Living Things

“Our poems / Are like the wart-hogs” /

Our poems
Are like the wart-hogs
In the zoo
It's hard to say
Why there should be such creatures

But once our life gets into them
As sometimes happens
Our poems
Turn into living things
And there's no arguing
With living things
They are
The way they are

Our poems
May be rough
Or delicate
Little
Or great

But always
They have inside them
A confluence of cries
And secret languages

And always
The are improvident
And free
They keep
A kind of Sabbath

They play
On sooty fire escapes
And window ledges

They wander in and out
Of jails and gardens
They sparkle
In the deep mines
They sing
In breaking waves
And rock like wooden cradles.

From Living Things: Collected Poems, by Anne Porter. Reprinted with permission from Steerforth Press.

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Also in this Issue

Issue 36 / November 26, 2015
  1. Editor's Note from November 26, 2015

    Issue 36: What smells so good, the other First Thanksgiving, and birds that gather to remember. /

  2. Oh, How He Smells Us

    Sniff and see that the Lord is good. /

  3. The First Thanksgiving We Don’t Remember

    Bad fortune, divine chastisement, and mercy after the Pilgrims feasted with the Wampanoag. /

  4. Bird Brained

    You know you can’t fly. But they may have you beat on memory, too. /

  5. Wonder on the Web

    Issue 36: Links to amazing stuff.

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