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Admire John McPhee, Bill Bryson, David Remnick, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr and James Martin (and most open and curious minds)

25.6.17

Critics

Petition
by K.A. Hays

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Here floats the mind on summer’s dock.
The knees loose up, hands dither off,
the eyes have never heard of clocks.
The mind won’t feel the hours, the mind spreads wide
among the hours, wide in sun. Dear sun,
who gives the vision but is not the vision.
Who is the body and the bodies
that speak into the dark below the dock.
Who to the minnows in the sand-sunk tire
seems like love.
Make us the brightness bent through shade.
The thing, or rush of things, that makes
an opening, a way.

"Petition" by K.A. Hays from Windthrow. © Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2017. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)




It's the birthday of poet and essayist John Ciardi (books by this author), born in Boston, Massachusetts (1916). He's remembered today for his book How Does a Poem Mean? (1959), which has become a standard textbook in high school and college poetry classes. He also published several collections of his own poetry, and his Collected Poems came out in 1997.
But he may be best known for his translation of Dante's Divine Comedypublished in 1954. More than 50 English translations of the Divine Comedy were published in the 20th century, but Ciardi's is considered one of the best. For years, it was the standard translation used in English classes in the U.S.
Ciardi said, "The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow."

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