Poetry

Winter at the end of the trail,
where the Columbia washes the ocean,
what one book calls The Kingdom of Conifers,

What redeems literary anthologists, if we're able to claim neither the creativity of the poet nor the analytic rigor of the cultural theorist? Having dedicated myself for years to constructing elaborate critical arguments, how did I get involved in what one of my friends called "pretheoretical" judgments about poem-gathering, a suspiciously curatorial practice in our supposedly post-canonical era?

The poems I have chosen to memorize over the years answer to an odd mixture of social occasions and opportunities. When asked to perform a poem at nonacademic parties, I have found Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," not among the poems Harold Bloom includes in The Best Poems of the English Language (2004), to serve me best.

As you dress, early mist
reflects moonlight and silence
between the winter hills