What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In Books We’ve Loved, our editorial board members and invited poets reflect on a book that has been particularly meaningful to them in the last year. Each Monday's delivery brings you a poem from the book and an excerpt from the essay. 
The person I once was found himself
In the present, which was the only place he could be.
The dog that yesterday had barked
At his empty dish barked again.
The stars were still shining,
Though the brilliance of the sun obscured them so completely
You'd believe they'd disappeared.
Time to walk to the paddock.
Will the roses be blooming? Will Penny be there, too?
Selfishly we planted cornflowers, delphiniums,
A different bed for every shade.
From behind the wisteria came children, then grandchildren—
The girls wore smocked dresses, dresses my mother
Had made, the boys had floppy hair.
The things we made
Ourselves seemed permanent,
But like the stars invisible, even the things
We made from words. Downstairs
The kitchen, the living room, everything in place:
The bed could fold up in the wall.
But upstairs a ladder where each evening, one by one,
We'd climb into the crow's nest
To rehearse the stars. Hold the railing! Don't fall!
How did we afford this house?
Why, if it exists
In the present,
Am I speaking in the past?
 


In Memoriam
Color photograph of a smiling James Longenbach

With great respect and affection, Poetry Daily remembers the life and work of James Longenbach (1959-2022). We celebrate and recall Jim and hope our readers will enjoy revisiting the work he allowed to appear on these pages:

Essays:
James Longenbach on Sir Thomas Wyatt’s “They Flee From Me”
James Longenbach on William Butler Yeats’ The Tower

Poems:
Barcarolle
Now and Then
In the Village
 
from the book FOREVER / W. W. Norton & Company
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Color image of the cover of James Longenbach's book, Forever
What Sparks Poetry:
Donald Revell on James Longenbach's Forever

"To read the poems gathered as Forever is to walk beside Jim Longenbach along the banks of Lethe. We know the place, having been here before, with Dante in the most beautiful cantos of  his Purgatorio. We remember its perils—the perils of oblivion and forgetfulness. And we remember its allures—the garden on the farther shore and a reunion there with the unforgettable. But something has changed. Somehow, Longenbach has prepared an estate for us along the water’s edge."
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"Short Conversations with Poets: Matthew Dickman"

"When making something I don’t sit around waiting for the muse. I believe in inspired moments but the muse I can do without. I have found that the important thing for me is to just sit down and write, to not expect some amazing outcome, some literary product, but to focus on the experience of making, of writing. If I have enjoyed a session of writing then it doesn’t matter what I’ve made.". 

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