"a mist of sorts"
Digges, Acconci, Dickinson, Merwin, Jen
Deborah Digges:
Vito Acconci:
Emily Dickinson:
Sweet Foot / that comes / when we call / it! // I can go / but stop a cemetery // How slow the Wind— / how slow the sea— / how late their Feathers be!
The Sharpener is a reader-supported newsletter. If you get value from these newsletters and want to support my work I encourage you to take out a paid subscription.
Japanese figure (tr. by W.S. Merwin):
Gish Jen:
Don Pullen, “Reap the Whirlwind,” rec. December 12, 1988:
Nina Simone, “Wild is the Wind,” rec. March 21, 1964:
About Sean Singer
Sean Singer Editorial Services
Subscribe to The Sharpener
The paid-subscriber version of The Sharpener includes weekly installments of craft pieces, approaches to writing problems, topics in contemporary publishing for writers, and biographical features on poets I consider important.
Hi Sean, we met at AWP in Kansas City, where we swapped books. I don't think you've read my collection Tiny Kites. Because the opening poem is "Wind to Wind."
I read the phrase in Dickinson as “but a Step / a Century” not “but stop / a cemetery.”
From “How slow” to the end is included in Franklin’s reading edition as poem 1607. I don’t have Franklin’s three-volume edition to see if the earlier part is included there.
Do you know what letter this is from? I can’t find the poem in the “index of poems” in new “Letters of ED”. (Do you have it? It’s magnificent.)