Let’s All Go Buy Some Poems by Sampson Starkweather!

“It’s true, I live in the woods alone. Sometimes, when I walk out into the dark, I feel I’m going to be pulled in and mauled by some creature. I’m practically waiting for it. When my motion light goes on, I know some beast is approaching. I’m not going to say anything transcendent sounding about how maybe the beast is me. It’s not my style.”
 — I LOVE PROSE POEMS LIKE YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE. I found this one in the cool thing about Jack Handey in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, but my all-time favourite is James Wright’s “The Secret of Light” which is a thing of surpassing and overwhelming beauty and magic. Now he’s dead. I mourn him genuinely. Some day, if I am given the ability to know I’m dying, I want to take “Above the River: The Complete Poems” (Indiebound | Amazon) and sit on a park bench and stay there until it’s over.