Tuesday Poem
A Little Pile of Stones
find a place
where the ground
is not too uneven
and the wind
not too strong
put a stone
on top of another
find a third
to rest on the two
and so on
choose each one
with the others in mind
each one just
the right size
the right weight
if you choose
your first stone well
the kind you can
build upon
the stones will stand
god bless you
young woman
may you be
just as lucky
as you are smart
go home now
with your husband
may you find
happiness together
and may it last.
—Jejuri is a site of pilgrimage in author Arun Kolatkar’s
native state of Maharashtra.
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The first part of my title comes from, and refers to, W. H. Auden, who once said, “When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.” The “Imagiste,” spelled in the French manner that Ezra Pound was so fond of, is, I hope to demonstrate, Donald Justice, a poet who wrote in, and cherished, traditional forms but who had been deeply influenced by Modernism. For a long time I thought of Justice as a traditionalist, ignoring those times when he seemed to be very much in the other camp. My view now is that Donald Justice was one of the few poets of his generation who managed to succeed in combining Modernist technique and traditional form.
On the face of it, Moth Days is probably Shawn’s most straightforward domestic drama. In the three-hour play, a man and woman fall in love when they are young. By providing unstinting support over many years, the woman imbues the man with the confidence he needs to flourish as a writer. The couple have a child, who himself becomes an author of outlandish, erotic short stories. The woman works as a teacher in disadvantaged schools while the now-successful man increasingly gads about with a bohemian crowd; he eventually begins an affair with a fellow writer that destroys the family and blights all three of their lives. It’s a perfectly realistic setup, except that the characters are all speaking to us from beyond the grave. (“Moth day” is Dick’s euphemism for one’s deathday.)
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Photosynthetic machinery
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When your best friend or partner or kid snaps at you, it’s easy to 
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Between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago, a 
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