Edward Hirsch
I rang the bell
to the past
and the owner let me in
so I could climb
seven steps
and stand in the doorway
of a narrowness
that was once my room
on the second floor
of a split-level house
on the corner
of a suburban development
in the village
of my adolescence
and time bent me back
to that fitful night
when I tried to scale
the rusty stairs
of a freight train rolling
out of control in the yard
so I could set the brakes
and stop the runaway
dead in his tracks
but instead
I pulled a bookcase
down on my body
and woke up
startled
to find my parents
frightened in the hallway
and my books—
or was it my future?—
scattered on the floor.
from the journal THE MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW
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A Poem Thirty Years in the Making

Francisco Aragón discusses his poem, "1985," from his collection, After Rubén. "I showed the poem to John Montague. He was a visiting writer on the Berkeley campus in the Fall of 1985. His snippet of wisdom I carry with me to this day. 'Move the Spanish into the body of the poem,' he said. 'You have two weapons. Use them both.' Montague was the first Irish poet whose work I fell in love with."
 
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What Sparks Poetry:
Gillian Parrish on Paul Celan's "In the Daytime"

"This poem also expands my view of poem-making as a practice of attention to include poem as communion, as something more like prayer. Clearly, Celan’s poem is a poem of attention. Better yet, it is a poem that attends without wanting, that rests in a ready waiting-that-is-not-waiting. For only in such an open space can wildness arrive and minds meet."
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