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phillipcrymble.bsky.social
phillip crymble
@phillipcrymble.bsky.social
1.3K followers 150 following 1.4K posts
poet | phd | umichwriters alum | fiddlehead poetry editor | record collector | author of not even laughter | one-armed bandit | he/him
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phillipcrymble.bsky.social
A #friendsgiving message from Alden Nowlan
The night of the party Never have I seen women wiser or more beautiful. Never have I known men so witty, so sensitive. Here in my living room are the twenty most remarkable persons in all the world. And me, the one fool, who must dance although too heavy on his feet, sing although his vocal cords are out of tune. But that is the price I pay for such companionship. My friends, I do not get drunk for myself, I get drunk for you.
November 26, 2025 at 7:51 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Jan Zwicky
SECURING THE HOUSE What is it we are trying to achieve? That we will learn before we die to make our leaving orderly? Imagine turning down the heat and walking out, not even locking up, imagine coming back weeks later. Ah, the list of failures: unpaid bills, the missing jewellery, plant leaves browning on the window sills. And the dust. What of the dust?
November 26, 2025 at 2:06 AM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
The final poem in Charles Simic's Scribbled in the Dark (2017)
AT TENDER MERCY O lone streetlight, Trying to shed What light you can On a spider repairing his web This autumn night, Stay with me, As I push further and further Into the dark.
November 24, 2025 at 8:55 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Derek Mahon, born on this day in 1941
The Birdlife of Kinsale The gulls are out at the Old Head Where the Lusitania went down, So we make do with rooks instead Among the tiered roofs of the town. The gulls are down among the fish, Raiding the trawlers at the quay; Crows strut among our spilt rubbish, Staring ferociously at the sea.
November 23, 2025 at 9:27 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Another poem by Jim Harrison, this one from Plain Song (1965)
CREDO, AFTER E. P. Go, my songs to the young and insolent, speak the love of final things - do not betray me as a dancer, drunk, is dumb to his clumsiness.
November 23, 2025 at 3:48 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Jim Harrison
LARSON'S HOLSTEIN BULL Death waits inside us for a door to open. Death is patient as a dead cat. Death is a doorknob made of flesh. Death is that angelic farm girl gored by the bull on her way home from school, crossing the pasture for a shortcut. In the seventh grade she couldn't read or write. She wasn't a virgin. She was "simpleminded," we all said. It was May, a time of lilacs and shooting stars. She's lived in my memory for sixty years. Death steals everything except our stories.
November 23, 2025 at 1:10 AM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Charles Simic
My Possessions I have lots of dead friends And few streets I still roam With eyes open or shut Hoping to run into them. I have address books big and small With crossed out names Two clocks and many wristwatches I haven't heard tick in years. I have a large black umbrella I'm scared to open indoors As well as outdoors No matter how hard it rains. Like a cobbler lost in a shoe He is repairing I rarely look up From what I'm doing, One foot in the grave, all but certain.
November 22, 2025 at 6:00 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Carl Dennis
At the Graveyard Now they don't need a thing from us, However small: not even a cup of water Scooped from the fountain; not even a slight Adjustment of leg or shoulder To ease a cramp, or an offer to read them A poem or two they used to like. And now they have nothing to offer us, Poor wanderers without luggage, Without maps or pockets. No blessings, no answers to any questions We can think of asking, no words of advice Besides the words that we choose to lend them. Nothing to give us now or receive, and yet Here we are with our bright bouquets As if to say we still remember the light Lost when they left us, and the light They bestowed on us that we can't repay.
November 21, 2025 at 6:46 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
An elegy for Franz Kline from the Winter 1986 issue of Grand Street.
Edwin Denby At first sight, not Pollock, Kline scared Me, in the Cedar, ten years past Drunk, dark-eyed, watchful, light-hearted Everybody drunk, his wide chest Adorable hero, mourn him No one Franz didn't like, Elaine said The flowered casket was loathsome Who are we sorry for, he's dead Between death and us his painting Stood, we relied daily on it To keep our hearts on the main thing Grandeur in a happy world of shit Walk up his stoop, 14th near 8th The view stretches as far as death
November 20, 2025 at 3:02 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Yvor Winters, from The Magpie's Shadow (1922)
WINTER ECHO Thin air! My mind is gone.
November 19, 2025 at 5:55 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Terrance Hayes, born on this day in 1971
WIND IN A BOX This ink. This name. This blood. This blunder. This blood. This loss. This lonesome. Wind. This canyon. This / twin /swiftly / paddling /shadow blooming an inch above the carpet―. This cry. This mud. This shudder. This is where I stood: by the bed, by the door, by the window, in the night / in the night. How deep, how often / must a woman be touched? How deep, how often have I been touched? On the bone, on the shoulder, on the brow, on the knuckle: Touch like a last name, touch like a wet match. Touch like an empty shoe and an empty shoe, sweet and incomprehensible. This ink. This name. This blood and wonder. This box. This body in a box. This blood in the body. This wind in the blood.
November 18, 2025 at 9:30 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
To commemorate Rock Hudson's centenary, a poem by Kathryn Gray that pays tribute to his frequent and most gifted collaborator, the great Douglas Sirk. #RockHudson
Love after Douglas Sirk Take me to the country club in my red dress. Make me locally infamous. Fix me a Martini-Dry-- I am getting weepy. I almost want to die. O take me, please, to the clinic in Zurich. I'm not being ironic-- I cannot see to see! You-you have blinded me! Be my gardener, and I can make the moves like Lana Turner: look what my eyeballs are doing now! This is all that heaven allows, and then some (uh, OK, that's Jane Wyman). Don't say I am, I am a poor imitation-- O, you. Magnificent. Obsession.
November 17, 2025 at 10:32 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
A posthumous and uncollected Charles Simic poem from the Spring 2023 issue of The Threepenny Review.
If Only I Could Find Again That small outdoor café With a single table and chair Under a huge old tree With one lone customer Who looks like my father Engrossed in some book Unaware a pretty waitress Is waiting to take his order, While the tree above them Is now all dark and silent As if fallen under a spell.
November 16, 2025 at 9:34 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Lyn Lifshin
IT'S EASIER, CLASSICAL MUSIC isn't it my mother asks the demerol taking hold calmer isn't it you don't have to feel words scrape but can float in the violins it's like a boat she says you don't have to steer
November 15, 2025 at 6:08 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Another David Ignatow miniature from Facing the Tree (1975)
THE PLEASURE I enjoy watching myself grow old and gray I am authentic I say I belong with the others.
November 13, 2025 at 2:55 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
David Ignatow
AUTUMN (For Wendell Berry) A leaf lies shaking at my door, about to be blown away. If I should bring it into the still air of my room, it would lie quietly on the windowsill facing the tree from which it fell.
November 13, 2025 at 1:08 AM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Maggie Dietz
November Show's over, folks. And didn't October do A bang-up job? Crisp breezes, full-throated cries Of migrating geese. Low-floating coral moon. Nothing left but fool's gold in the trees. Did I love it enough, the full-throttle foliage, While it lasted? Was I dazzled? The bees Have up and quit their last-ditch flights of forage And gone to shiver in their winter clusters. Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened plaster Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin, Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters. Even the swarms of kids have given in To winter's big excuse, boxed-in allure: TVs ricochet light behind pulled curtains. The days throw up a closed sign around four. The hapless customer who'd wanted something Arrives to find lights out, a bolted door.
November 12, 2025 at 3:05 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Wallace Stevens
It was when the trees were leafless first in November And their blackness became apparent, that one first Knew the eccentric to be the base of design.
November 11, 2025 at 5:53 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Howard Nemerov
A Modern Poet Crossing at rush hour the Walt Whitman Bridge, He stopped at the Walt Whitman Shopping Center And bought a paperback copy of Leaves of Grass. Fame is the spur, he figured; given a Ford Foundation Fellowship, he'd buy a Ford.
November 11, 2025 at 12:32 AM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Charles Wright
On the Night of the First Snow, Thinking about Tennessee It's dark now, the horses have had their half-apple, mist and rain, Horses down in the meadow, just a few degrees above snow. I stand in front of the propane stove, warming my legs. If the door were open, I'd listen to creek water And think I heard voices from long ago, distinct, and calling me home. The past becomes such a mirror--we're in it, and then we're not.
November 10, 2025 at 3:00 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Joe Brainard
I remember being surprised at how yellow and how red autumn really is.
November 9, 2025 at 8:46 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Mary Ruefle
Haworth Literature is steep, changeable, and solitary - like this day, there is a tomb, a debt, a crumb, and intertwined overhanging limbs in the damp green gloom of the overgrown graveyard. For which there is no vocabulary. So a rook drops a feather. But only after his screed. See that broken sunray yonder? A moth has gotten into my soul. The sad, gritty stuff of life - flowers freeze, children drown, she died on the sofa - but see that broken sunray yonder - who can tell the difference between ocher and umber? No one, I am glad.
November 9, 2025 at 3:54 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Charles Wright, with a word of warning
November is dark and doom-dangled, fitful bone light And suppuration, worn wrack In the trees, dog rot and dead leaves, watch where you're going . . .
November 8, 2025 at 4:58 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
A new poem by Rae Armantrout from this month's issue of The New York Review of Books.
No Promises If I know you now at all it's because I know what not to say in your presence. If I remind you of something you once said or did you'll scoff, "That scrap of the old phantasm!" * It was awful when my mother pulled at things I said, making them bigger or other than they were, snatching them out of a context that I wouldn't— really couldn't—share, it was so nebulous and crowded
November 8, 2025 at 2:24 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
One of the three Forrest Gander translations featured in the autumn issue of The Fiddlehead.
Indelible Radiance Translation of Jeannette Lozano Clariond It is perfectly itself, the tree fixed in your eyes. Poplar and blood. An image beaming its silver undersides: indelible radiance seeping out through little holes in the tracery. Leaking across the lake, the image advances toward you. But what remains beyond reach is the Word.
November 8, 2025 at 12:00 AM