Dana Gioia

When his beloved Sophie died, Novalis 
Lay by her grave and wept himself to sleep.
On the third night she met him in a dream.
He woke transformed, longing for the last trance,
“When sleep shall be without waking.” 

Meet me at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach,
That shabby, squat nightclub on its foggy pier.
Let’s aim for the summer of ’71,
When all of our friends were young and immortal.

Let’s go downtown. It’s a hot summer night.
Lovers are sitting in sidewalk cafés—
Breaking up, making up, hooking up, cooking up
Plans for tonight that leave them amazed.

A nagging question in Frost criticism in the half-century since the author’s death has been where to place him in the larger narrative of American poetry.

It’s a farm town in the August heat
With a couple of bars along Main Street.
A jukebox moans from an open door

Naked, only naked did I know you.
I, who had clothed you in my longing, now
Was undeceived. Naked in the darkness,
No longer blind.