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In that endless season of dead grass
and rotted pumpkins, I was a boy
who stood in a tree and named all the cows

The girl seems to fly
the hawk above her, a kite of feathers

The box dates from the late sixties, from a trip I took with my family to Ireland. I would have been eight or nine at the time. Of the trip itself I have one vivid memory. We are in a rental car, my father at the wheel, his attention...

Leroy, wisdom in a chuckle, 
            Gold chains drape around his neck—
                         High yellow on high yellow—

The woman saves every heart- or wing-
shaped rock she finds, studding the mountain 

The day moon the
                                     spirit of the morning

Liesel has no time for questions, especially her own. She is sitting on the floor in her room, holding on her lap a heavy wooden box. 

On April 1, 2014, Andrew Chastain joined Jack Hitt onstage at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions...

He walks back from the
                                         window in half-shadow

a half-shade himself

When literary promise is not enough