Notes on Mary Torrance (‘Mary is Mary’) Career spanning four decades, seventy-four essays, eleven collections. Formal poems; decline in moral values. Hated free verse in Poetry ’86, ‘The devil Whitman ruined it for everyone’ and in Paris Review ’92, ‘The New York Pre-School, why no one is counting’. Her book, Beat, Stick, ‘Howl’: Barefoot / […]
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Three Poems
Cod with the Voice of a Cantor Still we send the trawlers out, although no one alive has heard the song, and no one dead will tell. Boat after boat hauls back, and captains hold their silent ground on decks of gasping contraband to listen for a note, a tentative first ‘O’ among the mottled […]
Three Poems
On Latterly Overcoming Last October’s Loss for Rosa Tomalin Laugh out loud, oh lover of levity, our lingering optimism lightens our load. Observe, lover, our lashings of luxurious ornament: lilac oil, Lebanese ocarinas, legumes, oriental lanterns, oranges, lemons or limes; O listful of lissom, obdurate, lifely objects, lighting opulently like old-fashioned lamp-posts onto liveries of […]
Aren’t You Danny Mann?
The police officer looks like a young Ray Winstone and he might turn bad-cop if you don’t answer. “Name?” he repeats. “I’m not who you think I am,” you say, leaning in towards the twin-spool tape recorder. Ray raises an eyebrow. “Who aren’t you?” “Danny Mann. I just look like him.” “That’s bullshit, Danny.” “I’m […]
Two Poems
Love after Douglas Sirk Take me to the country club in my red dress. Make me locally infamous. Fix me a Martini—Dry— I am getting weepy. I almost want to die. O take me, please, to the clinic in Zurich. I’m not being ironic— I cannot see to see! You—you have blinded me! Be my […]
A Good Visit
I shouldn’t be here, I think, when my father answers the door, his face closing over with suspicion. But after a moment, and a grunt, he lets me in. I hold out a bag of White Rabbit sweets—still his favourites, as far as I know. He takes it wordlessly and goes to place it in […]