~ Donald Justice, Departures (Atheneum 1978)

          For me, this book was a beautiful discovery.  This poem in particular just crept up into the fray this morning—because I’m a hopeless r[R]omantic—because Wednesday is Genie’s and my three year anniversary—because the best love poems haven’t been written yet—because I haven’t written them yet.

          ~TM

          ~August Kleinzahler, Green Sees Things in Waves (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999)

          Even though I’ve read that this guy can be a real hot head, he still writes some damn fine poetry. 

          ~TM

          ~Mary Jo Bang, Elegy (Graywolf, 2007)

It’s clear I’m a sucker for “an eighteen-rib mule.”  I don’t know what the hell it actually means (the larger implication of such a mule), but she has me sold.  That’s it.  I’m easy to please.

          ~TM 

~James Wright, Shall We Gather at the River (Wesleyan, 1968)

Rodney Jones and I were talking about this poem the other day, and I told him how I’d lifted the image of “the red spider who is God” for my own purposes.  And so it goes in my poem: “Such was your grace.  I was nothing more than a tiny red spider tending to my own needs.”  It then occurred to me that if I were to draw a parallel between Wright’s spider and my own, my speaker has unwittingly become God (a tiny God filled with self-importance, but God nonetheless).  My speaker and I feel honored to be in positions of such eminent power.

          ~TM

                    ~Kim Addonizio, Tell Me (BOA Editions 2000)

This is the quintessential poem for me from Addonizio.  She’s pretty hot right now (publishing with Knopf I believe), and I don’t think she needs the praise from little ole me; but I’m giving it to her anyway.  Lovely poem.

                   ~TM