The furnace in the basement groans
like a sick god.
I draw curtains on a night
blackbirds brought,
straw by straw, and stuffed
into walls. Now crickets rattle in the yard—
and stop—
and rattle—and cars go by
sighing.
The great spaces of America
full of loneliness and raccoons!
Beyond Chicago
the land opens like a prayer.
I have come here
on steps no heavier than dew
to lay my body in a farmhouse in a field
in the newly opened quarter
of a year.
At the bottom of a meadow
the anger of America collects,
all its meanness and fear
swarmed over by horseflies
with maniacal wings.
I ask forgiveness of the raccoon
and the raccoon's god.
Then try to get some sleep.
Past midnight I wake
to hear small metallic bodies of insects
hurling themselves against the screens.
Again, crickets lift their voices—
lonely chieftains casting up
an almost audible cry
and shuffling their robes of dust.
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Spring Feature 2014
-
Feature
- Kurt Brown A Photo Tribute
- Kurt Brown Excerpts from his "Notebook"
-
Poetry
- Laure-Anne Bosselaar
- Lee Briccetti
- Wyn Cooper
- Stephen Dunn
- Richard Garcia
- Janlori Goldman
- Andrey Gritsman
- Kamiko Hahn
- Steve Huff
- Meg Kearney
- Eugenia Leigh
- Thomas Lux
- Laura McCullough
- Christopher Merrill
- Kamilah Aisha Moon
- Martha Rhodes
- David Rothman
- Harold Schechter
- Charles Simic
- Tree Swenson
- Charles Harper Webb
- Marty Williams
-
Essay
- David RigsbeeOn Kurt Brown, An Appreciation
Feature > Poetry
Andrey Gritsman
Andrey Gritsman, a native of Moscow, is a physician and a bilingual poet. He has published five collecions of poetry and essays in English and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times and received an Honorable Mention. Poems and essays have appeared in many magazines and anthologies. Andrey runs the Intercultural Poetry reading series at Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC and is the Chief Editor of the international poetry magazine Interpoezia.
Kurt Brown's poem "Alone in a Farmhouse in Iowa" is a brilliant example of philosophical poetry where one can smell life and death, loneliness, feeling of space, and time. It is a very sensitive reflection of a person's relation to nature, to land, to self. Kurt uses, very effectively and artistically, descriptions of landscape, aura of the place, insects with little hints of metaphors: prayer—prairie, cars sighing and maniacal wings—suggestions, not direct descriptions. Poet lives in such poems, they are the crystals of poet's breath staying in space and time.
Alone In A Farmhouse In Iowa
Poetry
Stephen Dunn
On Kurt Brown...
Poetry
Thomas Lux
At the Blue Gates
Poetry
Charles Simic
Fisherman