Lyrical poetry is both haunted and inspired by impermanence. How can language begin to render the sensation of living in all of its exhilaration, confusion, beauty and grief? These new poems by David Biespiel aspire to do so. His 12th book, Beautiful Is the World: New and Selected Poems, 1996-2026, arrived this month—a cause for celebration. —Jody Bolz, Poetry EditorÂ
ALL IN ALL
How yellow the light is, coming out
Of the branches when the last owl
Climbs off like a wind that drops
Morning from the light. You
At a distance that hovers in flame,
Stilled in middle life, middle rooms,
Lights off, watching the skull-like
Contingency sweep coastal.
Who will hold up the boy burning
In your heart and, later, bear your time
In the green-shaded changeling world
Before the days of nowhere and nothing,
Loom and ash? The owl glistens, an angel-
Soldier carrying the banner back—
O sad faced-bird—all the way
To the far waves of the sea.
LINES FOR MONDAY
This house in winter
Sleeps like a boat on a river.
The windows are shut. The sash, a harbor.
Plunge and anchor, Bark and clamber —
All night, my heart
Is slender, a sliver.
David Biespiel is a poet, critic, memoirist, novelist and painter who lives in Portland, Oregon. His 2020 memoir, A Place of Exodus, traces the rise and fall of a Jewish boyhood in Texas.