Daniel Brown

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

On the off chance you don't know this, which charmed me when I first encountered it decades ago, and still does. It's by a good friend of Keats' (among many other accomplishments).

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

Was happy to have this in the Innisfree Poetry Journal.

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

@kevin_farnham Good to hear the post moved you to look into more of his late poetry. The book that collects is called Sentenced to Life,

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

The late Clive James was best known as a critic, but he was always writing poetry too, and had a late-life efflorescence of it. Here's an example that arrested me when I saw it in the New Yorker:

Leçons des ténèbres

But are they lessons, all these things I learn
Through being so far gone in my decline?
The wages of experience I earn
Would service well a younger life than mine.
I should have been more kind. It is my fate
To find this out, but find it out too late.

The mirror holds the ruins of my face
Roughly together, thus reminding me
I should have played it straight in every case,
Not just when forced to. Far too casually
I broke faith when it suited me, and here
I am alone, and now the end is near.

All of my life I put my labour first.
I made my mark, but left no time between
The things achieved, so, at my heedless worst,
With no life, there was nothing I could mean.
But now I have slowed down. I breathe the air
As if there were not much more of it there

And write these poems, which are funeral songs
That have been taught to me by vanished time:
Not only to enumerate my wrongs
But to pay homage to the late sublime
That comes with seeing how the years have brought
A fitting end, if not the one I sought.

​New Yorker, May 28, 2013

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

Was happy to have this poem, "I Wonder," in a recent Modern Age.

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

@tamrmint @newversereview Fantastic news (I'm still reeling, in the good way, from the ending of that poem). Congrats!

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

Happy to have had this in Innisfree Poetry Journal.

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

@jasonguriel Thanks for the congrats (and the heartening PS).

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

Delighted to let you know that my new poetry collection Seventh Inning Stretch will be published by Bainbridge Island Press early next year. (I'd call the Press an up-and-comer, but it's a little late for that--has been so for a while in fact.)

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

@AlexRettie Thanks Alex!

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

Happy to have had this in Literary Matters.

[Jason Guriel @jasonguriel]

How cool: I ordered the new Bruce Taylor book, We Drove All Day for This: New and Selected Poems, only to discover something I once said about Taylor on the back cover! I vaguely remember writing this…somewhere. But it’s true. Certainly Taylor’s my favourite living poet.

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

Delighted to have this poem in the August installment of Talk To Me in Long Long Lines.
https://t.co/TdltxfpKmk

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

Easy to see why the late David Berman began his remarkable collection Actual Air with this mysterious, funny, beautiful poem.

[Daniel Brown @danbpoet]

@BurlHorniachek Thanks, Burl - glad you liked this oldie.