“Advice and instruction have always fascinated me, partly because of their pathos—so little is transmitted in any given instance of advice or pedagogy.”

Into the distance, the stacked-up whiteness
and beyond, endless,
the sleightrace of the lost.

It is time that the stone let itself break into flower,
that the unresting heart beat.

Foundry of the dead, the dead invisible hammer
Forgotten that dropped to forge
The ring behind the doorknob: brass roses

Inside the silver body
Slowing as it banks through veils of cloud
We float separately in our seats

 

 

Three men on scaffolding scatter corn flakes down
For people to see in black-and-white as snow,
Falling around the actor under the lights.

What if I told you the truth? What if I could?
The nuptial trek of the bower apes in May:
At night in the mountain meadow their clucking cries,

Faithful mother tongue
I have been serving you.
Every night, I used to set before you little bowls of colors

Faithful mother tongue
I have been serving you.
Every night, I used to set before you little bowls of colors

Now I will tell Meader’s story; I have a moral in view.
He was pestered by a Grizzly so bold and malicious
That he used to snatch caribou meat from the eaves of the cabin.

On the banks of the beautiful Loire,
There was my birth and my cradle.
Two kinds of goods flow from that land:

Though the sky still was partly light
Over the campsite clearing
Where some men and boys sat eating

In the spring of 2000, The Paris Review published an issue dedicated to poetry—dubbed, in fact, the Poetry Issue—including a series of prompts for poets and an essay by Robert Pinsky, who was then the U.S. Poet Laureate. Pinsky is seventy-four to…

What does it mean that so many distinguished and gifted poets responded to the somewhat goofy games and assignments suggested by The Paris Review for this issue? Not just willingly, but with spirit, they have composed poems to strange titles like "An Empty Surfboard on a Flat Sea" and "Lavatory in a Cathedral," written commentaries on worksheets—written, in other words, to suit the occasion.