[James Brancheau]

More and more I like him. First read this on American Life in Poetry.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...s/detail/56513

[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks for this. I hadn't seen it before. My favorite is The Gift.

[James Brancheau]

Terrific, Maryann. The emotional power he can generate, in relatively few words, is remarkable. He's one of those poets I not only admire, but feel I'm actually learning a good deal more about the craft as I'm reading his work.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

That splinter poem is really wonderful. Thanks for this, both of you.

[Catherine Chandler]

I actually had this same experience with my own father when I was quite little (splinter under my fingernail, which he had to slowly shave down). Years later, when I read The Gift, it took my breath away.

[R. S. Gwynn]

I have always found him delicate, but delicate to the point of preciosity. A lot of sacramental food poems. He was once savaged by Linda Gregg in a series of "love" poems. So much for delicacy.

[john savoie]

I really liked LYL's work when I first encountered it but found diminishing returns for a number of reasons: in short, similar poems done slightly less well, my own evolving taste. By the turn of the millennium I found myself sharing RSG's assessment. Still love those early ones, though, and the memory of their first reading.

[James Brancheau]

I understand that, Sam (and John). He does take a risk there. Like marriage, I suppose, you take the good with the bad, as long as the good is really good.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Put up something that shows what you mean when you dismiss a poet in a thread like this. Or else it reads like the Envyosphere where any contemporary poet receiving any notice on here quickly draws out this sort of jaded brush-off.

You can dismiss delicacy though. Like an ant can dismiss an elephant. It is just cute.

[R. S. Gwynn]

This is what I'm talking about, Andrew. The second half is better than the first.

Eating Together

In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger,
two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.
We shall eat it with rice for lunch,
brothers, sister, my mother who will
taste the sweetest meat of the head,
holding it between her fingers
deftly, the way my father did
weeks ago. Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road
winding through pines older than him,
without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

A little bit of sacramental eating goes a long way with me.

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

If there's so much "jubilance" in the silly things, small wonder Prufrock was afraid to bite into one.