Week of Monday, November 17th, 2025

Jason Barry, Portrait d'un homme

I'll go ahead and take the bold stance that his style reminds me of my own. Let's say that I identify with it.
Who are we waiting for?
Line 4: What dives? Or does he mean, like, a bar?
Referential context:
- Glyn Maxwell is a poet and playwright who is alive, British, and whom I don't know much about, but his work looks excellent. More on that another week.
I like (that):
- The last sentence describes both the speaker and the coffee.
- Barry noticeably skips a comma in the first line, then throughout the piece, the pauses increase until they escalate to stops.
- The sound of "empty-- / taxis, traffic lights, a dive."
- The threaded S sounds in the last stanza.
- The choice to find enjoyment in a mildly inconvenient situation.

Doshi thinks we should chill out about death and focus on what's in front of us.
I really love this one. It's delicious while still being accessible.
I like (that):
- The clarity of theme!
- Our fates are described as "the stones handed to (us)," our lives a "carnival of feathers." (Fate in opposition to life?)
- Sentence 12: "Oh, body-dweller, do not be afraid / of the unassailable deep, the habitation / of light is filled with perforations."
- The last part: "In one room, / the going on and on of childhood. / In another, a swarm of pond sludge / moving toward your legs. I, who / once made an island of the dark, / draw close to this carnival of feathers."
- The super variable sentence length that includes a lot of cropped insertions.
- The contrast of natural imagery with something industrially human: "plastic bags," "bedpan," "bowl," "terrace." (Some softer than others.)

This piece comments on a 1972 jazz instrumental. Poydras calls on the sometimes complicated, familiar feeling of listening to music that pushes you inward and calls you home (hello, title!).
Referential context:
- Alice Coltrane was, among other things, a jazz musician with a famous 10-minute composition by the same name as this poem. It's essentially pointless to read this piece without listening to her song first.
- Fulcrum (noun): the pivot/hinge point on a lever. Throwing that in here because I didn't know that.
I like (that):
- The first stanza describes Going Home (Coltrane) as "an arrangement," "then a... flood," that "opens / into a siren."
- The contrast of connecting "dialogue" to "wordless," "calling" to "quiet," then "ancient" to "home."
- Word choice connotes ambiguity/ imperfection/ freedom for interpretation: "hollow," "grainy," "salted," "crusted," and "dunes."
- The use of lowercase and minimal punctuation, which invokes shape and space.
- This part (stanza 2-3): "it reaches for that hollow place, / finding a grainy fulcrum / salted from a lower / rib of mine, steady / like limestone."

Never judge a poem by its title! This poem advocates for living sensually in the present by denouncing the artificial restrictions we place on ourselves.
Line 8: Ok, Fugees. (Joke!)
I like (that):
- Simple language and natural imagery reinforce the idea that the things we usually learn slowly and painfully over time are actually obvious when we let authenticity speak.
- The liberal use of my beloved em dash to end the first 5/7 stanzas, which each also begin the same way: "How to [present tense verb]."
- Stanza 3: "How to go home again when the wood thrush / is promising the drunk liquid bliss of dusk--"
- Very little punctuation exists at the same time as a ton of structure.
If an overabundance of caution "protract(s) the striving... life" (line 11), too little hurries it along. No need to languish; no need to rush.

Carver is one of my favorites of the super straightforward, realist American poets--a great teacher of impact and restraint. I do not wonder what he meant by this at all.
I like (that):
- To me, the first sentence connotes a tank for an animal.
- The part: "Hours and hours / much like a little room. / With just a strip of carpet to walk on." Time does not pass in the setting; the setting is the time that passes.
- Carver uses a lot of clipped, short sentences that begin with connecting words ("And," "Or," "Like," "With").
- The threaded vowel sounds ("Or," "Over," "Hours").