Why has our poetry eschewed The rapture and response of food? What hymns are sung, what praises said For home-made miracles of bread?
Louis Untermeyer
University of One
by Franz Wright
And I’ve lost my fear
of death
here, what death?
There is no such thing.
There is only
mine,
or yours–
but the world
will be filled with the living. Mysteriously
(heavy dear sky-colored book), too,
I have been spared
the fate of those who love words
more than what they mean!
My poem is not
for example
a blank check in pussyland
anymore,
nor
entry in the contest for the world’s
most poignant suicide
note. Now
I have to go–, but
meet my friend Miss April
snow.
Northern Pike
by James Wright
All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
Else is going
To die in a lonliness
I can’t imagine and a pain –
I don’t know. We had
To go on living. We
Untangled the net, we slit
The body of this fish
Open from the hinge of the tail
To a place beneath the chin
I wish I could sing of.
I would just as soon we let
The living go on living.
An old poet whom we believe in
Said the same thing, and so
We paused among the dark cattails and prayed
For the muskrats,
For the ripples below their tails,
For the little movements that we knew the crawdads were making under water,
For the right-hand wrist of my cousin who is a policeman.
We prayed for the game warden’s blindness.
We prayed for the road home.
We ate the fish.
There must be something very beautiful in my body,
I am so happy.
Fourteen Lines 