Reading…

Second Things by Daniel Tobin. A lovely, rich book of poems. I’m only at the beginning, and already I feel the weight of history in its pages. I’ll refrain from saying more until I’ve read more, but here’s a section from “Vessels”:

(This poem should have stanza breaks, but wordpress is being a bitch and keeps eliminating them. I’ve noted where stanza breaks occur).

III. Logos

Here is language,

a valise we carry

in our mouths. /

It is traveling

with us–do you see?–

not like a pet

in its plastic cage,

moaning in stowage

begging to be /

set free. It is

us, errant

in the circuitry. /

What shall we say

to it, fellow traveler

in the bones,

is there anything

it doesn’t know? /

Off the tongue

words roll

like baubles: /

mountain, snowdrift /

And in the throat

the breath

shuts tight.

Another wonderful, and too long to quote, poem here in the first section is “The Sea of Time and Space,” which has an epigraph a quote from Blake’s “Milton” that I love: “But we see only as it were the hem of their garments / When with our vegetable eyes we view these wondrous visions.”

Thank you, dear Mr. Tobin for something a gal can sink her teeth into.