I have to admit to being no big fan of Bob Perelman’s work, but oh my, what a beautiful poem he’s written here. I love this kind of out-of-the-blue reminder that maybe I’ve misjudged a writer. So I’ll be swerving back through his work in the near future, looking for those nuggets of luminosity I must have missed in past ventures.
This poem has been in my "to blog about" queue– glad to see it noted here. It saddens me to think of how much (potential) wonderful poetry is lost from writers absorbed in poetry as politics or experiment. This single poem is worth everything else I've read of Perelman combined.
Thanks, Joe, for posting this. It's delicate and powerful at the same time. Sometimes I 'give up' on a particular poet because I'm so damn old I don't have all that much time left. Glad you don't (give up).<br />Bob King
That is a beauty; thanks for sharing it.<br /><br />I have often been struck by this: avant-garde or experimental poets can suddenly write something pretty straightforward and extremely powerful when they are moved to tears.<br /><br />(In my aggressive moments, I think it means that they are poets who don't really have anything to write about other than their "experiments"