NYer Page-Turner

Criticism, contention, and conversation about books and the writing life, from

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

Driving up the ski-basin road, I spot purple asters
  and know it is time; near a blood-red, white-
flecked amanita, I dig two red-capped boletes
  out of the earth; green-stained Lactarius

and yellow-capped Cortinarius vanished decades ago,
  but, hunting mushrooms, I deepen through repetition.
A dancer repeats steps until she no longer knows
  any steps; a violinist plays notes until he is living

in the marrow of silences.

Arthur Sze https://t.co/0jkE9HVycB

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

I held up the femur
of a grasshopper

some blue air fell over me
what I want is less clear to me
now than it was then

to be loved to the end
without ruth or recrimination
to forgive myself as others

have forgiven me

C. D. Wright (1949-2016) https://t.co/vy5p3zt4U9

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

I’ve had the time of my life, friends,
living quietly like a snail in a pocket.
It’s a rather simple tale, really,
as elegant and amoral as a Latin poet’s.
I loved the sailboat and airplane rides.
I loved the fossil of a mouse.
The sweetness of growing
into a man whose dreams—
like leaves or a bird’s nest—
came to life.

Henri Cole https://t.co/ZatOhxWBdo

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

House of yelling, scent of hyacinth.
Back then, my head was full of fragments.
Of a question I buried & unburied
in the dirt. Flower brain unblinking.

Drenched in gossamer. Webs glint then
disappear. Subject fatigued by a silken un-
ribboning. Undoing takes more effort than
you’d think.

Patrycja Humienik https://t.co/nOYn5PfSSd

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

My younger brother was afraid of thunder,
lightning. My father bought a recording of storms,
put it on the stereo, and rocked on the love seat
with my brother over and over,
until the sound meant comfort, warmth.
Much later, my brother became obsessed with meteorology
and dreamed of becoming a weatherman.
When I finally connected the early fear
with the later passion,
we were looking down at my father in his coffin.

Bob Hicok https://t.co/atfPZcVLsS

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

The doctor told me there are two kinds
of people: unhealthy people who refuse
to get help, and healthy people
who always think they’re dying.
Nobody’s in between. But I’ve met
so many kinds of people:
people who stretch before
they get out of bed, people
who walk through life unstretched,
people who think their body
is a house and people who don’t
think of their body at all.

Sasha Debevec-McKenney https://t.co/Cc4sSEuhPP

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

I don’t remember who had died, what aunt
Or uncle or cousin we were going to bury.

I don’t know why he spent the hour-long drive
Lecturing a twelve-year-old about the faults

Of Peggy Lee, whose singing he denounced.
I barely knew who she was. Maybe he’d heard

That I was “musical.”

Robert Pinsky https://t.co/OpK7actVEj

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

How lavish the jacket and sleeves, the inseam.

Appraise from shoulder to shoulder its width.

Measure neck, chest, waist. Note

Its dimensions on brown paper. Otherwise

In the green field of your imagining.

When and where you will wear your suit.

Danielle Legros Georges (1964-2025) https://t.co/u9e0h1r8q8

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

My father drives the boat back to the cape.
The wind is cold as we hike up the cliff
to the wilderness around the temple.
My father comes here every year, and sometimes
he invites me. He captures all on film: leafless fig trees,
then the marble column engraved with Byron’s name.
Graffiti from 1810! he exclaims, as if it is the first time.

Aria Aber https://t.co/sj5sKB4Ywk

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

I turned myself into myself and was Jesus.
I turned Jesus into a business and was
The pastor of a megachurch. I turned
The church out. I’m Whitney Houston.
I’m Sam Cooke. I got a squall on me.
You want to see where it comes from.
I am Black and comely. I am come
To send fire on the earth . . . not to send
Peace, but a sword. My sword.

Jericho Brown https://t.co/QaYspDsisU

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

Read Jay Parini on this recently discovered poem by Robert Frost: https://t.co/XWTgnH2rBF

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

One moment when the dust to-day
Against my face was turned to spray,
I dreamed the winter dream again
I dreamed when I was young at play . . .

Robert Frost (1874-1963) https://t.co/eHpDa4sP7C

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

In the barbershop it’s hard to tell an argument

from a discussion. Men in the barber’s chair

tend to speak softly—especially if they’re

getting a shave. Those sitting in the chairs

along the walls waiting their turn for a cut

or a shave or both tend to speak loudly—

sometimes shouting. I’m in a chair, waiting

my turn for a cut. I’m listening, not talking.

Clarence Major https://t.co/qPUsmlWdsP

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

Some nights when she’s returned to me, I for a second
think: Changeling!

Of course it’s her; it’s only that
as her resemblance to me—to a version
I can remember and recognize as self—grows,

it gets harder to see her
grow, at once, ever more distinct from me.
Further and clearer.

Even as she repeats my errors:
the selection of boy, my old white jacket with the fringe.
And wears her seatbelt

always, because her mother made her.

Jameson Fitzpatrick https://t.co/rIyaxds5hg

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

We stay up all night again to scan
the sky from our deck above the bay.

How slow the constellations spin.
Invincible heroes. Unrequited loves—

until, it seems, we’ve lost all count.

David Baker https://t.co/KYFMkToCsL

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

Can’t you see her at her stop
In her gingham skirt, thinning? Inside, her groan grows
Louder, growling. False

Spring nibbling her ankles stings like a slap
As she asks for her Social Security

Check, her needle entering her
Thimble and thumb. Her bus comes and goes while she daydreams
Pressing her left wrist to her iron

Until her arteries become artillery.

Paul Tran https://t.co/9CGw7ycKOV

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

The summer at the drop-off, the summer
when the boat floated to shore
with no one on it, the summer
a stranger on the street
spat in my face,
every summer when
my sisters were my comfort,
my sisters to whom I confessed
my regrets. My sister who would
say: Just breathe, just as
my other sister
would say: Just listen.

Lee Upton https://t.co/daL6FxEBxx

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

No one’s home, & still
My mother is determined to get this ounce of exercise, this walk. She is,
I think, almost as friendless at this moment as I am friendless.
From the way she lists, I even suspect that she must be part wind
Herself by now. And now I notice that the faded khaki of the palm fronds
Above her is the exact shade of my father’s shirts, & by now
I am remembering her hair against his chest on the day he had to go
Into the hospital.

Larry Levis (1946-96) https://t.co/S4EGdj8Ohk

[NYer Page-Turner @pageturner]

I love that in the final fevered surge,
Hectic and heartsick and hemorrhaging time,
He had the art, the nerve, the need, the urge
To cup one last fair couplet with a rhyme.
Not “zest,” so much. It hints of spice and tart.

Michael Chabon https://t.co/MijTgm7RwC