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Time Wars – Tony Hoagland 

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , on October 30, 2026| 4 Comments »

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[ from What Narcissism Means to Me,
Gray Wolf Press, Minneapolis MN: © 2003 by Tony Hoagland ]
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The Time Wars
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It was the winter we ate a lot of oatmeal to stay warm.
We lived on 17th and G Streets; Kath called it the G spot.
At night in the bathtub I read The Collected Letters of Virginia Woolf,
trying to keep the pages of the 20th-century prose from getting wet,
reading the guest lists for her dinner parties
as she knocked out book after book between her shattering depressions.
 . 
Sometimes I would meet Richard at the Chinese place for dinner,
and one two three hours would vanish like our food.
We would stand outside The Great Wall, adjusting our scarves
in a pastoral moment of urban separation,
watching the cabs whiz by in the dusk.
 . 
The Vietnam War monument was just five blocks away;
on Saturday you would always see a vet or two,
in their windbreakers and baseball caps—
heads down, crying in the shrubs—
the little POW buttons and various insignia attached to their clothing
like they were advertising something.
 . 
We ourselves were fighting the Time Wars:
we could feel it speeding up, rapidly escaping,
like the hiss from a leaky balloon.
We were trying to plug it, to slow it down, to decelerate,
but none of us was having much success—
 . 
One day in February Kath brought in some roses and said,
“Here, the sun came 93 million miles
to make these flowers that I killed for you,”
and I said, “Kathleen, my talents are not capacious enough
to properly exaggerate your virtues,”
and we both burst out laughing
and time stopped right over our heads like a little red car.
 . 
On June 14th, Virginia Woolf wrote in her journal,
“Windy day. I am the hare, far ahead of my critics, the hounds.”
Something endearing about the mixture of weather report and vanity.
Something lonely about this image of success.
 . 
We ourselves aren’t thinking about the future anymore.
What we want is to calm time down, to get time in a good mood,
to make time feel wanted.
We just want to give time many homemade gifts,
covered with fingerprints and kisses.
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Tony Hoagland (1953-2018)
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❀ . 
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My first introduction to Tony Hoagland was in the pages of The Sun magazine, published in Chapel Hill, NC, then later at a workshop sponsored by the Winston-Salem / Forsyth County Library. Tony was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. As the child of an army doctor, he moved often during childhood. According to the novelist Don Lee, Hoagland “attended and dropped out of several colleges, picked apples and cherries in the Northwest, lived in communes, followed the Grateful Dead and became a Buddhist.” He earned an MFA from University of Arizona and in addition to his many awards, fellowships, and positions as educator, he re-established his NC roots by serving on the faculty of the low-residency Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. What Narcissism Means to Me (2003), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Tony Hoagland died in 2018 at age 64 of pancreatic cancer.
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[The quotation by Don Lee is from  Ploughshares Authors & Articles > Tony Hoagland, Zacharis Award > by Don Lee Archived October 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.]
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or more poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2025-07-10
 . 

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Brillig – Jones, Darcy, Robson, Weiss

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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[ 4 poems from Brillig summer/fall 2026 ]
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Peas are Wild Things
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In their tangle, the disrepair of the world seems new.
I sleep, only in fits; they grow all night without sound.
They make a mesh for themselves and my children
find in the green tent trellis a place of refuge,
shade as soft as wood duck down where they lay down,
where crows, those sailing shadows, come closer.
These peas are wild things. yet, they build a civilization
without acknowledging the grief ahead of them:
the dry rattle at summer’s end, the killing encasement
by the first hard frost. At this moment, their shelter
is a place of grace, of freedom, of mysteries.
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Paul Jones
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New Trail
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Two days after my divorce is final I see a vision. Pepsodent
smile, red hair, overgrown beard, strong legs, ragged sorts,
scuffed leather boots. We’re trailwork volunteers. He’s worn
that insurmountable barrier ten years; doesn’t own a razor.
I can’t imagine a kiss.
 . 
“Mom! You don’t do beards.”
“I do now.”
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Patricia Darcy
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En Passant
 . 
Sodden he trudged through the downpour.
Whether heedless or hopeless, who knew?
In no hurry, his head down and dripping,
one more shower within the deluge.
 . 
A girl in a green sedan passed him,
slowing down not to spray, turned aside,
“Would you like an umbrella?” she called to him.
“I’ve an extra” “Why, thank you,” he said.
 . 
As the girl raised her window, the walker
opened her tiny shelter and waved.
She resumed her slow drive through the thunder,
and wondered what difference it made
 . 
to reach out to a stranger in passing,
for her kindness left him no less wet.
Yet he stood a bit straighter beneath it
and began to take care where he stepped.
 . 
Ed Robson
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Flashback
 . 
Does he recall their courtship?
His ardent bow. Her frenzied curtsies.
How she squeezed through metal mesh,
tore luminescent wing, to dance for him.
 . 
The green ballerina shimmered and twirled.
 . 
He demanded a tango, chased, caught her.
 . 
A singeing kiss. A fiery flutter. A crackle.
 . 
Beholding cinders at dawn, does the candle
remember the moth?
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Jennifer Weiss
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I am standing at a long table heaped and strewn with books. A rank of glass doors on two sides of the room pours Sandhills light across the table, while darkness from old paneled and patterned walls pushes back, antique shadows in opposition. It is a room that has hosted Southern literary luminaries for dinners around that table, followed no doubt by fantastical conversations long into the night, but this morning’s luminaries are the books. Poetry books. New poetry books. Authors of those books hanging in the wings to see who will be attracted to these shining colorful seductive books, books, books. I pick one up.
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This book is smaller than most. Square. Slim. Hand crafted and oddly folded such that it opens itself into an organic creature in my hands. I read a poem. I exclaim, “Oh frabjous day!” A laugh behind my shoulder. I turn to find Deborah Doolittle, she whose book I am holding. She who has selected the poems in the book, curated and arranged, applied them to the pages that her own hands have also decorated, folded, sewn. Brilliant and big. I look forward to every new issue, and when I discover the envelope in my mailbox I know it will be another frabjous day.
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Paul Jones has been inducted in to the NCSU Computer Science Hall of Fame.
Patricia Darcy is partial to orange cats, crocheted cowls, and the Oxford comma.
Ed Robson celebrated his 73rd birthday by paragliding in Guatemala.
Jennifer Weiss is passionate about childhood literacy and reading to children out loud.
Also featured in the summer/fall 2026 edition of Brillig are J.T. Bryson, Peggy Heitmann, and Mary Spadoni.
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Also at Verse and Image by Paul Jones;
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Also at Verse and Image by Jennifer Weiss:
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or more poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
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Geography of One – Richard Allen Taylor

Posted in family, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on September 25, 2026| 11 Comments »

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[ 3 poems by Richard Allen Taylor ]
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Continental Divide
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When I drop the word cry on the spine
of a mountain ridge, weep flows down
one side, shout down the other, one word
split into different-meaning halves,
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then face will follow, turning toward
the Eastern slope while becoming the front side
on the West, and
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check will hesitate at first, not sure whether
to inspect for defects or stop a moving object,
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but before I drop the word orange,
I have to decide whether to eat it or wear it,
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and I discover the word colonizing, when released
from high altitude, might burst into colon and zing
like a couple divorced for irreconcilable differences,
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and knowing that rivers seldom head straight for
the sea, but wander sometimes in great bends
and curves before they reach home, one must
be careful when dropping a grenade like love.
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Richard Allen Taylor
from The Geography of One, Main Street Rag Enterprises, Edinboro, PA; © 2026
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Blessed Are
 .  .     after “Ode on Inheritance” by Kate Partridge
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Perhaps there is no inheritance worth having
that does not include a narrative of water—
a river, a lake, an ocean
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pounding on the beach below the open windows.
My father bought a farm
with a white house on a hill, a pond
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at the bottom. My mother inherited. She later sold.
All of it was, shall we say, liquidated.
Gone, the tiny lake
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fed by a stream tumbling over my father’s modest
ambitions. Just as well. My brothers and I sought
neither the view nor the serenity.
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We were reaching elsewhere, for something
less pastoral, more hopeful,
something more highway
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than country road. But even a cave can elicit hope.
The torch goes out, we thrust our hands
forward, grope walls,
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feet following our blindness. As if a hole could lean
against its sides. All it takes is the will
to swap adjectives.
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Trade wet for slick. Choose briny over soaked.
Here we go again with that
narrative of water. Snow, hail,
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ice melting in your palm. Later, when drought
squeezes the pond dry, a spark catches,
and fire climbs the hill—
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everything promised burns. The difference between
bold and meek becomes a matter of timing.
Bold when we rush forward
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to extinguish the blaze. Meek when the flames
force us back to a place
where faces do not melt.
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When rain finally comes, we inherit the memory
of blackened hills, even if no lawyers or signatures
attend. When grief follows, we console ourselves.
 . 
We say the trees bury their seeds under layers of ash.
We say the trees dream of resurrection..
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Richard Allen Taylor
from The Geography of One, Main Street Rag Enterprises, Edinboro, PA; © 2026
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Song for a Wind with No One Left to Talk To
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Now that you’re alone, wind,
where will you go?
north, sough, high, low
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Now that you sleep, wind,
what will you know?
peace, love, war, snow
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Now that you’re empty, wind,
how will you fill?
zephyr, gust, sail, chill
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Not that you’re free, wind,
what else will you be?
home, afar, aloft, alee
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Now that you die, wind,
how will you rise?
cloud, star, spirit, sky
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Richard Allen Taylor
from The Geography of One, Main Street Rag Enterprises, Edinboro, PA; © 2026
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About a month shy of 60 years ago, DuPont transferred my Dad (again) and we moved from Michigan to Aurora, Ohio. The first of November was my first day of eighth grade in my new school, and my first class was German with Fräulein Appenzeller. I shuffled my feet while she introduced me, then declared that they already had a Wilhelm in the class and therefore christened me Fritz. For the next five years most of the kids in Aurora thought my real name was Fritz.
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I sat down and looked around the classroom. I don’t remember much from that morning, but I do recall that there was one girl with long dark hair and very red cheeks. I mean really red, like silver dollar sized lipstick circles. Was this an arcane German class ritual? Turns out it was lipstick, from Halloween the night before. Turns out she had tried really hard but hadn’t been able to wash it off. Turns out her name was Linda. Turns out eight years later, in 1974, we would get married.
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Turns out we still are. During those almost 60 years now the proportion of time we have driven each other completely nuts has been far less than the proportion of time we have made each other laugh. Or at least smile. Smiling — I love that.
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Smiling is what these little paragraphs are about. Richard Allen Taylor’s poetry always, always makes me smile. His new book of poetry is crammed to bursting with smiles. Not just the poems that are funny – slyly, wickedly, innocently, unexpectedly funny. Also and even more so I am smiling with Richard and with his poems about these last few years he has lived alone, and about the three decades he and Julie were married before her death from leukemia. Smiling because love remembered and relived in such a pure, tender, and honest way lights up the world. Smiling because it is a gift to discover a poet willing to give so much of himself or herself.
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Turns out, Richard, that you are the world’s biggest mensch, and I love you. Keep smiling.
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❀
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Order Geography of One from Main Street Rag Enterprises.
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or more poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2020-11-22
 . 

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