#dan beachy-quick

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Alina Stefanescu :: @aliner

"When the eye loses the ability to see an object for the fact of its very nearness, then the imagination must alter the lens. A poem may bring us what we see in it just such a way."

- Dan Beachy-Quick

[fatchance]

The Cricket and the Grasshopper

The senseless leaf   in the fevered hand Grows hot, near blood-heat, but never grows Green. Weeks ago the dove’s last cooing strain Settled silent in the nest to brood slow Absence from song. The dropped leaf cools On the uncut grass, supple still, still green, Twining still these fingers as they listless pull The tangle straight until the tangle tightens And the hand is caught, another fallen leaf.  The poetry of the earth never ceases  Ceasing — one blade of grass denies belief Until its mere thread bears the grasshopper’s Whole weight, and the black cricket sings unseen, Desire living in a hole beneath the tangle’s green.

By Dan Beachy-Quick, in Poetry Magazine, February 2013.

It was Dan who encouraged me to read Mr. John Keats many years ago. I love his modern reflection on the Keats poem of the same title.

[bibliomancyoracle]

The messenger comes and says there is a wound.

*

from “Therapon, II, 4-1″ by Bruce Bond and Dan Beachy-Quick

[missedstations]

“A Poem Torn in Half” - Archilochus

the surrounding smoke they made[ in warships, spear-shafts d[ men are tearing, and he wilts[ in the sunlight, courage and[ great longing for[ of Naxians able to f[ of trees cut sharp down[ men hold back[ this would for all soldiers m[ as in the past without anger[ and of brothers[ of whom they cut off[ beat down beneath plague-like blows[ these things in my soul, my thinking heart[ abysmal deep] but all the same dead[ knows now, if you[ of words who is destined[ some men in Thasos[ and Torone[ some men in swift ships[ and from Paros t[ and of the same mother born[ soul, heart, but[ fire now all around[ in the suburbs k[ they ever-scorch the earth[ violent men overrun[ readying for the road[ nothing lucky, nothing on the right[ Translated from the Greek by Dan Beachy-Quick

[antigonick]

The word, like the beloved, excites desire, because, like the beloved, the word is ensouled.

Dan Beachy-Quick, excerpt of “What Kind of Monster am I ?”, in The Ecstatic Lyre

[soracities]

we are what light gazes on

Dan Beachy-Quick, from ‘[morning green through ivy]’, in Poetry

[heteroglossia]

Who am I? I am who is here. The grave can speak it just as well as I can. The stone says I am the memory of myself. But the memory lives so much longer than the life. It points at what is departing, a kind of elsewhere that I am, an elsewhere that is me. I live it so I cannot see it. Witnesslessness.

Dan Beachy-Quick, Of Silence and Song

[poetsandwriters]

I write because I read. I imagine many of us are this way, bewildered in the tangle of these co-creative activities: writing to understand how better to read, reading to understand how better to write. I seek out—both for inspiration and comfort—those writers who seem to share, and to illuminate, that confounding sense of wonder.

Dan Beachy-Quick, in this week’s Writers Recommend, read the rest at pw.org!