A favorite poet

Gary Young is so great.  He reminds me that I want to write poems again some day.

He reminds me also of a quote from Christian Wiman of Poetry Magazine: "Let us remember...that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both."

I'm off to bed but here is one of Gary Young's sparse, untitled prose poems from his book titled "If He Had." It's best to read it aloud to yourself, slowly. (unfortunately, blogspot is messing with the original line breaks...)

I thought I could save the boy. The world could be remade, and the boy would survive.  Penance, prayer, the smallest gesture can change the world. So can I. But so can the birds yammering in the trees, and the trees, and the wind that moves them all around. The world is every promise and possibility. Am I still a father, he asks, now that I have no son? Oh, yes, I tell him. Now more than ever.


www.rafacarlo.blogspot.com