, dark-eyed, watchful, light-hearted Everybody drunk, his wide chest Adorable hero, mourn him No one Franz didn't like, Elaine said The flowered casket was loathsome Who are we sorry for, he's dead Between death and us his painting Stood, we relied daily on it To keep our hearts on the main thing Grandeur in a happy world of shit Walk up his stoop, 14th near 8th The view stretches as far as death

I posted Denby's elegy for Franz Kline here a couple of weeks back. The man really knew his way around a sonnet.

Twelve hours to go until the submissions window closes on our disability issue, folks. Keep those poems rolling in.

Full call and instructions here: thefiddlehead.ca/revolution