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Poetry

This guide is intended to help you identify and locate scholarly and non-scholarly resources (books, articles, etc.) on the subject of poetry. On this guide you'll also find info. on library services, research tips, etc.

Featured Poem


Speedlust

by Allison Cummings, Professor of English

 

Some say superathletes see in slow mo,

bodies and balls frozen in discrete frames,

the world a series of readable stills,

phone poles sauntering by on highways,

clouds scudding frame by frame above Constable fields,

hands and spheres ethereally veering toward their eyes,

like careful seducers savoring the approach. 

For the rest of us, clocks spin, cars and words blur and run--

shuttling through tunnels and mental lists

Magritte twilights we note to absorb someday,

weekend sex -- vapor, the retinal afterburn of MTV. 

 

I hear that compact disks play on delay,

travel forward through notes that have not yet lit the air

and back to mortal time,

to bridle the skip before it occurs,

revise a future others never sense:

the sneeze before the dog ran under the wheel,

neutral breeze escorting a kiss that pulls two houses down. 

 

Some brains crave flashing change:

remote controls and gender etceteras;

others sigh for the still point of twirling worlds,

Flying Dutchman, a mind murdered of its crew,

ghost vessel drifting on the waves.

A hunger for optimal flow,

netting the wind or flicking what catches away,

what psyche can take on a given day,

and sift and exclude the endless rest –

guesses or choices, bites at the shiniest lure.