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True Water
why does he write poems: it’s the only way he can meanwhat he says: you mean, say what he means: yes,but it’s harder for him to mean something than say something: his sayings are facile, light-headed, anddiscontinuous: he keeps saying in order to hope he willsay something he means: poems help him mean what he says: poems connect the threads between the tuft of his headand the true water: that’s important to him, like rootsto a turf: without it, the separation would be awful… —from “Hibernaculum,” by A. R.Read More
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Ted Hughes’s “The Thought-Fox”
I remember a luminous floating breathlessness the first time I read this poem, in the dusty yellow light of the cage I worked in (a literal cage: one chainlink wall separated my gray metal desk and the cramped, brown-and-tan linoleumed room it sat in from a store-room where crippled book trucks awaited repair amid stacks of gray metal shelving and the hulks of gray metal file cabinets whose drawers were too battered to close). This was 1970.Read More
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Another Różewicz Poem About Poetry
THE MYSTERY OF THE POEMby Tadeusz Różewicz once somewherelong agoI read a poemby Eminowiczwhose first nameI subsequently forgot this was before the war then for half a centuryI never encounteredhis poetry he would come to mindevery few yearsthen return to oblivion Chess? yes I read the poemin “Pion” magazine Chess? not ChessChessI think it was Chess the poem rattled about in my headlike a death-watch beetle(that was all I needed!) two years agoI found myself in Krakówwith Czesław Miłoszin Ludwik Solski’s Dressing Room Mrs.Read More
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Spacks’s “Themes On Love”
THEMES ON LOVEby Barry Spacks Grading themes on love at M.I.T.,one-man Symposium at 3a.m., across the court I saw a light;another office-holder working late.While Plato on a silver pillow rodeabove the waves of pre-sophistic prose,I jotted teacher’s notions that were notas brave as our two lamps against the glutof dawn.Read More
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Edward Field’s “Writing for Money”
WRITING FOR MONEY by Edward Field My friend and I have decided to write for money, he stories, I poems. We are going to sell them to magazines and when the cash rolls in he will choose clothes for me that make me stylish and buy himself a tooth where one fell out. Perhaps we will travel, to Tahiti maybe. Anyway we’ll get an apartment with an inside toilet and give up our typing jobs. That’s why I’m writing this poem, to sell for money.Read More
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Ta-dáy-oosh Wo-zhyáy-vich’s “philosopher’s stone”
Tadeusz Różewicz philosopher’s stoneby Tadeusz Różewicz we need to put this poem to sleepbefore it startsphilosophizingbefore it startsfishingfor complimentscalled to lifein a moment of forgettingsensitive to wordsglancesit looks toa philosopher’sstone for helpo passerby hasten your stepdo not lift up the stonethere a blank versenakedturnsto ashes_______________________From a group of poems by Różewicz (translated by Joanna Trzeciak) published in the lovely Little Star Journal (see here and here).Read More
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Scott’s “Uses of Poetry”
Winfield Townley ScottPhoto: © Rosalie Thorne McKenna FoundationCourtesy Center for Creative Photography,The University of Arizona USES OF POETRY by Winfield Townley Scott Love poems they read Were work of an aging man Alone and celibate Who published them in joy Of his craftsman’s skill, How they folded into each other.Read More
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Szymborska’s “The Joy of Writing”
Wisława SzymborskaPhoto: Adam Golec©Agenca Gazeta THE JOY OF WRITINGby Wisława Szymborska Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?For a drink of written water from a springwhose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.Silence—this word also rustles across the pageand parts the boughsthat have sprouted from the word “woods.” Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,asre letters up to no good,clutches of clauses so subordinatethey’ll never let her get away.Read More
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Ammons’s “Poetics”
Self-portrait watercolor paintingby A. R. Ammons, dated 1977.Image courtesy Joyner LibraryDigital Collections, East Carolina University.(Read the Terrain.org interview here.) POETICSby A. R.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
