Essay online

An old essay of mine on Irving Layton's involvement in the Black Mountain School, published in Canadian Poetry, is now available online.

GOOD TO BE LUCKY

How often, it seems to me, an error

proves to be the key that opens doors

 

to unforeseen prosperity, while ex-

ecutions less imperfect in their ex-

cellence lead nowhere, as when a mishit

dribbler sparks a rally, while the blistered

liner settles into leather, to snuff

the home team’s hopes. This is the vexing stuff

of life and luck. I wish that I could forecast

which fuckups would prove fruitful, but the past

discloses no mysteries in advance

and the dancer stays soldered to the dance.

We have made our share of missteps, but the longer

we play through them, persevere, the stronger

grows our bond. Impeccability is not

our lot. We’re vain. We sin. We take weak shots

at glory, we soar too high, we tumble

to earth, find our feet again—and stumble

into thickets dark and deep. We are lost

and found and lack the wit to grasp and gloss

our going, knowing only where we’ve been,

dust motes moved by static on a shifting screen.

ZW reads poems by John Clare and Louis MacNeice

ZW reads My Last Duchess

ZW reads poems inspired by Oliver Sacks

ZW reads A Prayer for My Daughter by WB Yeats

ZW reads father poems by Shane Neilson, Don Coles and Weldon Kees

Father's Day poems

ZW reads Thomas Hardy, Edna St. Vincent Millay and ZW

ZW reads Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Clare

ZW reads Mark Strand

ZW reads Christopher Patton and Marianne Moore

ZW reads Barbara Nickel, Elise Partridge and Patrick Warner

ZW reads "The Moose" by Elizabeth Bishop

ZW reads Suzanne Buffam and Kerry-Lee Powell

ZW reads Barbara Nickel and Elise Partridge

ZW reads Patrick Warner and Ted Hughes

ZW reads Goran Simić

ZW reads Rafał Wojaczek and Wisława Szymborska

ZW reads Geoffrey Cook and Heinrich Heine